State officials say they want cops out of Kingston schools.

That’s the recommendation included in a response from the office of state Attorney General Leticia James to a report by a local task force charged with coming up with ideas for police reform.

Kingston’s Re-envisioning Public Safety Task Force was convened last summer in response to Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Order 203, which directed communities across the state to come up with local solutions to issues like use of excessive force and systemic racism in policing. The city’s task force wrapped up work earlier his year; in March, its recommendations were formally adopted by the Kingston Common Council and signed by Mayor Steve

Noble.

The task force covered a range of topics from civilian complaint procedures to officer recruitment and morale. But the issue of school resource officers dominated public hearings on the task force report, with public opinion running heavily in favor of the program.

A smaller group of reform advocates argued that SROs helped fuel a “school to prison pipeline” that disproportionately impacts students of color. They pointed to nationwide data on arrests in schools and noted that there were few recorded instances of SROs preventing school shootings. The task force report ultimately recommended that language be added to the contract between the city and the Kingston City School District for SRO services specifying that officers were not to act as school disciplinarians or make arrests in cases, like drug possession or fights that do not result in serious injury, that would traditionally be handed by school staff. If no agreement could be reached on the issue, the report recommended, the officers should be removed from schools.

But school officials noted that such language is already included in the SRO contract. District Superintendent Paul Padalino said that in his nine years leading the district, SROs had made just five or six arrests in city schools and had only been the subject of two formal complaints, neither of which was substantiated.

Padalino, who served on the district’s own police reform task force said that he saw room for improvement in the complaint process and efforts to communicate more effectively with students and parents the role of police in schools.

“I think that creating an open, safe way for community members to communicate with us about issues they have with SROs is something that’s got to come out of this process,” said Padalino in March.

But the recommendation in the Attorney General’s Office’s response to the city task force report goes well beyond changes in the contract or complaint process. The March 18 letter signed by Civil Rights Bureau Chief Jessica Clarke unequivocally recommends that the city and the school district terminate the SRO program.

“We strongly urge you to consider removing all SROs from schools. The presence of SROs often perpetuates the same policing inequities that are reflected outside schools and does not yield a benefit in increased student safety that justifies their continual presence,” the letter reads. “Accordingly, jurisdictions across the country have mounted efforts to reduce or eliminate police presence in schools.”

It is unclear whether city school officials, who submitted their own police reform report back in March, received similar guidance. Padalino, school board President Jim Shaughnessy and Mayor Steve Noble were not immediately available for comment on Tuesday. The current contract between the city and the school district for SRO services expires on July 30.