Niara Mollett, a rising junior at Western High School, said she didn’t meet the police officer working in her school until she was training him.

“We talk about, ‘We want schools to be better; we want to be able to support our students’ but how can you support them when you don’t have relationships with them?” Mollett said in an interview with WYPR.

Mollett is the chair of Youth as Resources, an organization which uses biannual grants to empower teenagers and young adults to make changes in their school communities. This year, Mollett led a training for school police officers on July 5 to bring attention to student needs.

“With a few exceptions, officers were not receptive, some were rude and confrontational,” Mollett said during a meeting with the Board of Commissioners this week. “Policing is not going to help the impact that trauma has had on our lives. We need more mental health and wellness resources.”

Mollett spoke on behalf of Youth as Resources at the board meeting on Tuesday, after Baltimore City Schools officials presented results from the annual school police survey.

The Office of Achievement and Accountability collected responses from nearly 4,000 Baltimore City students from March until May of this year. That’s almost double the amount of respondents from last year’s survey.

69% of this year’s student respondents reported that police contribute positively to their school environment, up from 61% last year. And 66% of respondents said school police provide protection and security.

But 65% of the students also said there are challenges that come with having police officers in schools. The most common concern is that police presence makes creating a safe school environment more difficult. Some students reported disrespect and intimidation from officers, along with feelings of being over-policed.

Superintendent Sonja Santelises said she still sees the data as a move in the right direction.

“We clearly still have work to do, given some of the challenges in our city and schools,” she said. “But I will say on all notes, based on some past year’s data, we are on an upswing and I think that gives us a really strong foundation to move even further along in addressing safety in our schools.”

Students from 22 schools participated in this year’s survey, an increase from only three last year. But Kyliah White, a Youth as Resources board member and 2023 graduate from Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, said the data is still skewed.

Most of the survey responses came from students at schools like Western High School and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, White said, “who have the resources, who have things like more mental health resources to address different students’ needs.”

For schools without those resources, police officers often serve as first responders to mental health crises — putting a strain on student relationships, Mollett said. At Western, she said, students have access to a mental health department, which reduces the interactions students have with police.

“Y’all taking most of the data from schools who don’t need an officer,” Mollett said.

White told board members on Tuesday that students want more transparency about the mental health services available at each Baltimore City school. She also called for data about the use of police force in schools, such as pepper spray, to be shared publicly.

Mollett said officers should be held accountable for their behavior at future Youth as Resources trainings.

Chief of Schools John Davis said school police and administrators have more work to do to bridge the partnership between the student group and the school officers.

“We’re going to have to continue that and really develop that partnership, so that we have these types of student-led professional development, professional learning with school police officers,” he said.

For the first time this year, Baltimore City Schools also polled school police officers in the survey. Respondents said the volume and severity of violence within schools is their most pressing concern. Nearly 90% also want more crisis training.

Mollett urged board members to meet with Youth as Resources more often, especially to develop correctional plans for schools where students rated their relationships with police poorly.

“We see some of your faces when Youth as Resources is mentioned or we talk,” she said. “But we want to work with you.”