Denver school board can't decide on police in schools

Denver's dysfunctional school board spent an hour Thursday debating whether to return police officers to schools after a series of shootings on campus, and finished without a consensus or a plan for moving forward.

Driving the news: Two competing proposals — one to give superintendent Alex Marrero authority to put police in schools as needed and another to create rotating community resources officers — led to more discussion than action at the board's meeting.

• Beyond not deciding on a path forward, the board didn't schedule a vote and even considered putting aside both proposals for a vote on a plan to ban police from district schools, our education reporting partners at Chalkbeat write.

What they're saying: "We need to center the needs of our students and not make reactionary decisions," said board vice president Auon'tai "Tay" Anderson, who led the effort to remove school resources offices in 2020 amid the protests surrounding George Floyd's murder.

Of note: Denver Public Schools filled its vacant chief safety officer position Thursday after it sat open for six months, hiring Greg Cazzell from a similar role at Aurora Public Schools, Chalkbeat reports.

• He will implement a new safety plan the Denver superintendent is developing.