NOTE: Watch the press conference live at 11 a.m. in the player above
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools CEO Dr. Janice Jackson are expected to announced "reforms to the School Resource Officer program" for the upcoming school year Wednesday.
The pair are scheduled to speak at 11 a.m. at City Hall, but it remains unclear what changes they will announced.
Several city schools have voted to either keep or remove such officers from their schools in recent weeks. According to the district's most recent tally, 55 schools have voted to keep officers in their buildings while 17 have voted to remove them.
The Chicago Board of Education voted in late June to continue the public school district's contract with the Chicago Police Department, keeping officers in schools despite protests that called for their removal.
The board rejected a proposal to remove CPD officers from CPS by a narrow 4-3 vote. The vote meant the ultimate decision on whether to keep officers in schools would be made by each local school council.
The board plans to take another vote before the $33 million contract with CPD expires in August.
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The contract assigns nearly 200 police officers to city schools in order to provide more security to students. Several aldermen have been divided on the issue with some saying officers should be removed and others saying their roles should be redefined.
The matter has also been the center of several demonstrations in the city, with protesters calling for officers to be removed from schools.
“As black and brown students, we know the violence that police put onto us,” organizer Alycia Kamil said during a demonstration in June.
Lightfoot and Jackson have said the decision of whether or not to remove officers should be left to individual school boards because they understand the circumstances.
