No More Federal Cash for School Police: $5 Billion Fund Created to Hire Counselors Instead

If you’ve ever wondered why schools seem to have more police officers than mental health staff, the "Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act" is trying to reroute that entire system. This bill is a major pivot: it bans the use of any federal funds for hiring, training, or keeping "covered law enforcement officers" (a term that includes School Resource Officers, or SROs) on K-12 campuses. That means programs like the COPS grant, which previously helped fund SROs, are now off-limits for school policing.

The $5 Billion Pivot: Trading Badges for Diplomas

The most significant part of this legislation is the creation of a massive, $5 billion competitive grant program, managed by the Department of Education. This money is explicitly designed to help local school districts (LEAs) transition away from a police-centric safety model. To even apply for the grant, a district must promise to end all contracts with local police departments or dissolve their own school police force at least 30 days before receiving the funds. They must also promise not to bring officers back while receiving the grant.

For districts that get the funding, the money has strict marching orders. It must be used to hire staff like school counselors, psychologists, social workers, nurses, and trauma specialists. This directly addresses the finding that millions of students are in schools with police but without adequate support staff. For example, a mid-sized district that qualifies could use this grant to hire a full team of social workers, replacing the single SRO they might have had, thereby increasing the ratio of supportive adults to students.

Who Gets the First Check?

Because $5 billion isn’t enough to fix every school system overnight, the bill prioritizes certain districts. Top priority goes to LEAs that already cut their police contracts before applying. If the money still runs short, priority shifts to districts with a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students. The idea is to direct the resources where the need is greatest and where the commitment to the new model is proven. They also give extra points to districts that involve students and families who have been historically disciplined or arrested in deciding how the new funds should be spent, ensuring the new policies are actually effective.

What the Money Can’t Buy

This bill isn't just about what districts must do; it’s also very clear about what they cannot do. The grant funds are strictly prohibited from being used for anything that promotes punitive discipline. That includes sharing student data with law enforcement agencies like ICE or Border Patrol. Crucially, districts cannot use the money to purchase or maintain surveillance equipment like metal detectors, facial recognition software, or social media monitoring tools. And, perhaps most definitively, no federal grant money can be used to arm teachers or other school staff.

The Real-World Impact: Tracking the Change

For parents and students, the biggest change will be the shift in school culture. The bill is founded on the idea that police presence increases arrests for minor infractions, disproportionately affecting students of color and students with disabilities. Black students, for instance, are arrested at four times the rate of white students. By replacing officers with counselors and implementing trauma-informed services, the goal is to stop the "school-to-prison pipeline" by addressing the root causes of behavior rather than criminalizing them.

To ensure this actually works, any receiving district must submit an annual public report comparing the number of student arrests and referrals to law enforcement before and during the grant period. This data must be broken down by demographics—race, disability status, etc. This accountability measure means districts can't just take the money and keep doing business as usual; they have to prove the shift in staffing is leading to fewer students entering the justice system and more students receiving support.