BEAUMONT, Calif.—Public Advocates and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) sent a demand letter Thursday to the Riverside County Office of Education and Beaumont Unified School District, calling on the county to reject the district’s 2026-27 strategic budget plan for illegally counting a $577,927 school police contract—placing school resource officers at individual schools—as a service to the district’s highest-need students.
Last school year, a student with autism at Beaumont Unified threatened self-harm at school. Rather than being connected with appropriate mental-health support, he was handcuffed, detained, and taken to a police station by a school resource officer.
“The district has continuously failed our families by excluding us from the decision making process,” said Melissa Huggins, Beaumont Unified parent and president of the district's Family and Community Engagement Parent Advisory Committee. “Parents are pleading for more mental health supports for our students, but our pleas go ignored. It is crucial to student safety, their well being, and development to ensure that appropriate and entitled funding is allocated to strengthen the mental health supports in our schools.”
For more than a decade, Beaumont Unified has counted its contract with the Beaumont Police Department toward its legal obligation to increase and improve services for foster youth, English learners, and low-income students under the state’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) process. The letter details how the district has failed to show any connection between school policing and the needs it claims to address, while chronic absenteeism has worsened for nearly every student group the funding is supposed to serve.
“Money meant to help students overcome barriers to their education should be used to support them, not police them,” said Nicole Gon Ochi, director of Education Equity at the ACLU SoCal. “Beaumont cannot claim that putting more police in schools is an investment in foster youth, English learners, and low-income students when school policing subjects students of color and students with disabilities to higher rates of arrest and punitive discipline. Our students need counselors, mental health care, and other supports that help them thrive.”
For the 2026-27 school year alone, Beaumont Unified is counting $577,927 in police spending toward its obligation to increase or improve services for high-need students. That spending is part of a recently renewed three-year, $2.39 million contract with the Beaumont Police Department.
At the same time, the district has rebuffed parent demands for more licensed therapists. Too few therapists exist to support students across the district.
“Beaumont Unified has a responsibility to use equity dollars for their intended purpose, not to redirect them toward law enforcement,” said Karissa Provenza, Staff Attorney at Public Advocates. “These funds are intended to close equity gaps for high need students; they shouldn’t be spent on practices that are proven to deepen those inequities. The county has both the authority and the responsibility to take immediate steps to stop this violation of the law and correct it.”
Public Advocates and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California are calling on the Riverside County Office of Education to reject the district’s adopted LCAP and require Beaumont Unified to redirect the funding toward evidence-based supports, including additional Educationally Related Mental Health Services (ERMHS) therapists trained to respond to student crises with care instead of criminalization.
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About Public Advocates Inc.
Public Advocates Inc. is a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity, and climate justice.
About ACLU Foundation of Southern California
For over 100 years, through litigation, policy advocacy, media advocacy, and organizing, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California has fought to expand and protect the civil rights of all people -- namely women, youth, people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary people, immigrants and refugees, members of minority religions, disabled people, people experiencing poverty or houselessness, and people impacted by the criminal legal system.
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