DES MOINES — The ACLU of Iowa is demanding that schools eliminate their resource-officer programs, a sweeping proposal that would remove armed law enforcement officers from campuses despite concerns that doing so could leave children and school employees less protected during a violent emergency – and good kids and teachers at the mercy kids no better than Scooby Doo villians.
The organization released a 37-page report on Thursday, July 30, 2026, titled “Rethinking School Safety in Iowa: The Harms of School Resource Officers.”
Its primary recommendation is unequivocal: “Eliminate SRO programs.”
The proposal would take Iowa in the opposite direction from policies adopted after deadly violence shook the Perry Community School District in 2024.
A teenage gunman opened fire inside Perry High School on January 4, 2024, killing sixth-grader Ahmir Jolliff and fatally wounding Principal Dan Marburger. Several other people were injured.
Later that year, Iowa lawmakers approved legislation requiring school districts enrolling at least 8,000 students to employ a school resource officer or private security officer at high-school attendance centers unless the local school board votes to opt out. Smaller districts are encouraged to provide similar security.
Supporters of school resource officers argue that an officer already inside a building can react more quickly to an armed attacker, investigate threats, intercept weapons and drugs, break up dangerous fights and build relationships that encourage students to report suspicious behavior.
They warn that removing officers could leave teachers and administrators alone during the critical first minutes of an attack while police travel to the school.
The ACLU reaches a sharply different conclusion.
Its report claims there is no clear evidence that SROs make schools safer and argues their presence can escalate ordinary disciplinary problems into criminal investigations, citations and arrests.
The organization says it identified at least 130 resource officers working in 78 Iowa school districts, representing approximately one-fourth of the state’s districts. Its research included federal civil-rights data and 154 public-records requests submitted to school districts and law enforcement agencies.
Northern Iowa districts included in the examination included Cedar Falls, Waterloo and Waverly-Shell Rock, along with Spencer, Spirit Lake, Estherville Lincoln Central and several other districts across the region.
According to the ACLU, Black students constitute approximately 7 percent of Iowa’s student population but account for 13 percent of law enforcement referrals and 21 percent of school arrests.
The organization reported particularly large disparities in Waterloo, where Black students represented 27 percent of enrollment but allegedly accounted for 71 percent of referrals and 69 percent of arrests contained in the federal data examined.
Students with disabilities represented 13 percent of Iowa’s student population but accounted for 27 percent of referrals and 26 percent of arrests, the report said.
The ACLU also criticized schools for involving officers in cases involving vaping, pushing, bullying, name-calling and other behavior traditionally handled by teachers, principals and parents.
Examples cited in the report include an officer becoming involved with a 7-year-old running through a Perry school hallway, a 6-year-old allegedly disrupting a classroom and a Sioux City student accused of taking a bag of popcorn.
The organization further claimed that 78 percent of the school districts examined had no formal SRO-specific training requirement, while 58 percent of the participating law enforcement agencies had no policy requiring specialized training for officers assigned to schools.
Reporting, parental notification and complaint procedures also varied significantly among districts.
Those findings have prompted the ACLU to argue that counselors, teachers and other student-support employees would be a better investment than armed officers. It estimated that an SRO costs a district an average of at least $98,000 annually.
Even some districts criticized in the report are not prepared to abandon their officers.
The Cedar Rapids Community School District said it values its partnership with the Cedar Rapids Police Department and recognizes the important role resource officers play in a comprehensive school-safety system.
For districts that reject its demand to eliminate SROs, the ACLU recommends stricter training requirements, improved recordkeeping, clearer limits on when officers become involved in student misconduct, annual program evaluations, parental-notification requirements and defined complaint procedures.
Those secondary recommendations may attract broader support than the organization’s call to remove officers entirely.
The central dispute remains whether problems involving training, oversight and disproportionate enforcement justify eliminating school police—or whether those shortcomings should be corrected while preserving an immediate law enforcement presence capable of responding when a routine school day suddenly becomes a life-or-death emergency.
To read the complete ACLU of Iowa report, please click here.
NIT previously reported on Iowa legislation addressing violent and disruptive students in schools, including the role of school resource officers. That story can be found here.