I checked with a few veterans who were in the system back before 1998 and I jogged my own memory and besides an NYPD logo placed on the uniforms, nobody could remember much of a difference between when school safety was under the direct control of the school system or when it is NYPD running it except for principals having more direct control over the officers in the olden days. Why move it now? The bureaucracy looks to be fighting for this which is why it is something to be worried about.
Look at who is spearheading the movement to change it back to direct control of the schools and we find that Eva Moskowitz is one of the supporters. That should raise some red flags. We also discover that principals are leading the charge to put school safety back into the DOE Office of Safety and Youth Development. That is not generally a friendly place.
From Chalkbeat:
The letter, which has gained over 600 signatures as of Friday afternoon, was launched by Michael Perlberg, the principal of Brooklyn’s M.S. 839. He said he was motivated to organize other educators to speak out because “there’s this feeling that we’re playing the same story over and over again,” referring to police violence against people of color. “And we’re not making any real progress.”
I will go out on a limb here and say the Safety Agents are not the problem in the schools. At Jamaica and Middle College, I had nothing but the deepest respect for them as a group.
As for the DOE Office of School Safety and Youth Development, I dealt with this office and the NYPD Division of School Safety over the years as Chapter Leader of Jamaica High School. In comparing the two, the police were fairer to us.
I recall when Jamaica High School was reporting, or rather, overreporting safety incidents. UFT's Rona Freiser arranged a meeting with the Principal, me and representatives of the NYPD and the DOE Office of Safety and Youth Development. The police were supportive. They understood we were reporting everything. The DOE people were obnoxious and only concerned with numbers. They didn't care about context. I even remember the head of the office berating the principal in front of the group. Yes this is one school and this was over a decade back but I haven't heard much positive about DOE's safety people since then.
Has anyone bothered to ask the actual Safety Agents how they feel about going back to DOE direct control? Their union has been silent thus far.
What this looks like to me is a DOE bureaucracy power grab combined with principals who want direct control over the Safety Agents. For the left, it is an easy way to say, "Look how we defunded the police."
I understand both sides of the issue.
ReplyDeletehaving been on the school safety teams in the past and currently my schools crisis team, it would be nice to have everyone in the building on the same page, as well as someone in the building- (i wrk in a small school) that the agents are accountable to-their level 3 or sargeent does not work in my building.
However if a criminal offense does happen, the SSA's do need to be able to operate independantlty and follow protcall and the law- without fear of retaliation from their boss.
This is a pure opportunistic push for control by DOE. Be careful whose side you are on here.
ReplyDeleteSo it's good they don't work for our corrupt principals 11:30?
ReplyDeleteDefund the police has 16% public support. Leave school safety as it is. They aren't the problem.
ReplyDeleteAgree. The police aren't the problem the abusive police officers are the problem along with those who sit in silence when they see the abuse. Im sure they haven't polled the safety agents in order to gauge their opinion.
DeleteThank you James for being a voice of reason on this topic.
ReplyDelete@11:38 its a two way street- i have seen some corrupt principals -mine happens to be good, heck my school is still reporting for scholastic dishonesty.
ReplyDeleteso if you have a good principal it would be good to have one family in the blding.
i've seen some great ssa's but also some lazy ones as well.
so who knows what is right anymore?
So what does this mean for Eva Moskowitz?
ReplyDeleteIf the public schools are less safe, then more parents will want to enroll their
child in charter schools?
Fucking scumbag principals will be able again to lie and cover up assaults and other crimes. Terrible idea to move school safety back to principals. As we know, in this day and age asministrators are basically shit who have no concern with education nor the well being of students or their staff.
ReplyDeleteI can't speak for hs anymore, but when a middle school kid gets in a fight- those parents know, and come up to the school- even when the situation occurred in the park at 5pm-- so there needs to be a report. also with the online bullying complaint form- schools are under the gun to report.
ReplyDeleteCall 911 and the media.
ReplyDelete@2:25pm...simple enuff to me. However, how many teachers do you think will do so? Silence is a response too.
DeleteI can hardly wait to see the elite squad of social workers deployed to quell the next riot
ReplyDeleteHow many trillions have we spent on students in NYc and nothing has gotten better? Why is that?
ReplyDelete@2:37pm...You can't be serious with your question or you haven't been reading this blog for too long. Here is an answer: The students are not being taught they are being victimized by the DOE. Everyone passes. Everyone graduates. My question to you: How can anything get bettwr when a game is being played by the DOE against the students and educators?
DeleteOn Monday, the World Health Organization said that data from the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic had led them to believe that it was “very rare” for an asymptomatic carrier of the virus to be able to spread the virus.
ReplyDeleteThis came after preliminary evidence from the outbreak pointed to people who were asymptomatic or carrying the coronavirus to spread it to others.
The W.H.O. pushed for governments to focus on detecting and isolating symptomatic carriers.
But on Tuesday, June 9, the World Health Organization walked back the comments about transmission.
The W.H.O. said that the claims that it was ‘rare’ for an asymptomatic carrier to spread the virus was ‘misleading.’
The organization said that it estimates around 16% of people are asymptomatic carriers and could transmit the coronavirus.
When asked how investors should approach this kind of headline, Jim Cramer railed against the W.H.O, saying the organization has gone "off the reservation." Cramer said that this latest headline contradicts everything he has been hearing from American doctors.
Anybody who takes their medical advice from Jim Cramer needs help.
ReplyDeleteSome people already forgot the names of PO Ramos and PO Liu who were shot dead in their patrol car in 2014 after anti-police protests. And PO Famalia, who was 'murdered for her uniform' in 2017.
ReplyDeleteWords matter. Inciting hostility toward the NYPD can have tragic consequences.
The same could be said for WHO. 500M a year well spent.
ReplyDeleteChicago Mayor Now Pleading With Walmart And Other Companies Not To Leave The City https://thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/chicago-mayor-now-pleading-walmart-companies-not-leave-city/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=websitesharingbuttons via
ReplyDelete@gatewaypundit
LOL
Riots are good
Looting is good
Defund the police
Correct?
Those calling to defund police should offer own zip codes as trial areas | Just The News
Which is the biggest waste...
ReplyDelete500M a year on WHO
Billions on the NYC school system
$1600 a year to uft
D All of the above
DeleteCSA
ReplyDelete@FollowCSA
Independent Budget Office conclusion: Proposed reductions "fall disproportionately on the general education instruction budget" and cuts in Fair Student Funding will "directly affect" students all over the city. Now more than ever, cuts must be made w/o impacting school budgets.
Mark Cannizzaro
@CannizzaroCSA
According to IBO: schools account for 28% of DOE budget but 68% of the proposed cuts. https://ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/mayors-budget-includes-nearly-475-million-in-public-school-savings-cuts-fall-most-heavily-on-general-education-classrooms-foeb-june-2020.pdf
The people who are best organized and most capable of taking advantage of the protests are the yuppie, bourgeois professionals. Many of these people have bachelors degrees in various social science and humanities disciplines, and their primary objective is to create jobs for themselves. They use the deaths of African-Americans as a business opportunity, demanding that companies employ them to run diversity training programs or hire them to diversify an endless series of government and corporate boards, commissions, and panels. These “woke neoliberals” always succeed in co-opting these protests, because they went to the same universities and speak the same language as the people who work for governments and corporations. They claim to offer diversity, but they succeed in getting positions because they are just like the people they aim to replace in every way that matters.
ReplyDeleteFrantz Fanon called them the “black bourgeoisie”, but today they come in many colors. They attack capitalism not because they want to do away with it but because they want to run it themselves. They deceive poor and working people into supporting them, and once they acquire power they run the system the same way the “white” bourgeoisie ran it. They don’t care about funding social programs that work–they just want to get paid.
Obama
ReplyDelete@3:55pm...i love him. He's the ruler to which trump incessantly measures himself. Poor thing.
DeleteAmy Arundell Retweeted
ReplyDeleteroxane gay
Jun 8
Every single media property is racist. Every single workplace is racist. We knew but to read the individual stories...I am furious for every person of color who has to tolerate so much bullshit and mediocrity to make a living.
Well...racism is rampant.
DeleteAmy Arundell Retweeted
ReplyDeleteAsma Nizami
Jun 6
I personally think it's really cool how we all went from learning how to make banana bread to learning how to abolish the police in a matter of weeks
Governor Cuomo gives a passionate speech today about what's wrong with NY states' education system and how it's full of inequality and it shouldn't be tolerated (I hope he doesn't find out that he's been the one running it for the last ten years) AS HAS THE UFT...
ReplyDeleteKerner commission
DeleteJanella Hinds Retweeted
ReplyDeleteSoraya Nadia McDonald
"At best, white law enforcement officials were lackadaisical about investigating sexual assaults on black women. At worst, they were perpetrating such assaults, not only on public streets but also in jails.
Buy me out
ReplyDeleteThe NYPD is getting defunded and now this.
ReplyDeleteIs there a contradiction, an hypocrisy perhaps, in the continuous demand that Carranza and Mulgrew and De Blasio clean house at Tweed, dump Bloomberg's anti-teacher De-formers, and the recent defense, often by the same people, of Giuliani's people and policies such as the NYPD in NYC public schools policies?
ReplyDeleteThis apparent contradiction is often supported with lies, the kind that Giuliani and his buddy Trump are prone to, about crime in our city, how and why it has declined.
The incredible decline of crime, over the last 3 plus decades, not only in NYC, but in nearly all major cities across the United States, has little or nothing to do with police work. Though Giuliani and his friends on the idiot box and in social media echo chambers keep claiming that his police work drove down crime in America's largest city, when ask to explain equal and often greater declines in crime in other cities, many of which used police strategies and tactics inconsistent with or directly opposed to the methods Giuliani used and advocates, the former mayor obfuscates and resorts, more and more, like his boss, Trump, to his charismatic and autocratic strategies, appealing to his base while fanning the flames of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, while resorting to outrageous demagoguery and shock stand up comic vulgarity.
Working class folks are the tools. We are pitted against one another. Some of us have our eyes open and some do not. Teachers are bullied into giving out grades while being cursed out. Police officers are made to look like vicious animals. Black and brown folks are the angry, lazy folks who just want. Instead of pulling together, we are divided. Working class folks are fighting for scraps. Separated by communities and attacking one another. What would happen if we all spoke up TOGETHER against a bully? The bully will run. Ridiculous.
DeleteCrisis being used to divide and conquer. You hit it Waiting.
DeleteWhy the cannibalism in and within the unions in NYC?
ReplyDeleteWhy the same old cut his, slash hers, not mine?
Why cut? why slash?
Some say this is the way things are, have always been, and will be.
I say, BS.
First, it's not economic. You don't have to be a Keynesian to know that cutting jobs when unemployment is 13.5% and the economy is a self induced coma is not sound economics.
And we can go to the credit markets, the city and the state, with emergency powers, and raise the money. We can raise taxes. and how about this nifty idea from Nader.
he major revenue source described below is one that you have been familiar with during your tenure as Governor but have avoided due to over-reaching corporate resistance.
Now, given your precise predictions of state budget deficits and forthcoming dire cuts in human services, you should not find the collection and rebate of about $13 billion yearly from the state’s indirect stock transfer tax so easy to dismiss.
https://nader.org/2020/06/05/letter-to-governor-cuomo-may-1-2020/
I say, stop the cuts and slashes, business as usual. Think! Create! There are better solutions. Stop calling for a cut to other people's jobs.
The workers need to stick together.
If the safety workers and budget are to be shifted back over to the DOE from NYPD, we should call for saving every job. Indeed we will need more people and money not less.
That's right. Divide and conquer. Have noticed it with those that are not in education having resentment due to pension, 10 month work schedule, etc. Instead of working people uniting to fight for similar rights for all, those that don't have it any times want to take it away from those that do. Need to fight together for good benefits.
ReplyDelete@6:06pm...they are continuing to attack the classroom teachers and staff. Everyone is expendable. Instead of pulling together we are expected to look around for someone to blame. We know who that will be: the students and their families. Imagine what will happen if ALL workers supported each other? We ALL have things that we are good at but we are pitted against each other.
ReplyDeleteSeptember is going to be a repeat of March but with less staff. I think an answer is to reach across the divide.
@6:06 you're right
ReplyDeleteWorking-class people across the country as a whole should be taking action for improved benefits. There are model countries where people have good benefits. No jealous and envy. Decades ago the benefits were much better and there was job security in all types of industries. Now, there is too much backstabbing and wanting others to get nothing. Wake up America! Divide and conquer.
ReplyDeleteYes!!!!
ReplyDeleteDemocrats playback pander to african americans. divide and conquer, fear monger (media especially).
ReplyDeleteObama had 8 years in office as first african american president to reform police, dropped the ball like he dropped the mic thinking trump never be president.
500 million WHO= waste
750 million diblasio misguided wife on her mental health gone.
All leaders in Minnesota from governor down all dems, cali, new york, all dems. See a trend?
Corporate Dems almost as bad as Republicans. We have made that point over and over but this post is about the School Safety Agents. Remember that please.
ReplyDeleteSorry James your other bloggers got me off topic!
ReplyDeleteWhatever Moskowitz wants to do the opposite she wants DOE control because these children are not criminals. They are not, there is something called accountability.
Since the NYPD took over and began hiring and employing the school safety agents, applicants must pass civil service exams, undergo background checks and receive training at the Police Academy, he said.