Students at Bothell High School left campus to demonstrate in front of city officials on Monday.
Bothell, Wash. — Hundreds of protesters descended on Bothell City Hall on Monday to protest a local high school’s decision Cancel a resource officerorganizers said.
Students at Bothell High School left campus to demonstrate in front of city officials on Monday.
“We are going to City Hall to protest the school board and their decision to remove Sheriff Ware. The NSD school board is ignoring the community and we need to stand up for ourselves,” organizers said.
The action reportedly follows the North Shore School Board’s decision to fire the school’s longtime school resource officer, Garrett Ware.
The board voted 4-1 last week not to renew Bothell High School’s services contract with the city of Bothell.
The decision sparked an online petition calling for the officer to be reinstated.
“They should vote based on the needs of the community,” said Change.org petition author Brady Minneman. “Obviously they are bringing their own political and personal beliefs to this issue.”
Ware has served as the school resource officer at Bothell High School since 2017.
“He was always there,” Minneman said. “A lot of people who didn’t have a lot of friends would talk to him. You could always talk to him, person to person.”
State law requires the North Shore School District to review its SRO contracts annually. This year, the board chose not to renew. Members cited concerns among some students, particularly students of color, about having armed police on campus.
Bothell High School is the last campus in the North Shore School District to have an SRO. The board canceled the program at Woodinville High School in 2022.
In a 2024 survey of Bothell High School community members, 77% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the SRO program promotes student safety. School principals and district administrators recommended continuing the program.
Ware will remain on campus until the end of the school year in June.
Bothell High School will have two campus supervisors next year who will receive state-required training in social-emotional learning, implicit bias, student-centered instruction and restorative justice, district spokesperson Carri Campbell said.
A second unarmed campus supervisor at Bothell High School will replace the SRO. Campus supervisors are school district employees, not law enforcement officers.
Minneman said the students won’t give up.
“Everybody’s kind of going crazy … trying to find a solution to keep it,” he said.
North Shore School District and Bothell city officials could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday’s strike.
