Chicago Public Schools recently suffered four shooting deaths. The reaction of city and school leaders? Remove police from city schools. Sorry. Wrong answer. Chicago Public Schools experienced three shootings near its schools that left four students dead during the last two weeks of January, so what is the Chicago Board of Education doing about the violence?

Kicking the police out of city schools.

That was the decision after a recommendation by Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, who appointed nearly all the board members. The board unanimously approved a resolution to remove school resource officers from all public schools starting next school year.

As it stands today, CPS has a police presence in about 39 high schools, with local school councils able to choose whether they want police in schools or not. The resolution would take away local control and put children at risk.

Now is the time to use police more effectively in schools, not to remove them entirely.

The whole point of having Chicago police officers in high schools is to defend against and to deter active shooters. I saw this firsthand serving as a superintendent in Bridgeport, Conn., when one of my teachers lost her child during the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting tragedy. Sandy Hook now has a police officer in the school.

Police are essential for school safety. Yet Johnson is shamelessly placating his anti-cop and defund the police Chicago Teachers Union supporters with moves such as this.

Last year, four students were shot at Benito Juarez Community Academy and two died. The local school council for the neighborhood high school was among a few to vote to remove Chicago police officers in 2020. The vote came during a period of national protests against police treatment and violence.

At Benito Juarez, council members, students and staff said they want CPS to redirect funding for school officers to pay for more social workers, counselors, nurses and restorative justice programs, Block Club Chicago wrote in 2020.

Instead, the unimaginable happened.

Even in 2020, the majority of schools voted to renew the Chicago police contract with CPS. The board's push now seems foolish and reckless.

Murders of and by school-age children have seen historic increases in Chicago. The University of Chicago Crime Lab reported a 50 percent increase in murders among school-age youth between 2019 and 2022, with 8 percent of murder arrests and 9 percent of shooting arrests involving school-age individuals.

During the past 15 years, there has been a significant increase in school shootings nationally: 82 in 2023, steadily rising from 18 in 2008. During the last three years alone, there have been a shocking 234 school shootings, almost double the number of the previous three years.

CPS is naively ignoring the escalating violence that is engulfing our youth. Meanwhile, district savings from the canceling of the police contracts will fall far short of providing the desired resources they say they want. The amount spent to reimburse the city for police coverage constitutes 0.1 percent of the total school-district budget.

Instead of removing police officers, the city and school board should revamp the school police officer program in a way that uses officers more effectively. Their strategy should better align with city and district goals.

The city could create a dedicated school resource officer program, with officers carefully selected as the best candidates suited for interacting with students and faculty. The specially trained unit's officers would not only serve as first responders in school emergencies but also act as liaisons between the police department and schools.

The program could train officers to respond to incidents involving any inappropriate behavior on the part of adults within and outside the schools, including domestic-violence incidents, bullying, gang intimidation, and other health and safety needs. This presence wouldn't conflict with a restorative justice approach to dealing with student misdeeds.

If the SRO program is successful, it could be expanded to more schools: high schools, charters, and beyond.

This would also make hundreds of additional police officers available to local police precincts on the 165 days that schools are closed – which generally align with when crime spikes and police-officer shortages are most acute. More important, local police districts would have officers during holidays and summer to deploy in areas where young people gather: officers who know the youth and are known and trusted by the youth. Familiarity and trust form the backbone of effective community policing.

Removing Chicago police officers from public schools is a mistake with potentially tragic consequences. We should be protecting our kids above all.

Now someone needs to tell the school board, before it's too late.

Paul Vallas is an adviser for the Illinois Policy Institute. He ran for Chicago mayor in 2023 and in 2019 and was previously budget director for the city and CEO of Chicago Public Schools.