By Aaricka Washington, Photo: Solutions Journalism Exchange, The 74, March 24, 2022
Kyla Payne distinctly remembers being on edge any time she entered Dorsey High School in Los Angeles. The 16-year-old felt uncomfortable being monitored by campus police officers who seemed to be intent on finding crimes and rule violations that weren’t there, Payne said.
“I know for me and my friends, it was difficult trying to live just as a high school student and live freely and be creative when you have these figures on your shoulders just waiting to get something out of you,” said Payne, a high school junior.
Amid the uncertainty of COVID-19 and remote learning, the trauma of the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the turmoil of the uprisings that followed, Payne said the school police only intensified the students’ anxieties rather than calmed them. After witnessing what she calls unfair backpack searches and students being pepper-sprayed by police, Payne, with a group of students and community membersin Students Deserve, a youth-led activist group, pushed for the Los Angeles Unified School District to withdraw all funding for schoolpolice and divert it to mental health support for Black students.
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