Dear friends,
There is a very important planning and zoning bill before City Council. The sponsors of Intro 2186 include some of my favorite council members, including Brad Lander, and Antonio Reynoso. But the bill sounds insidious, as it would allow a “Director” to dictate certain zoning decisions (think Robert Moses). Tomorrow is the one and only hearing scheduled for this legislation, which is on a fast-track for passage this spring. It seems important to ask some questions and raise a red flag, although I confess that city planning and zoning are not topics about which I am well-informed.
Please send a letter to city council (a ready-made action from the folks at Alliance for a Human Scale City) asking council members to reconsider this initiative.
If you are knowledgeable and interested in how city planning decisions get made, please follow this link for information about other steps you can take.
In my extended discussion of school reopening, I promised to look into the Teamsters’ position on a city council bill to retrain school safety agents (SSAs). When schools reopen, we have to reconsider the normal that students and staff are returning to. The bill promotes restorative justice techniques rather than police procedures when student behavior requires intervention.
On February 18, Gregory Floyd, Teamster Local 237 President, testified before the NYC Council Education Committee. Here are the main points that Floyd made about maintaining school safety agents in schools:
There were more that 285 major crimes committed in schools in 2019-20. He argues that what appears to be a decline in criminal behavior is misleading because fewer incidents were reported. He noted that in 2018-2019, 2701 weapons (including box cutters and guns) were confiscated from students. He mentioned a school that closed because students felt so unsafe there.
Floyd pointed out that SSAs are not armed and that they provide leadership for outreach programs that distribute free school supplies in new bookbags in the fall and organize toy drives for the holidays. He raised the specter of school shootings such as the ones at Parkland and Newtown and hailed the SSAs who lead students to safety on 9/11. He mentioned the high proportion of women of color in the ranks (70%). He said:
With so much chaos in the world…
At a time when racism and social injustice have reached a boiling point in our own country….
At a time when so many of our government leaders, our healthcare professionals, and even our next door neighbors, have failed us, disappointed us, misled us, betrayed us.
Why do some people think the solution lies in a knee-jerk, politically correct reaction that ultimately harms the very population they want to protect?
School Safety Agents are NOT a part of a supposed “pipeline to prison”.
It’s quite the opposite. They don’t help to create criminals, they help to protect children from them. They wear a uniform as a beacon; a sign of authority to let students know who to run to in a time of need, and for the potential troublemakers, who to fear.
Gregory Floyd is correct that children cannot learn if they don’t feel safe and that safety agents can be an important part of promoting safety. I had the pleasure of working in a school with excellent, personable safety agents who knew many of the students by name and were trusted by young people.
The bill in question, Intro 2211, is not designed to eliminate safety agents and emphasizes retraining of safety agents. The bill is intended to get safety agents out of police uniforms, which do inspire fear. Generally, the worst things that people do are in response to fear. If the bill becomes law, safety agents could wear uniforms that clearly identify them as safety agents, but not police uniforms. They would not be permitted to carry or use handcuffs or other restraints. Topics for regular trainings would include:
a) Safety and security procedures that honor the dignity and humanity of students and educators;
(b) Child and youth development;
(c) Trauma-informed care;
(d) Therapeutic crisis intervention in schools;
(e) Restorative justice;
(f) Social-emotional learning;
(g) Prosocial behaviors among students and adults;
(h) De-escalation;
(i) Conflict mediation;
(j) The department’s supportive environment framework;
(k) Cultural responsiveness;
(l) Implicit bias;
(m) Equity;
(n) The department’s respect for all program based on chancellor's regulation A-832;
(o) The requirements of title IX of the education amendments of 1972; and
(p) Community building.
The core of the school safety agent workforce would be well-suited to this work if they are open to retraining. Most of the agents (unlike most teachers) come from similar neighborhoods and backgrounds as the students and have credibility as mediators.
Giuliani was the first mayor to advocate for police presence in schools. Before that, the school system
had roughly 2,900 school safety officers – none of whom were police officers – and a budget of about US$72 million. By 2020 under New York City’s police force, staffing for school safety officers roughly doubled in size, growing to 5,511.
And some budget reports now document spending growing to over $400 million.
The school-to-prison pipeline is real and districts that are phasing out the policing of schools, like those in Oakland, California, and Denver, Colorado, are redirecting resources to hire counselors and social workers trained in the same methods this legislation calls for.
The results of pilot studies in both Oakland and Denver were quite positive. In Oakland, graduation rates increased 60% in schools that implemented restorative justice practices, and suspensions fell by 56%.
Contact your council member to let them know that you support Intro 2211, requiring retraining of school safety personnel, expanded quarterly reporting on complaints made against SSAs, and a plan to transfer all school safety functions from the NYPD to the DOE.
Have a great day!
with love,
L