Students, Parents, Educators & Advocates Urge NYC City Council to Pass Student Safety Act

More than 100 students, parents and educators rallied with the Student Safety Coalition today at City Hall, urging the City Council to pass the Student Safety Act (Intro. 816-a), legislation that would bring much-needed transparency to unchecked policing and punitive safety policies in New York City’s public schools. Following the rally, the City Council held its first hearing on the Student Safety Act, which was introduced in August 2008 and is cosponsored by 33 council members.

“A clear majority of City Council members agree: It’s finally time to pass the Student Safety Act,” New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “This important civil rights legislation will shed much-needed light on police practices in our schools. It is a good first step toward establishing school safety procedures that promote learning instead of intimidation, unwarranted arrests and suspensions.”

The act would require quarterly reporting by the Department of Education (DOE) and NYPD to the City Council and the public on a wide range of school safety issues, including incidents involving the arrest, expulsion or suspension of students, and a breakdown of information by students’ race, sex and disability status. This information could be used to craft more effective student safety policies and procedures.

For years, advocates have requested this data through the Freedom of Information Law. The DOE and NYPD have resisted those requests, stalling for months or even years, preferring instead to cherry pick the data they release to the public.

“How unfortunate that a mayor who prides himself on making data driven decisions withholds information on this sensitive topic from those responsible for oversight,” said Robert Jackson, chair of the New York City Council’s Education Committee. “This leaves legislators without the information they need to make sound policy and budget determinations, decisions that can improve learning conditions and outcomes. This leaves the public without the full story. The Student Safety Act will compel the Department of Education to open the window and let us see into the schoolhouse.”

During the rally, students, parents and educators spoke about the need for safe schools, but they also underscored the need for a nurturing classroom environment. All too often, in many of the city’s neediest schools, students are deprived of the right to learn because of unnecessary and heavy-handed policing and suspension practices. Though few students, parents and educators know how to file a misconduct complaint against school safety agents, the NYPD reports that it receives approximately 1,200 complaints a year about police misconduct in schools.

Since taking control of school safety in 1998, more than 5,000 school safety agents and at least 200 armed police officers have been assigned to the city’s public schools. This massive presence makes the NYPD’s school safety division larger than all but four of the nation’s police forces – larger than Washington DC, Detroit, Boston or Las Vegas. The Department of Education now spends 65 percent more per year—an additional $88 million this year alone— on school safety than it did in 2002, despite the fact that student enrollment has decreased over the same period.

While the number of police personnel in the schools has increased dramatically, school safety agents are provided with little-to-no guidance and training about their role in the schools. As a result, school safety agents often become involved in minor disciplinary incidents that should be handled by educators, not police personnel.

The escalation in police activity has created a de facto zero tolerance policy in many schools that serve the city’s poorest neighborhoods. In these schools, which often have permanent metal detectors, students as young as five have been handcuffed, taken to jail or ordered to appear in court for infractions such as talking back, truancy, refusing to show identification and refusing to turn over cell phones.

Punitive school safety measures like these contribute to the School to Prison Pipeline, a system of local, state and federal education and public safety policies that pushes certain students out of school and into the criminal justice system. The pipeline disproportionately affects youth of color and youth with disabilities.

Jeffrey Paulino, an 11th grader at Bushwick School for Social Justice in Brooklyn, was allegedly choked and hit by an SSA last school year.

“Police and school officials did not respect my dignity,” Jeffrey said. “They treated me like I was an animal. No student should be treated that way. It made me want to stay away from school, to go some place else where they treat students like human beings.”

Seventeen-year-old Adama Wint, a student at Youth Adult Borough Center at Walton High School in the Bronx, said the SSAs at her school sexually harass students. Many of her friends are now desensitized to the harassment and just think it’s a normal part of going to school.

“I never thought that a place I was supposed to feel safe in would make me not want to come most of the time,” Adama said.

Additional examples of recent school safety misconduct include:

• In September 2008, Stephen Cruz, a Queens 11th grader, suffered a lacerated forehead after an SSA allegedly recklessly and pointlessly kicked open the restroom stall Stephen was using then left him disoriented and bleeding in the restroom.
• In January 2008, school safety agents handcuffed Dennis Rivera, a 5-year-old special education student, for throwing a temper tantrum in his kindergarten class.
• In October 2007, Mark Federman, a principal at East Side Community High School, was arrested after trying to prevent police from humiliating his student.
• In April 2007, 13-year-old Chelsea Fraser was handcuffed and arrested for scribbling “okay” on her desk.

The Student Safety Coalition is composed of the following organizations:

• Advocates for Children of New York
• Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, UAW 2325
• Bronx Defenders
• Children’s Defense Fund – New York
• Class Size Matters
• Correctional Association of New York
• CUNY Graduate Center Participatory Action Research Collective
• DRUM – Desis Rising Up and Moving
• Make the Road New York
• NAACP-Legal Defense and Educational Fund
• NAACP New York State Conference
• National Economic and Social Rights Initiative
• National Lawyers Guild – New York City Chapter
• NYCLU
• New York Lawyers for the Public Interest
• Suspension Representation Project
• Teachers Unite
• Urban Youth Collaborative
• Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice

Additionally, the following organizations have endorsed or passed a resolution in favor of the Student Safety Act:

• Advancement Project
• Citywide Council on High Schools (CCHS)
• Coalition for Educational Justice
• Community Asset Development Redefining Education (CADRE)
• Community Education Council 30 (CEC 30)
• The Justice Policy Institute
• The National Center for Schools and Communities at Fordham University
• National Youth Rights Association (NYRA)
• The New York City Bar Association Committee on Civil Rights
• The New York Law School Racial Justice Project
• The Southern Poverty Law Center
• The Working Families Party