GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

City school officials are scouring the budget for ways to close a budget gap that could be as large as $600 million. But one realm is likely to escape their scrutiny: the city’s force of more than 5,000 school safety agents.

That’s because it’s not clear who controls the $300 million school safety budget, which is set for a $5 million increase next year. The Department of Education says the police department does, but the NYPD claims it just manages the funds the education department sends them.

City Council financial analysts laid this conflict out in a report presented to the council at a DOE budget hearing late last month. According to the report (pdf):

“The refusal of each agency involved in school safety to take accountability for the division’s budget does nothing to assure one that the school safety budget should be left untouched, while other key service areas should be cut.” (more…)

Stepping up its campaign against excessive policing in city schools, the New York Civil Liberties Union today sued the city on behalf of students who say they’ve been victims of overaggressive school safety officers.

The abuses alleged in the 56-page complaint filed in federal court today “shock the conscience,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman at a press conference this morning. The NYCLU charges that school safety officers threatened, intimidated, handcuffed, and assaulted students whose only offenses included writing on a desk or being late for class.

The NYCLU has sued the city before about single cases of abuse by school safety agents, who are overseen by the police department rather than the Department of Education. In November, the city agreed to pay $55,000 to a student who said he was assaulted by a safety agent at Robert F. Kennedy High School in Queens. Today’s suit is different because it seeks to represent all city students and because it aims to establish that the city’s official school discipline policies violate students’ civil rights. (more…)

Jeffrey Paulino, 17, said he had been assaulted by a school safety agent at his Bronx high school.

Rallying before a City Council hearing today on a more than year-old school safety proposal, advocates renewed their call for a law that would force the city to issue quarterly reports on school violence.

Introduced in 2008 by Robert Jackson, chairman of the City Council education committee, the School Safety Act has the support of 33 of the Council’s 50 members as well as advocacy groups like the New York Civil Liberties Union. Lost amid the debate over term limits last year, the act has seen little movement in the Council.

The act would require the Department of Education and Police Department to report arrests, suspensions, and expulsion data on a quarterly basis, along with a demographic breakdown of the students involved in school incidents. (more…)

The New York Civil Liberties Union has spent the last few years arguing that police officers are too aggressive in public schools. Today, it is spotlighting a Queens high school where a 16-year-old says police beat him so forcefully that he had to have surgery. Other students at the school also say they have been assaulted by safety agents.

Yesterday, NYCLU sent a letter to Chancellor Klein and police commissioner Ray Kelly calling on them to investigate the allegations of abuse. At a press conference this afternoon, at Hillcrest High School in Queens, they will make this demand publicly, and will also call on the City Council to pass the Student Safety Act, which would increase oversight of the more than 5,000 safety agents in city schools.

NYCLU’s letter, obtained by GothamSchools, says the school’s administration has not responded to complaints about alleged abuse:

It is our understanding that several students and at least one community organization have approached the school’s administration about these reports in hopes of remedying the situation. These attempts have been fruitless, according to the organization, as the administration has turned a deaf ear to these concerns.

Just a few weeks ago, a student at Robert F. Kennedy High School in Queens filed a lawsuit alleging that a school safety agent there kicked open a restroom stall door, injuring him. NYCLU has filed a complaint with the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau on his behalf.

A Department of Education spokesperson said she cannot comment on pending litigation.