Kansas City Public Schools Is Hiring A School Spy to Investigate Students
Imagine dropping your child off for school, only to find out a former cop was paid by the district to watch them — from your front lawn, from the corner store, from the bus stop. Parents call KCPS' newest job listing a dangerous escalation of school-based policing, especially in an era of ICE raids and state violence against immigrant families. The post Kansas City Public Schools Is Hiring A School Spy to Investigate Students appeared first on The Kansas City Defender.
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Buried on SchoolSpring’s job board is a Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) listing for a “Residency Investigator & Admissions Support Specialist.” On paper, the post claims to “uphold the integrity of the district’s enrollment process.” In reality, it reads like a blueprint for a miniature police state inside our classrooms.
The duties include:
- “Conduct surveillance in the community at bus stops to verify residency.”
- “Perform home visits” and “interviews” of families.
- Preference for candidates with “prior experience in investigations or law enforcement.”
In other words: KCPS wants to hire an undercover agent to follow children from their front doors to the yellow bus.
Why This Is Terrifying — Especially for Immigrant and Black Families
The United States has a grim history of policing Black and Brown students under the guise of “school safety” and “residency enforcement.” Just eight years ago, ICE agents dragged Romulo Avelica-González away while he dropped his daughters at school in Los Angeles, traumatizing an entire community — and the video went viral for a reason.
Now imagine a district-paid investigator staking out bus stops in a city where federal policy has already chipped away at “sensitive location” protections that once kept immigration enforcement out of schools. KCPS itself passed a “Safe & Welcoming Schools” resolution promising ICE could not remove students without a warrant.
Hiring a surveillance specialist armed with police tactics shatters that promise.
“They’ll Be Watching Our Kids”
One KCPS parent sounded the alarm in a message to The Defender:
“They are literally planning to spy on kids at bus stops. Given the horrible things happening with ICE and forced disappearances, undocumented families need to know.”
And the fact of the matter is, when schools turn residency checks into criminal investigations, marginalized students are the first to feel the knock on the door.
Additionally, KCPS will pay up to $31.19 an hour for this role — funds that could instead support bilingual counselors, housing-stability liaisons, or community health workers. Instead, the district chooses surveillance.
The posting flatly states that the investigator will ensure compliance with “district, state, and federal regulations.” Those “federal regs” are precisely where ICE nests.
Who Benefits?
- Real-estate-obsessed school bureaucrats eager to purge “border-crossers” and inflate attendance data.
- Law-enforcement retirees looking for side gigs.
- ICE and other policing agencies who gain a pipeline of intel on immigrant neighborhoods—without lifting a finger.
Who Loses?
- Black families already targeted by truancy courts.
- Undocumented parents juggling survival and secrecy.
- Every student who now has to wonder if the adult parked near the bus stop is a mentor—or a mole.
This is a developing story.
The post Kansas City Public Schools Is Hiring A School Spy to Investigate Students appeared first on The Kansas City Defender.
