CONTACTS:
Students,
Parents, Educators &
Advocates Present A New Vision for School Safety in NYC Public
Schools
Student Safety Coalition Urges Next
Mayor to
Implement Major Reform Governing Police in Schools
FOR
IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
September 4,
2013 –
The
Student Safety Coalition, a diverse group of educators, parents,
students, advocates and
legal experts, today called on New York City’s next mayor to
implement reforms
to end overly aggressive policing in the city schools and
restore authority
over school discipline to professional educators.
The
coalition
presented “A New Vision for School Safety” – a set of nine
guiding
principles for overhauling the flawed Memorandum of
Understanding between the
New York City Department of Education and the NYPD that governs
school safety
operations. Implementation of these principles would clarify
that educators,
not police personnel, should address the vast majority of
student misbehavior.
“The
massive
and largely unregulated police presence in New York City’s
public
schools undermines the ability of school officials to provide
students the
safe, nurturing educational environment they deserve,” said
Donna Lieberman,
executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Much too often, we’ve seen
police personnel
intervene in disciplinary matters, resulting in students being
roughed up,
handcuffed, and even taken to jail. We urge the next mayor to
restore authority
over school safety and discipline where it belongs – in the
hands of educators,
not the NYPD.”
“A
New Vision for School Safety” is the Student Safety Coalition’s
latest
initiative aimed at ending the school-to-prison pipeline – a
nationwide system
of local, state, and federal education and public safety
policies that pushes
students out of school and into the criminal justice system. The over-policing of New York
City schools,
paired with zero tolerance discipline policies in schools,
contributes heavily
to the school-to-prison pipeline. These policies
disproportionately target
youth of color and youth with disabilities.
Extensive
research
shows that such zero tolerance disciplinary policies fail to
differentiate between minor student misbehavior and more serious
safety
threats, in the process involving police officers in school
disciplinary
matters and dramatically escalating arrests, suspensions and
referrals to juvenile
and criminal court.
In
1998, the then-Board of Education entered into an agreement, a
Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU), with the mayor that transferred school safety
responsibilities from the DOE
to the NYPD. Currently, there are more than 5,200 police
personnel in the
city’s schools. On its own, the NYPD’s
School
Safety
Division would be the nation’s fifth-largest police force –
ahead of
Boston, Detroit, Dallas, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.
“In order to truly improve the
education of New York City’s
public school students, we need to address the way they are
disciplined,” said
Damon Hewitt, director of the education practice of the NAACP
Legal Defense and
Education Fund. “Students should feel nurtured and safe at
school – not
degraded, mistreated, and criminalized simply for being kids.
By handing
disciplinary responsibility back to educators, we can reduce the
role of police
in schools and create a better academic environment for our
students.”
In
2011-2012, there were more than 2,500 arrests and summonses and
more than 69,000
suspensions in New York City public schools.
While overall suspension numbers have decreased slightly,
the DOE continues
to report dramatic racial disparities. Black
students make up only 28 percent of the student population, yet
they received
53 receive of the suspensions.
Students,
some
as young as 5 years old, have been handcuffed, taken to jail,
and ordered
to appear in court for infractions such as tardiness, talking
back, writing on
the desk, and refusing to turn over cell phones.
Students
with
an arrest are twice as likely to drop out of school and those
with a court
appearance are four times as likely to drop out.
“The
next
mayor has an opportunity to improve the climate in our schools
and foster
a more productive form of discipline,” said Kim Sweet, executive
director of
Advocates for Children of New York. “This can’t happen without a
change in the
relationship between the NYPD and the Department of Education.”
“Students,
parents
and teachers need to get a bigger role in deciding what happens
in our
schools and safety,” said Nilesh Viswashrao, a 20-year-old youth
leader of
Desis Rising Up and Moving. “NYPD officers and School Safety
Officers are not
teachers or counselors, they are going to be able to solve the
problems that we
as young people go through. Our peers and educators can do that.
Having police
and metal detectors in schools keep youth of color like us
criminalized. The
MOU will be one step closer to making sure our schools are kept
as learning
places.”
“Our
front-line
staff representing children in court in all five boroughs sees
first-hand that we need to keep students safely in school and
prevent students
from being kept out of school by over-reliance on exclusionary,
criminal
responses to normative child and adolescent behavior which does
not create
safer schools,” said Steven Banks, the Attorney-in-Chief of The
Legal Aid
Society, the oldest and largest legal services organization in
the United
States which annually handles more than 300,000 legal matters
for low-income
New Yorkers with civil, criminal or juvenile rights problems in
addition to law
reform representation that benefits all two million low-income
children and
adults in New York City.
The
push
to transform the relationship between educators and police
follows the
release earlier this summer of a special report by The New
York City School-Justice Partnership Task
Force,
under the leadership of former New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye.
The task force,
which spent two years studying local and national school
disciplinary
practices, calls on the next mayor to lead, convene and
implement an initiative
that establishes a shared goal among city agencies, in
collaboration with the
courts, to keep students safely in school and use positive
approaches to
discipline while reducing suspensions and arrests.
“I
sent my children to New York City Public School to learn the
skills they needed
to do so, but rather than be inspired they were confronted with
metal detectors
and NYPD officers every day at their school’s front door,” said
Cassandra
Whitney, whose two children attend city public schools. “As a
parent, I am fed
up. It’s time we put the power and trust back in the hands of
our educators,
and give the authority to determine how to provide our children
safe and
nurturing schools.”
The
Student
Safety Coalition works to end the New York City
school-to-prison-pipeline
and its disproportionate impact on youth of color and youth with
special needs.
Composed of New York City advocacy, academic and community based
organizations,
the coalition uses a coordinated set of legislative, public
education and
organizing strategies. In 2011, the coalition successfully
advocated for
enactment of the Student Safety Act, one of the country’s most
comprehensive
local reporting laws on student discipline and arrests.
The
Student
Safety Coalition includes: Dignity in Schools Campaign – New
York, Center
for Community Alternatives, Children’s Defense Fund – New York,
DRUM - Desis
Rising Up and Moving, The Legal Aid Society, Association of
Legal Aid Attorneys,
Make the Road New York, National Economic and Social Rights
Initiative, New
York Civil Liberties Union, Teachers Unite, Urban Youth
Collaborative, Advocates
for Children of New York.
-xxx-
--
Shoshi Chowdhury
Coordinator
Dignity in Schools Campaign-NY
90 John Street, Suite 308
New York, NY 10038
Phone:212-253-1710 ext.314
Fax:212-537-0264
shoshi@nesri.org
www.nesri.org
www.dignityinschools.org
