Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, takes issue with the claim that Los Angeles has the largest police force in schools in the country.
LAUSD does not have the “largest school police force in the country” as claimed above (in UTLA press release). NYC DOE has more than 5,000 School Safety Officers who work for the NYPD, at a cost of nearly $500M — more than seven times the cost of the police at LAUSD.
According to the LAUSD website, they have only “10 sworn police officers, 101 non-sworn school safety officers (SSO), and 34 civilian support staff,“ far less than the 5,000 in NYC schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Neither cops nor the military have any business in a school, whatsoever.
‘Education’ literally means ‘drawing out from within’. The police and military do the exact opposite. They stuff in from without. They indoctrinate.
Education encourages freedom of thought and respect for diversity. Indoctrination encourages servility and conformity.
It is especially shocking that local police departments have been buying or getting spare military equipment.
Why do local cops need grenade launchers or tanks?
living free from threat vs. living with endless fear of threat
According to the NYPD website, School Safety Officers are civilians who get training in the police academy. (i.e., it is technically a “civilian job” like crossing guards).
Presumably, parents would want to make sure that someone is training the new DOE School Safety Officers in schools once every one of the “police” school safety officers is fired, so the DOE would need to have a training structure in place to train the new employees who would be at the doors once the ones trained by police are fired. Hopefully that would happen before schools reopen.
I am interested in hearing what the people who want to replace all the “police” in public schools plan is for replacing them and training them.
I am also interested in hearing what security private schools are using as my recollection is that many private schools were demanding that the Mayor put trained safety agents in their school to protect their students when there were threats.
NYCPS also have probably the highest rate of school segregation in the country.
I worked at a middle school in one of the toughest inner city neighborhoods in New York City during the ’90s.
We had the 5th floor to ourselves (special ed middle school for kids with severe behavior management issues). Rough streetwise kids…but we were tame compared to the general ed school housed on the first four floors.
That’s because we had a structured and consistent method for dealing with the kids who become disruptive. Both proactive, active, and reactive. All the teachers were trained in these techniques. The general ed school’s method was different: just kick the kids out of the classes.
There was a neighborhood gang that terrorized that general ed school. They’d plan a common time to get themselves kicked out of class. Then they’d meet at an agreed upon location and start making lots of noise. At that point, everyone in the building (it was that loud) would lock their doors and put cardboard over the door windows.
The gang would make their rounds, random floor to floor, breaking bottles on the walls, kicking at doors/pounding on the windows, testing out the locks, tearing down bulletin boards, and more. Nobody wanted to be in the halls at that point.
We BEGGED the DOE for School Safety Officers and metal detectors, to no avail. The school had so many riots that it eventually had to be closed down.
You had to have been there to really understand. Students, teachers, and admins feared for their lives. Literally. We were so thankful when the SSOs and metal detectors became more accessible, city wide.
I agree with Diane about police departments having no need for grenades, tanks, etc. And the school to prison pipeline is a reality, as is police brutality to people of color. But let’s please not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The need was (and still is) very, very real. Even with the metal detectors, the students would “find a way”. One example was to put the weapon in arms reach by a window of a class that the kid knew he/she would be in, first period.
There’s an axiom in the corporate world: always make friends with the secretary. In education, I’ve included the SSOs and custodians. And of the many SSOs (and custodians) that I’ve known; I can think of only one who I wouldn’t have wanted in the building. And she ended up getting fired. The rest have always been from the immediate neighborhood and were liked and respected.
This blanket dislike and distrust of police and SSOs is reminding me of the media’s campaign against the “lazy, overpaid, pension seeking” teachers. THERE’S NO DOUBT THAT CHANGES ARE NECESSARY..but it’s not all of the cops and precincts that are the problem. I think we’re fooling ourselves if we think we can survive without a strong police presence in the community.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Although the three schools I have taught at have never been quite as bad as what you’ve described I can relate to several things you pointed out. I do know that other schools in LAUSD experienced issues similar to what you’re describing took place in 1990’s NYC.
These types of problems are real; band aid fixes will never work.