Screening apparatus greets students on their way into John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx.
Cameras, Screening Apparatus & Security In NY Schools..
The Internet Protocol Digital Video System is only one aspect of New York City’s school safety program, a joint Department of Education - New York Police Department effort that some student advocates consider so aggressive, they’ve dubbed it the “school to prison pipeline.”
In addition to security cameras, the public school atmosphere today includes more than 4,500 uniformed officers patrolling the halls, enforcement of zero-tolerance behavior policies, and thousands of predominantly minority students attending “Impact” schools – a designation given to the most crime-ridden – who must walk through metal detectors and past armed police officers just to get to class.
Students have expressed their objection in a variety of ways, including at a demonstration in Aug. 2006 on the steps of DOE’s central office at Tweed Courthouse. “We’re students, not felons. We need books, not prisons,” hundreds of student demonstrators chanted.
In the wake of a City Council hearing this fall, lawmakers increasingly have spoken of a need for change (See Principals, Police And A Question of Authority, City Limits Weekly #609, Oct. 15, 2007). “The current school safety system is at best a Band-Aid, and at worst a criminalization of the students,” City Councilman John Liu said this month. A member of Council’s Education Committee, Liu went on to condemn the DOE’s widely-touted decreases in school crime and overcrowding as “smoke and mirrors.”
Councilman Robert Jackson, the chair of Council’s Education Committee, believes that the current safety policy has turned schools into “institutions resembling prisons” and “is not conducive to learning.”
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