Double standard for kids and adults at the DOE

See today's Daily News about how Alexa Gonzalez, a 12-year-old student at JHS 190 in Forest Hills Queens, was put in handcuffs and taken to the precinct house after doodling on her desk. She remains suspended from school and attended court along with her mother yesterday. (photo thanks to the Daily News)

These overly harsh disciplinary tactics in our schools remain distressingly common and were the subject of a NYCLU lawsuit filed last month, charging that the practice of arresting children for minor disciplinary offenses feeds the schools-to-prison pipeline.

DOE officials said that this latest occurrence was regrettable -- and they yet refuse to alter the guidelines under which the police have full sway in our schools.

Last year the NYPD agreed to "test out" velcro handcuffs for children in 22 schools in northern Queens-- and in these schools alone said that restraints would be used only when a child was at risk of hurting himself or others. This was in response to an highly publicized incident in which a five year old child was handcuffed and dragged to a psych ward after a trantrum at PS 81 in Ridgewood Queens.

I guess Forest Hills children who reside in Central Queens -- no less the rest of our million NYC public school students --aren't so lucky.

Meanwhile, this week, Maura Keaney, Bloomberg campaign staffer, was hired to run the DOE's office of external affairs with a $143,000 salary, the same day that the Conflicts of Interest Board announced she had engaged in ethical violations for soliciting campaign contributions from union officials while working on union-related policy issues for Speaker Quinn.

In 2007, Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf was determined to have violated conflict of interest rules and having lied under oath, with the special investigator's findings suppressed until the report was FOILed the next year. Cerf remained without any sanction in his high-level job, and later was tapped to work for the Bloomberg re-election campaign, along with Maura Keaney.

Keaney will now be in charge, as Cerf was earlier, of the DOE's extensive public relations and lobbying operations.

What did Bloomberg say about Keaney's being hired for a top DOE job on the same day she was cited for conflict-of-interest violations?

“I think,” he said, “she’s going to be spectacular."

Bob Herbert: "Cruel madness" in our schools

Bob Herbert has a column in today’s New York Times about the overwhelming and often abusive presence of police in the NYC public schools – based on the devastating NYCLU/ACLU report called "Criminalizing the Classroom" that we excerpted on our blog here.

I have posted Bob's column here, for those who do not subscribe to the NY Times. It ends this way:

“There is no excuse whatever for this systematic mistreatment of New York City students. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in charge of the school system, and he and Commissioner Ray Kelly run the Police Department. Parents across the city should demand that they step in and bring this cruel madness to an end.”

Unfortunately, when this report came out back in March, not a single major NYC newspaper covered it. Bob used to write regularly about our public schools – including several columns on the problem of class size in NYC schools-- which continues unabated. Let’s hope he’s back on the beat.

If you'd like to send a message to the Mayor and/or Chancellor, the NYCLU has a sample letter here.

Criminalizing the Classroom -- and NYC students

The New York Civil Liberties Union has released a scathing critique of school policing practices, based on over 1,000 interviews and surveys, describing how NYC students have become criminalized as a consequence of overly aggressive policing operations, which in many instances, have led to less safety in schools rather than more.

The documented behavior of the police and School Safety Agents includes derogatory, abusive comments and conduct; intrusive searches; inappropriate sexual attention; physical abuse; and arrests of students for minor violations, or for nothing at all.

Countless armed NYPD officers along with thousands of SSAs patrol our schools every day -- the total number of whom constitute the tenth largest police force in the country -- more than Washington DC, Detroit, Baltimore and many other large cities. San Antonio has only half as many police per resident as NYC schools have per student.

Almost 100,000 students everyday are forced to endure scanners, bag-searches, and pat downs, with no probable cause -- and by personnel who are often abusive and arbitrarily confiscate their possessions, and never return them.

NYC is alone among the largest districts in the country in the manner in which police and agents are assigned to schools who are neither selected, trained or under the authority of the educators in the building, and as a result, our students are suffering.

Here is one story:

Statement of Biko Edwards, Samuel J. Tilden High School

In January of this year I was late to Chemistry Lab because I had been talking with my math teacher after math class. As I was rushing to class, Val Lewis, the Assistant Principal for Security, stopped me in the hallway. Because I was worried that I would be late to Chemistry Lab, which has strict attendance requirements, I asked Officer Lewis let me keep going to class, and I told him that I had been talking with my math teacher. Officer Lewis didn't listen to my explanation and instead told me to go to the "focus room," where we have detention.

I kept begging to go to Chemistry Lab, and Officer Lewis got angry and threatened to send me to the principal's office. Then he ordered a police officer stationed at the school, Officer Rivera, to arrest me. Officer Rivera grabbed me and slammed me against a brick door divider, which cut my face. I was bleeding. Officer Rivera then sprayed Mace in my eyes and face, then called for back-up on his radio and handcuffed me.

Eventually they took me to the hospital, where I spent about two hours handcuffed to a chair and received some treatment for my injuries. Then they took me to the local precinct and to central booking. I missed the rest of my classes that day. Overall I spent more than 28 hours in police custody. I was also suspended for four days.

If it can happen like this in school, imagine what police officers could do to you outside if something like this happened…. Why are they arresting school kids while they're in school? Tensions between students, teachers, principals, and school safety agents wouldn't be as bad if SSAs would do more listening to students and less pushing them around.

Biko Edwards is from Crown Heights and is a seventeen-year-old eleventh-grader at Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn.

An update: in a similar vein, see the new report from NESRI, the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, "Deprived of Dignity: The Degrading Treatment and Abusive discipline in New York City And Los Angeles Public Schools."