All Baltimore City School Police officers will wear body cameras by next academic year.

At a school board meeting Tuesday night, school police officials said officers will record arrests, interviews, uses of force, and instances when officers stop cars, bicycles or people.

“They provide clear documentation of our officers’ interactions. They play a crucial role in evidence collection,” Nick Smith, the director of school police systems, said at the meeting.

The school’s police department has a budget for the 2024-25 school year of $10.6 million with 107 officers and staff, according to budget documents. The Maryland Police Accountability Act of 2021 mandated that nearly every law enforcement officer in the state wear a body camera by July 1, 2025.

The equipment and cloud storage will cost the department around $1.1 million over five years, school police said Tuesday.

Patrol officers are piloting the body-camera program, and the board plans to adopt the policy for school-based officers in June. Previously, district code said officers should not use body cameras for calls or service involving students in schools.

Sabree Barnes, the director of school and student support, said that school police plan to assign three police officers to review footage. Smith said the body camera footage will be reviewed every day, and students and staff recorded by body cameras will not have access to the footage.

Board member Ashiah Parker said reviewing all the footage will require additional hires.

“Who is going to review all of the video? I assume you will need new admin people to do that,” Parker said. “I have done oversight of the Baltimore Police Department and once it gets into full implementation, it’s going to be overbearing.”

School police said Tuesday that officers have an “obligation” to share with students and staff if their camera is recording, and that the cameras have three LED lights that turn red when recording.

The American Civil Liberties Union said in 2020 that police should not activate body cameras in school except when responding to an imminent threat to life or health. The ACLU added that footage should be retained for six months, and that student subjects of footage and their parents and lawyers should be allowed to inspect the footage.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s police department requires officers to activate cameras during calls for service or other law enforcement actions. The department keeps recordings depending on the crime, ranging from 60 days for accidental activation and 80 years for a homicide, and a public information request for recordings can be submitted to the university’s general counsel.

In 2022, officers in Howard County Schools, which contracts for school resource officers from county police, started wearing body cameras. Baltimore City Schools has its own police department.

“We are unique. We have our own police force, different than most other school systems,” board Chair Ronald S. McFadden said Tuesday.

During the public comment section of the meeting, two high school teachers, Robert Marianelli and Jocelyn Providence, said the many classroom doors in the district do not lock from the inside, which goes against national best practices for school shootings.

“The vast majority of classrooms in Baltimore City do not have this capability,” Marianelli said. “I have to step into the hall when that shooting begins to lock my classroom door from outside my classroom with a key.”