Former Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo asked a state district court on Friday to quash ten felony charges of child endangerment for his response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting.

Arredondo is one of two law enforcement officers who face criminal charges for their response to Texas’ deadliest school shooting, which left nineteen children and two teachers dead on May 22, 2022. An indictment handed down in June by a Uvalde County grand jury called Arredondo the incident commander and accused him of to ten children by delaying law enforcement’s response to the active shooter and not responding as trained.

In their motion to toss out the indictment, Arredondo’s lawyers say school districts and their employees don’t have a duty to protect students from third-party threats. The lawyers also point out that the children were already in danger when Arredondo responded.

“The indictment does not allege that Mr. Arredondo engaged in any conduct that placed a child in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment,” the filing states. “To the contrary, the language in the indictment itself makes clear that when Mr. Arredondo responded as part of his official duties, an active shooter incident was already in progress.”

Arredondo that he did not think he was the incident commander and that he did not give any orders. Nearly 400 local, state and federal law enforcement officers descended upon the school but failed to act decisively, instead waiting for more than an hour to confront the gunman.

Border Patrol agents ultimately decided to breach the classroom and killed the shooter.

Since the school shooting, families of Uvalde victims have called on local and state elected officials to hold officers accountable for their failures in leadership. Many said they were disappointed that the grand jury indicted only two officers.

In addition to Arredondo, former district officer Adrian Gonzales was indicted on 29 counts of child endangerment. Gonzales violating school district policy or state law. Both officers were released from Uvalde County Jail on bond.

Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Update: The bill was ordered to the inactive file on the last night of the session Aug. 31. It had been amended to keep mandatory police notification requirements if a student assaults or threatens a teacher. The bill would have still let teachers choose to call the police if a student is using or possessing controlled substances, and it would also decriminalize willful disturbance by students.

During Zuleima Baquedano’s first year as a teacher, she faced an important choice. 

One of her students had difficulty controlling her emotions. One day, she had a meltdown and kicked Baquedano down.

The principal asked Baquedano if she wanted to call the police, because the incident legally counted as assault. But not long before, the student had moved in with her family after being in and out of foster care, was beginning the diagnostic process for her disability and had been working with Baquedano on coping mechanisms. 

“Any contact with police would have really put all of that in jeopardy,” Baquedano said. “Calling the police, getting Child Protective Services involved and all that would have completely just ruined any kind of progress she’d made.” 

Baquedano decided against calling the police. “I’m never going to regret advocating for her, despite the fact that several teachers told me I couldn’t let her get away with it, and that she did this on purpose when they didn’t even know her,” she said. 

She had a choice because she worked at a charter school in Los Angeles. Staff at traditional public schools don’t have the same freedom: Under California law, they are required to make a police report if a student assaults them — and can be prosecuted if they don’t. 

A bill before the Legislature in its final week . 

But what supporters see as a common sense bill, opponents see as going too far, raising partisan tensions in an election year in which crime and education are top of mind for many voters. 

A difficult path to the Senate

, a San Jose Democrat, has been trying to get similar legislation passed for four years.

“The data very clearly shows that when law enforcement is required to come onto campus, those that they choose to arrest are disproportionately people with disabilities and students of color,” Kalra said in an interview. 

 found that students with disabilities make up 26% of school arrests, despite being 11% of total enrollment. According to a , students of color are handcuffed by police at a disproportionate rate — 20% of Black students compared to 9% of white students. 

“This bill is really a turning point in addressing issues around school climate,” said Oscar Lopez, an associate managing attorney at Disability Rights California, a sponsor of the bill. 

This is the first time Kalra’s bill has made it to the Senate, and it wasn’t easy. It barely squeaked out of the Assembly by a vote of just 41-22, with seven Democrats voting “no.” 

“It’s unfortunate that a common sense bill like this has struggled so hard to make it through the Legislature,” Kalra said. 

And opposition is organizing.

Last week, Senate Republicans , listing concerns about school safety, drug possession and the relationship between schools and law enforcement. 

“The bottom line is this is going to make our school campuses less safe,” Senate GOP Leader  of San Diego told CalMatters. “It’s going to endanger our students, teachers, administrators and even the law enforcement professionals who have to serve on these campuses.”

Law enforcement officials worry that AB 2441 could open the door to eliminating school resource officers. 

“School officials and law enforcement should work together, especially when it comes to pupils whose behavior violates the law and puts school safety in jeopardy,” said Cory Salzillo, legislative director of the California State Sheriffs’ Association. “Removing requirements just runs counter to that notion.”

If AB 2441 were to pass, there would still still be times when staff are required to call the police. Under federal law, local education agencies must call law enforcement if a student has a firearm or is caught selling controlled substances. 

Some opponents have also raised concerns about school administrators’ ability to discern between students who are selling controlled substances or just possessing them — a task they think should be left to law enforcement, particularly .

“Schools are not isolated in the community, so when there are crimes being committed, even if it’s simple possession of a controlled substance, that’s something that law enforcement should be aware of,” Salzillo said. 

The California Department of Public Health plans to announce a new fentanyl education campaign on Wednesday. 

“Fentanyl is so dangerous that we need to be all hands on deck on dealing with that crisis on our school campuses,” Jones said. “Removing this requirement of reporting is just unbelievable to me at this point in time.” 

Because of an amendment to the bill, staff would also need to notify law enforcement if someone needed immediate medical attention. 

After the Senate Republican Caucus released its analysis — and sent it to its entire press list for the first time — supporters of the bill accused them of fear mongering and spreading misinformation. 

“There’s been a lot of untruths shared and promoted by the opposition to this bill,” said Rachel Bhagwat, legislative advocate at ACLU California Action, a bill sponsor. 

Jones denied that’s what’s happening. 

“California voters and taxpayers are fed up with the criminal justice system in California right now,” he said. “They’re fed up with the progressive wing that’s continuing to decriminalize crime.” 

Preventing the school-to-prison pipeline

 that when young people face severe discipline at school — such as police interaction, suspension or expulsion — they are less likely to graduate high school and more likely to go to prison. 

“The interpretation of normal, age-appropriate behaviors as being threatening and criminal and dangerous is leading to a situation where young people are not getting educational opportunities in school, and they’re being funneled into further criminal contact and the criminal system,” Bhagwat said. 

Under current state law, staff are required to try other methods — such as meeting with parents, speaking with a psychologist, creating an individualized education plan or restorative justice programs — before resorting to something more severe. 

“Between counseling and other programs, there are methods to use that don’t involve punitive consequences such as a misdemeanor crime,” Naj Alikhan, senior director of marketing and communications for the Association of California School Administrators, wrote in a statement to CalMatters.

The bill would also get rid of a clause that makes it a crime to “willfully disturb” public schools and meetings. Under this provision, students could be criminally prosecuted for running in hallways or knocking on doors. 

“It’s somewhat of a vague term,” Kalra said, “and it’s been used against students who might have behavior issues. There’s a lot of different reasons why a student may be causing a disturbance and we want to give schools the ability to decide how they want to handle those situations.” 

An amendment to the bill would make it an infraction for someone to prevent a school staff member from calling the police. 

Baquedano — who  before the Senate education committee in July and now teaches in Santa Ana — said that if the bill passes, there are serious situations, like having a deadly weapon or being in possession of drugs, where she would still call.  

“There’s an assumption that we’re going to stop calling the police, and that’s not the case,” she said. “The idea that we wouldn’t have that common sense is a little insulting.” 

It’s a decision Baquedano said teachers deserve to have. 

“People should trust us — the professionals in the situation, who’ve been trained, who’ve gone through education to do this — they should be trusting our judgment,” she said. “We’re the ones who best know our students. We spend all these hours with them a year, sometimes more than parents do.”

Kalra remains optimistic that AB 2441 will pass the Senate this week and make it to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. 

“You would hope,” he said, “that legislators would understand the need for us to support all students, and I’m hopeful that at least we can get this bill through to see that it’s not going to create some doomsday outcome.”

This was originally published on .

Now, however, some advocates say they fear that the task force’s law enforcement majority wants to shut down discussion of the issues at the core of the raging debate over the perils of stationing cops in schools. 

At the task force’s first meeting, in June, the executive director of the Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training announced that the group would not discuss prone restraints or use of force, says Khulia Pringle, the task force member who represents Solutions Not Suspensions. Her coalition consists of community groups including disability and racial equity advocates.

“He said, ‘This is not a philosophical debate and we are not going to go beyond the substance of the statute,’ ” Pringle quoted Erik Misselt as saying. “I thought for sure we would get into the weeds of what we were there for.”

The board, which licenses law enforcement officers, is responsible for overseeing development of the model policy. 

The , Pringle and other advocates say, requires the committee to address a number of issues pertaining to the use of school resource officers, whose campus presence dramatically increases student arrests. They believed the model policy — to be adopted by law enforcement agencies whose officers work in schools — would specify when police can act in schools and lay out alternatives to the use of force.

The task force is scheduled to hold the second of four planned meetings July 18 and to agree on a finished model policy in mid-September. So far, members of the group have been given little research on policies guiding police presence in schools, causing some advocates to fear the end product won’t reflect best practices.

“The public was told this was sorted out, that children would be protected by a model policy,” says Erin Sandsmark, another Solutions Not Suspensions leader. “To say you can’t do the job without holding a child face-down in a dangerous hold seems extreme to us.” 

By law, the task force had to include representatives of the police licensing board and five other law enforcement organizations, four statewide education organizations and three community groups — one of them representing special education students. Maren Christenson, executive director of the Multicultural Autism Action Network — one of two disability-focused organizations in the Solutions Not Suspensions coalition — is concerned about the lack of representation for the students most impacted.

“We know who is on the receiving end of most types of disciplinary actions in schools,” she says, “especially students of color with disabilities. Limiting their representation in this discussion doesn’t help.”

The U.S. Department of Education has called for banning prone restraints, and the Justice Department in 2022 issued for in-school policing. 

More recently, the Government Accountability Office released research that draws on federal arrest data, which revealed dramatic disparities by race, gender and disability status. At schools where police are stationed, teachers and administrators often call on them to deal with student misbehavior, the report notes, dramatically ratcheting up arrest rates. 

In the wake of Floyd’s 2020 murder, numerous districts throughout the country — including Minneapolis — stopped stationing police in schools. In 2023, Minnesota lawmakers banned the use of in-school prone restraints altogether. 

But with election year politics already in play, in-school policing remained a red-hot topic. Although they control the state House of Representatives, state Senate and governorship, Minnesota Democrats have straddled a rural-urban divide on policing since Floyd’s death. After in-school prone restraints were outlawed, at least 16 suburban and rural law enforcement agencies pulled officers out of schools, arguing that they could not work if they were not allowed to use the holds. 

Fearing the controversy would cost the party seats in November, this year Democrats stripped the ban from state law but added detailed requirements regarding training, data collection and the creation of a model policy. Among other things, the law says the policy must prohibit calling on cops to enforce school rules or assist educators with discipline; specify de-escalation techniques and other alternatives to the use of force; create a timeline for school resource officers to complete extensive, new training on juvenile issues also called for under the law; and protect student data. 

Debate during the legislative session was hampered by a near-total lack of data on police presence in Minnesota schools. No one tracks how many school systems have contracts with law enforcement agencies, how many officers are stationed in schools and how often they intervene with students — much less which ones and why.

“Reporters kept asking, ‘Do you know how many kids are restrained?’ ” says Pringle, the only person of color on the task force. “And [lawmakers] kept saying, ‘That’s one of the things we will now know.’ ”

It’s not clear to her or other advocates present at the group’s first meeting if data will be collected or whether any agency will track law enforcement contracts with school systems.

Disability advocates nationwide for years have campaigned to outlaw prone restraints, which were linked to between 1993 and 2018. In 2015, Minnesota passed a law prohibiting school staff from using the hold and requiring education and school leaders to reduce other types of physical holds and seclusion, which are used disproportionately on children with disabilities. 

Though COVID-related school closures skew the data, the use of physical restraints involving students with disabilities in schools fell from 19,000 in the 2017-18 school year to some 10,000 in 2021-22. Black and Native American children are disproportionately likely to experience restraint, as are autistic students and those with emotional behavioral disorders. 

In preparation for the July 18 meeting, participants were asked to submit examples of model policies for discussion. Solutions Not Suspensions submitted the only guidance to go beyond the law’s basic scope, according to a meeting preparation packet emailed to participants. Created by the American Civil Liberties Union, it contains detailed information on many of the topics raised by the legislature.

The ACLU document distinguishes between disciplinary misconduct, which should be handled by school staff, and criminal behavior requiring police intervention. School resource officers can’t be called in when a student is disruptive or involved in a fight that doesn’t involve a weapon or result in injury, for example. The rules also require police to collect data on their in-school activities and make it publicly available. 

Other models submitted include a policy drafted by the Minnesota School Boards Association and manuals used by a school system in Georgia that operates its own police department. The Georgia materials do not address prone restraint, instead defining different levels of physical force, ranging from benign redirection to lethal steps. 

Like most school board organizations, the Minnesota association typically creates policies for its members, many of whom serve on boards of districts that are too small to generate their own. So that it can be used in many contexts, this type of model policy is typically very general. simply reiterates the main points of the new state statute without addressing alternative strategies. 

The task force will use the school board policy as a starting point, law enforcement board officials said in an email sent to members along with an agenda for their July meeting. The group is supposed to have a finished model policy by September, after which the law enforcement board will decide whether to adopt it. 

In an emailed response to ����Ӱ��’s request for comment about advocates’ concerns, Misselt wrote, “All members of the working group have the opportunity to discuss their opinions and viewpoints during the meetings and all participants are expected to do so.” 

Lawmakers who voted both for and against allowing police to use prone restraints said they have not yet received updates on the development of the model policy and thus can’t comment. Disability advocates said they expect several legislators will be present at the task force’s next meeting.

In the end, Pringle is concerned that the task force won’t have time to come up with a nuanced recommendation. “I’m just confused as to how in the world this is supposed to work,” she says. “It feels like whatever happens in this model policy is going to be focused on the adults.”