As educators across the city report a spike in altercations on and off campus, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will boost security at certain schools. At a press conference Monday morning, de Blasio said there will be additional “unannounced” metal detector scanning at schools experiencing an uptick in violence. The NYPD will also deploy special “youth coordination officers” to staff arrival and dismissal in some cases.
“We know there are some schools where there have been some real issues lately and we need to make sure we’re adding extra protection to make sure there’s never violence [or] any incident where a child is harmed,” he said.
Videos of brawls at Benjamin Cardozo High School in Queens and Susan E. Wagner High School on Staten Island surfaced late last week and over the weekend. Security agents have also confiscated multiple guns and knives in recent days.
Still, Nathaniel Styer, an education department spokesperson, said felonies were down in schools this past September compared to September 2019.
But school counselors told WNYC/Gothamist that tempers are running high for many students as they return to school after a year and a half of loss, stress and disrupted learning. They said conflicts that simmered online are boiling over now that kids are back together in school. Students are also out of practice socially, struggling to relate to one another and misreading social cues.
The city is rolling out a mental health screening for all kindergarten through 12th grade students this month which seeks to identify students who need extra support. Officials have also pledged to hire 600 new social workers and counselors; about 93 percent of those positions have been filled. But parents and educators said mental health services fall far short of the need.
Hear Jessica Gould speaking about mental health screening in public schools on The Brian Lehrer Show.
The conflicts also come as the number of School Safety Agents in city schools has dropped substantially. There are now more than 3,200 security officers, down from a high of 5,000 before the pandemic. Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237 which represents the safety agents, said ranks have decreased through attrition.
Since the killing of George Floyd in spring 2020, the city has not brought in new classes of officers to replace those who have retired or left. De Blasio said there will be a new class of 250 agents coming on board next month, although union leader Floyd said it will take 17 weeks of training before they can be deployed.
“This is the mess they created,” union leader Gregory Floyd said of lawmakers.
De Blasio and the city council also agreed to transfer oversight of safety agents from the NYPD to the education department, but that has yet to happen.
Principals warned of a shortage of school security agents due to the vaccine mandate for school system staff earlier this month, although the number of vaccinated agents climbed quickly as the mandate went into effect, and is now around 92 percent.
But groups that oppose police in schools said the mayor’s plan to increase metal detectors and ramp up the presence of officers on campus could cause students’ more stress and backfire.
“We are alarmed at the announcement,” said Kate McDonough, coalition director for Dignity In Schools Campaign New York, a group that advocates for police free schools. “We’ve seen this time and time again that [increased policing in schools] leads to the criminalization of students, particularly students of color. And at a time that we definitely need healing, this is very concerning.”
