The Chief Newspaper
By Crystal Lewis
Click here to read the article on The Chief website.
An excerpt:
School Safety Agents: We're Misunderstood
“About 90 percent of the Agents don’t want to go under the Department of Education,” said Harold Wise, a Level III School Safety Agent who has worked in city public schools for 20 years.
The controversial plan to transfer jurisdiction of School Safety Agents from the Police Department to the DOE was announced in June 2020 after advocates for defunding the police called for police-free schools. They argued that the Agents contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline and the high suspension rates among black and Latino students.
Some—notably Public Advocate Jumaane Williams—stated that the Agents physically and sexually abused students, a claim that sparked outrage from Gregory Floyd, President of Teamsters Local 237, which represents the Agents.
The role of School Safety Agents will be transformed: they will receive training on de-escalation and restorative- justice practices, and they won’t be able to arrest students or use handcuffs. The transition, which was set in motion by the City Council, is expected to be complete by July 2022.
But three School Safety Agents said the narratives being pushed about them were false. Although advocates for police-free schools attributed the disproportionately high number of black and Latino students being suspended to the Agents, “School Safety doesn’t have the power to suspend kids—that’s the administration,” Mr. Wise noted.
Although a City Council bill called for the Agents “to no longer carry weapons,” they are not armed.
And the criticism that the use of metal detectors make students feel like they’re in prison?
“Random scanning happens because a Principal asks for it,” Mr. Wise explained.
Many of the false narratives developed because “people really don’t understand what School Safety does,” he stated.
Quiann Simpkins, a School Safety Agent at a Brooklyn school serving students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, said she was “confused and alarmed” when she first heard about the transfer.
“We were the low-hanging fruit because they couldn’t go after the NYPD,” she said of the proponents for police-free schools.
But the Agents argued that they have often served as mentors to the kids. Ninety percent of the Agents are black and Latino, and 70 percent are women, a workforce that reflects the city’s students, who are predominantly people of color. Many live in the same neighborhoods as the students they serve.
“The kids call us ‘Uncle.’ They call me ‘Grandpa,’” said Charles Greene, a School Safety Agent Level III in the Bronx who has been on the job since 2002. “I tell the kids, ‘I am you. When you succeed, I succeed.’”
Mr. Wise started a mentoring program for students at Port Richmond High School, while Mr. Greene holds an event called ‘Battle of the School Stars’ where students from different schools put on performances.
“School Safety is not the enemy. We love the kids,” Mr. Greene said.
“We do a lot of mediation,” Mr. Wise noted. “We talk things out with the kids.”
Oversight of School Safety Agents shifted from the Board of Education to the NYPD in 1998 because schools had proved incapable of managing the unit, with many hires the product of political patronage and background checks shoddy at best.
“I don’t know why they would want to transfer us to the DOE when it didn’t work in the first place,” said Mr. Wise, who attended city public-schools when the Agents were under the Board’s jurisdiction. He recalled encountering Agents who were gangbangers or were in inappropriate relationships with students.
“I believe the best thing would be to stay under NYPD,” he said. “We get trained properly and we’re vetted thoroughly.”
Read the full story in The Chief at https://thechiefleader.com/news/open_articles/school-safety-agents-were-misunderstood-free-story/article_339486ee-2df2-11ec-8d9f-bf721d6347e9.html?utm_medium
NYC School Safety Coalition rally photo copyright by John Kwok.
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