We are parents of students who attend Montgomery County Public Schools, as well as community organizers and advocates who have educated ourselves and others about the harms of carceral approaches to youth safety. We therefore read with dismay that the Montgomery County school board appointed former county police Chief Marcus Jones to lead its Department of Security and Compliance.
Putting our former police chief in charge of school safety clearly signals that MCPS views school safety as a matter best handled by policing and punishment rather than through student wellness and support. It ensures that school safety will be addressed through a criminal lens because this is how Marcus Jones has addressed safety in this county for the past 38 years.
During his tenure as chief, Jones was responsible for a culture that led to police berating and threatening a 5-year-old child who ran away from school. When asked at a Montgomery County Council inquiry into this incident whether, “In your personal opinion is referring to any child, especially a black or brown child, as a beast appropriate?” Jones would not comment. Jones’s inability to recognize how to appropriately respond to juvenile behavior was also revealed last year when he claimed that a 12-year-old child who made bomb threats at area schools did so because the child knew that recent changes in state law regarding the age of criminal liability would ensure he would not be punished.
After a concerted push by students, parents, community members and experts to remove police from our schools, Jones has been a staunch advocate of restoring them, despite the well-known disparate impact they have on our most vulnerable students, in particular Black students. In addition to national data showing significant race-based disparities in school-based arrests, a 2020 report by our county’s Office of Legislative Oversight (OLO) revealed that while Black students made up less than a quarter of the MCPS population, they comprised almost half of its arrests over the previous four years. A second OLO report, issued in 2023, found that ”Racial disparities in the School to Prison Pipeline [in Montgomery County] persist with Black children being twice as likely to be suspended or referred to juvenile services compared to their share of student enrollment.” In short, MCPS’s choice of Jones to lead on school safety tells us that it is willing to sacrifice Black students in favor of the false promise that schools will be safer with a former police chief at the helm.
We are at an inflection point in the county–will MCPS embrace a public health approach to student safety or look to the heavy hand of law enforcement? MCPS has started to develop a more robust restorative justice approach to working with students. But this takes time and resources to fully develop. It has proven very successful in other school systems across the country, including in Baltimore City, where schools that adopted restorative practices “have seen dramatic drops in suspensions, improved school climate, and better relationships between students and teachers,” according to Baltimore City Public Schools. Bringing in Jones will lead us away from effective approaches to the failed policies of the past, which relied on high arrest and suspension rates rather than establishing more positive school climates. Certain students, particularly Black boys, will suffer the brunt of these consequences.
Our schools should be a place where all students can learn without a pervasive threat of punitive measures. We urge the Montgomery County Board of Education to reconsider its appointment of Marcus Jones.
Mara Greengrass is the parent of an MCPS student and a leader with Jews United for Justice. Zakiya Sankara-Jabar is the parent of an MCPS student and the co-founder and co-executive director of Racial Justice NOW!