By Jaskaran Singh
BEAUMONT, Calif. — Two civil rights organizations are urging Riverside County education officials to reject Beaumont Unified School District’s 2026-27 budget plan, alleging the district illegally used $577,927 reserved for its highest-need students to pay for school police.
The allegation comes in a press release from Public Advocates and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
The two groups sent a demand letter Thursday to the Riverside County Office of Education and Beaumont Unified. They say the money was legally reserved to improve services for foster youth, English learners and low-income students.
It was not meant to pay for police, they argue.
Public Advocates is a nonprofit civil rights law firm. ACLU SoCal is the Southern California affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Under California’s school funding system, districts receive extra money for high-need students. They must document how they spend it through a Local Control and Accountability Plan, known as an LCAP.
According to the release, the Beaumont Police Department has not met that obligation for more than a decade.
The groups stated that the district has never shown a connection between the school’s policy and the needs the money is supposed to address. The absenteeism has made it worse for almost every student group that the funding is meant to serve, they say.
The $577,927 figure covers the 2026-27 school year alone. It is part of a recently renewed three-year, $2.39 million contract, the release said.
The contract places school resource officers at individual campuses.
School resource officers are sworn police officers assigned to work on campus. The groups argue the renewed contract expands their presence at schools instead of funding counselors or clinicians.
The organizations point to one incident from last school year. A student who has autism threatened to hurt himself at school.
Instead of being connected with a mental health support specialist, he was handcuffed and detained. He was then taken to the police station by a school resource officer.
Melissa Huggins is a district parent and president of its Family and Community Engagement Parent Advisory Committee. She said the district has “continuously failed our families by excluding us from the decision-making process.”
“Parents are pleading for more mental health support for our students,” Huggins said. She added that those pleas are ignored.
Huggins said the district must direct entitled funding to strengthen mental health support in schools. She called that funding crucial to student safety and development.
Nicole Gon Ochi is the director of Education Equity at ACLU SoCal. She said equity money should not be spent on policing.
Funds meant to help students overcome barriers “should be used to support them, not police them,” she said.
Ochi said school policing subjects students of color and students with disabilities to higher rates of arrest and punitive discipline. Students instead need “counselors, mental health care, and other supports that help them thrive,” Ochi said.
At the same time, the district has rebuffed parent demands for more licensed therapists, according to the release. It notes that too few therapists exist to support students across the district.
Karissa Provenza is a staff attorney at Public Advocates. She said the district must “use equity dollars for their intended purpose, not to redirect them toward law enforcement.”
Provenza said the money should not fund “practices that are proven to deepen those inequities.”
She said the county has both the authority and the responsibility to stop and correct what the groups call a violation of the law.
The two organizations are asking the county education office to reject the district’s adopted LCAP. They want Beaumont Unified to redirect the money toward evidence-based support.
Those include additional Educationally Related Mental Health Services, or ERMHS, therapists trained to respond to student crises with care rather than criminalization.
The letter frames the dispute as a test of whether Riverside County will enforce how equity dollars are spent. The county office of education reviews and approves district budget plans.
That gives it authority to require changes.
To comment please go to one of these social media platforms:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavisVanguard
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/peoples-vanguard-of-davis-inc/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davisvanguard/
X: https://x.com/davisvanguard
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/vanguardnewsgroup.bsky.social
Subscribe to the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.