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Releases
& Statements
For Release: Wednesday,
February 21, 2007
Contact: Anat Jacobson
O: (212) 669-4743; C: (646) 321-4400
As
Crime Rises in Schools, DOE Fails to Make Students Safe, Treats
Students Like Criminals, Say Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, Councilmemeber
Jackson, Parents, Students, Advocates
Joined by parents, students and advocates, Public Advocate Betsy
Gotbaum today called on the Department of Education to make schools
safe. Gotbaum’s office found the DOE is underreporting school
safety incidents, is not providing principals and school administrators
with adequate resources to effectively handle safety incidents,
and has a suspension a safety transfer policy that fail to keep
kids safe.
“Contrary to what the Department
of Education would have us believe, they have failed to keep our
kids safe in schools,” Gotbaum said. “The suspension
policy has failed, the safety transfer policy has failed, and
the DOE’s focus on turning a handful of schools into armed
prisons isn’t working in keeping our kids safe.”
Major crimes in the New York City
public schools, as reported in the recent preliminary Mayor’s
management report, increased by 21 percent from July through October
of this school year over last. A report recently released by Gotbaum
contends that the DOE may have been under-reporting numbers in
previous years.
For the 2004-05 school year, the DOE
reported that only eight public schools experienced 181 or more
safety incidents – such as grand larcenies, misdemeanor
assaults, and trespassing. Yet Gotbaum’s survey of 158 school
principals and administrators identified 16 schools that experienced
181 or more school safety incidents during that same year, double
the number officially reported. For the 2005-06 school year, the
number jumped to 18.
“A 21% increase in major crime
in our City's public schools is just unacceptable. And reports
that student safety transfers are too frequently being denied
only raise concerns that the school system is failing to adequately
protect our children,” said City Councilmember Robert Jackson.
“When it comes to a child’s safety, we must always
err on the side of caution. Perhaps the DOE needs to invest more
in conflict resolution and other preventive programs, rather than
metal detectors and costly technology that simply don’t
address the problem at its core.”
As the number of school safety incidents
increases, the safety transfer policy is failing to protect students.
“My son was threatened in his school, but nobody would help
him. The Department of Education should be held responsible for
keeping my son safe, but they failed. People in the schools can’t
keep children safe,” said Wanda Rivera, whose son was hospitalized
as a result of a school fight. Ms. Rivera could not obtain a safety
transfer and as a result relocated her son to Florida.
Gotbaum pointed out that, in visits
to high schools across the city, school principals, deans of security,
teachers, and students have raised a variety of concerns about
the DOE’s approach to school safety, from a dysfunctional
suspension policy to the Impact Schools Program that Gotbaum says
has turned a few schools into the equivalent “armed camps.”
“The transfer of school safety
to the NYPD and pervasive use of metal detectors has too often
subjected students to the criminal justice system for violations
of school rules,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director
of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It undermines students
self esteem, undermines education and is neither necessary nor
effective in keeping our children safe.”
“As students we should be involved
with the safety issues because we are the most affected. When
we feel harassed and disrespected, it makes it so much harder
for us to learn. In order for us to do our best, we need to feel
comfortable and we need to be treated with respect,” said
Alejandro Ramos, a 14-year-old youth leader and representative
of the Urban Youth Collaborative.
Gotbaum is calling for an overhaul
of the school safety policy. “We’ve been listening
for years to the administration’s side of the school safety
story. But it’s the parents, students, teachers, administrators
and advocates who have the real story,” Gotbaum said. “The
DOE needs to listen to them carefully and draw on their experience
to create a school safety policy that truly allows teachers to
teach and students to learn.” Gotbaum recommends the DOE
substantially enhance the role of conflict education and resolution
programming in schools and make training for teachers and administrators
mandatory.
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