VOYCE

Youth Transforming School and Community Safety Through a Holistic Approach

Voices of Youth in Chicago Education

Convened by Communities United, Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) is a youth organizing alliance led by students of color from across Chicago. Through VOYCE, young people have been leading a movement to transform what safety means in schools and communities, advancing a vision for healing-centered schools and communities.

Through organizing efforts and by lifting up their narratives, VOYCE youth leaders have made significant progress in shifting the narrative on what safety should look like for communities of color, making sweeping changes to end zero-tolerance practices and expand the use of restorative justice, and helped paved the way to ending the SRO (police in schools) program across Chicago Public Schools and the expansion of holistic approaches to school safety. VOYCE leaders are continuing to uplift their voices to create safe and supportive schools and communities.

PROGRESS MADE

Created the nation’s most comprehensive statewide school discipline reform, SB100, ending zero tolerance at all publicly-funded schools in Illinois.
Along with our allies: Community Organizing on Family Issues (COFI), BUILD Inc, and Mikva Challenge, VOYCE partnered with CPS to lead the district in transforming school safety, ending police in schools and the investment of over $10 million toward holistic approaches to school safety.
Leading narrative change efforts to center youth leadership to address mental health in Chicago.
Youth participate in helping shape the vision of the Austin HOPE Center, a new health hub in Chicago’s westside.
VOYCE leaders helped create the Whole School Safety Framework, a proven and replicable model to center student and parent leaderships to transform school safety to be healing-centered.

Community Resource Packet:

Know Your Rights Slides

English & Spanish version

Arabic & Gujarati version

Warrant Poster

Posters to display around workplace, home or school

RESOURCES

RECENT MEDIA COVERAGE

WTTW

Development of CPS Safety Plan Can Serve as Model for Other School Districts: Study

Nearly two years after Chicago Public Schools removed police officers from campuses and implemented a new holistic approach to school safety, officials believe that shift could serve as a replicable model for school districts across the country.

Those findings come from a new study from the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research and the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital, which examined the CPS process for removing school resource officers in 2024 and replacing them with a new Whole School Safety plan.

THE TRIBE

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‘It’s a win for us’: Youth organizers rejoice after failed City Council effort to override Johnson’s ‘snap curfew’ veto

Black and brown youth organizers breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday afternoon. A months-long debate over the controversial “snap curfew” ordinance had come to an end. An effort to override Mayor Brandon Johnson’s veto of the ordinance failed in a 27-22 vote during the Chicago City Council meeting; 34 yea votes were needed to overturn it.

WTTW

CPS Looking to Improve Transparency, Accountability as It Continues to Rethink School Safety

Chicago Public Schools said it expects to begin publishing student discipline and safety data in the coming weeks, a year after dozens of high schools voted to reduce or eliminate their school resource officer (SRO) programs.

WBEZ CHICAGO

Chicago students feeling fear, frustration amid ICE raids and threats of National Guard deployment

More than a dozen teens from schools across the city gathered downtown to talk about how immigration enforcement actions and the possibility of National Guard troops in Chicago is affecting their mental health.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

School resource officers are under scrutiny again in CPS as dozens of high schools reconsider the controversial police program

Forty-one high schools will once again evaluate their safety plans and decide by June 15 if they will continue in Chicago Public Schools’ controversial school resource officer program.

BLOCK CLUB CHICAGO

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CPS Agrees To Take 1 Officer Out Of Each Of 24 Schools That Voted For Removal

The decision to respect schools' wishes comes after the district's safety chief initially said two cops would temporarily remain at the high schools that voted to keep only one officer.