In Bushwick Schools, a Peace Dividend
Bushwick High, by A Guy in Brooklyn
I have been hard on Bushwick community organization Make the Road NY, and we do disagree on many important points. I think their point of view on certain economic issues is more characteristic of the beginning of last century than this one. That said, I appreciate their immigrant advocacy services — the idea of a person’s very existence in a particular place on earth being “illegal” offends me on a fundamental level. The other day I realized we have something else in common: opposition to the anti-child hate crime that is our heavily armed and armored public school system.
Make the Road has put together some statistics showing the brutality with which even small children are handled in the public schools’ security “apparatus on steroids”:
On January 15th of this year, police handcuffed a ten-year old girl, Imecca Burton, who was allegedly roughhousing on a school bus outside her elementary school, PS 25 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
On January 16th, SSAs handcuffed twelve-year old seventh grader D.A. at IS 291 (in Bushwick) and took him to the 83rd Precinct for holding.
On January 17th at PS 81 in Ridgewood, Queens, security guards handcuffed Dennis Rivera, five years old. When first the child’s babysitter and then his mother came to the school, the guards refused to release the child and instead took him to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
More on the day to day brutalization of children in New York schools can be seen in the NYCLU report, “Criminalizing the Classroom [pdf].” In many cases, when a teacher or even principal tries to intervene against an unnecessarily rough officer, they too are threatened and in some cases, actually arrested. Why is school security run like the Turkish military — independent from, and when push comes to shove, superior to the people who are supposed to actually be running the show?
But there is another way. A handful of schools across the city are experiencing stunning declines in violence, including Bushwick Community High School. These schools use a whole new approach to running schools: a combination of trust and respect for the students and an open atmosphere fostered by the notable absence of metal detectors and only a single security guard. Incidents at BCHS in the last three years? One, off of school property.
What this may show is that kids — even those in gangs — respond positively to positive reinforcement. And quite negatively to negativity and punishment. In the city’s “IMPACT” plan, school crime stats drop because kids are expelled and suspended and separated, a road that is unlikely to end in a change of behavior but likely to lead to jail as an adult. The new method immerses the kids in a positive environment and proves wrong the notion that the world is against them from early on — a key cultural belief in inner-city, poverty-ridden areas which slices kids’ bootstraps before they get a chance to pull them.
We need a more holistic approach to education. There must be a better way to educate children than to herd them into one-size-fits-all camps where they are taught more to be model citizens than they are taught actual skills and knowledge. This approach to security is a great start toward reform.
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:27 pm
This is a great post, Jeremy!
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I work as a special ed therapist for the NYC board of ed, and am placed anywhere from the projects to posh private schools on the UES. Handcuffing a five year old seems unfathomable, but I have seen similar and worse in some the schools I have worked in, from sitting on children to restrain them, locking them in closets or offices, to good old hitting, not to mention emotional abuse, which is much more insidious. I also went to a public school in DC with armed guards and metal detectors…civil liberties were ignored in many instances. Thanks for calling attention to this issue Jeremy.
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Muy amable Jeremy, thanks for giving us at Make the Road our due.
Nope, the school security overkill we have going in our city doesn’t really work that well. Costs a lot of money, maybe helps the mayor look like a tuff guy, but doesn’t work that well at all.
In the course of researching the report you link to, I was told by students, teachers and principals that it’s real easy to get a weapon past a metal detector. The scanners are turned of by noon at most schools, but the doors remain open. The scanners are only at the main entrance–but there are other exits. And guards often wave the kids they like right on through, and if there’s a beep the kid can say hey it’s my belt buckle.
Don’t believe me? On March 28th at Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights one student stabbed another in the shoulder. I hear the victim is paralyzed below the waist now. The school’s metal detectors were fully operational that morning.
To be sure, some schools may find that scanners are the way to go, but this decision should be up to the principals, teachers, parents, and even students. Right now it’s a policy that essentially gets imposed, with very heavy pressure, by the Department of Education.
The tragic thing is that the successful alternatives to the lockdown model aren’t just theoretical, they’re real, and have been getting great results at lots of schools across the city. You’d think the city would show more interest in these cheaper, more effective, and much more humane methods of doing school security.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Camilo I completely believe you about the scanners/detectors. We had 2400 students at my highschool, and ONE scanner at one entrance. that meant that only the kids who arrived to school 1 hour early went through the scanner, and they had to turn it off for all the on time/late kids. Very effective. They are still working out the same problems with “increased security” more than 10 years later.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
“These schools use a whole new approach to running schools: a combination of trust and respect for the students and an open atmosphere fostered by the notable absence of metal detectors and only a single security guard. Incidents at BCHS in the last three years? One, off of school property.”
This is impressive!! Especially for me coming back from visiting family in Chicago where I was told that sadly 30 people have been killed in the last month alone due to gun violence on the south side. It gotten to the point there that police are escorting students to and from school. Even the high school I went to in the suburbs had gang brawls. I wonder what a five year old had done that required him to be handcuffed! I firmly believe that behavioral problems begin with how a child is raised at home but brutalizing kids will only deepen their distrust of authority. Bravo to those who are making a positive change!
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:21 pm
What amazes and encourages me most is that it’s not just that kids aren’t stabbing and shooting each other, or even being caught with these weapons on them, but that they aren’t even FIGHTING! In my school, which was about 40% inner-city kids and 60% suburban, there were fights every day (among and between both demographics), it seemed, not to mention all the weapons seizures. This really exposes the big differences in outcomes of the various approaches to security and education.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Bushwick Community High School is a small institution that ADULTS may ELECT to attend if they have been unsuccessful at their previous high school. It is on the state’s list of schools needing academic improvement so I doubt you’ll be planning to send the kiddies there someday!
The fact that the people attending classes at this school are not carrying weapons, fighting or whatever should be considered normal…..why do we expect less?
June 4th, 2008 at 10:15 am
“The fact that the people attending classes at this school are not carrying weapons, fighting or whatever should be considered normal…..why do we expect less?”
You’re right, this should be considered normal but due to many years of violence and high dropout rates reported in urban high schools (especially where I’m from in Chicago) I guess I, like others have low expectations.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:35 am
These kids (they’re only technically adults) are all wrapped up in gang shit, fighting and weapons are normal even in non-gang/suburban schools, and it’s the damn ghetto. That’s why we expect less and are happy to see way more.
June 4th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I agree that handcuffing a five-year old, or any elementary school student is totally unexcusable under any but the most extreme circumstances. However, I teach at a middle school which is just a few blocks away from John Adams High School. Each year I’ve been working here I’ve had numerous 8th grade students get jumped on their walks home by thugs from John Adams who feel the need to prove that they’re tough by beating up younger, smaller kids (please help me understand the logic here!). Recently the NYPD School Safety has become aware of this and responded with a presence in the neighborhood at the end of each school day. I know this is not necessarily a popular sentiment, but the presence of police and school security agents outside the schools, and at the local bus and train stations really does seem to deter these senseless acts of violence. Although a better school environment based on positive reinforcement would be ideal, in the face of this danger the highest priority should be protecting innocent children and keeping school a safe place. Unfortunately, at least in the short term, the use of force may be the only strategy that the gangsters and instigators respond to.
June 4th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Well, actually occasional fights and flare-ups at high schools are normal, beyond normal even. This is true at public high schools, true at fancy boarding schools.
What may not seem “normal” to many of us is that run-of-the-mill bad teenage behavior– mouthing off, a shoving match, being somewhere without a hall pass– will get a kid handcuffed and often enough slapped with a desk appearance ticket in criminal court. But this is our new normalized MO at many NY high schools. Does this create any rational order? Does it help kids internalize self-discipline? Does it foster that minimum of mutual respect necessary for any kind of civilization? For all three questions, check the “no” box.
BCHS–a great many of whose “adult” students btw are 17 and 18– isn’t the only school in the linked study; the other four schools with humane & successful security methods are rather more conventional, from the mammoth Herbert Lehman HS in the Bronx (more than 4,000 students!) to tiny El Puente academy with just 175 kids. But please let’s not sneer at BCHS! The school does a great job of giving a high school education to kids who have already failed in and been failed by the school system.
June 4th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Camilo - my comment above was in no way to sneer at BCHS, however, now that you mention it - is a “school” that has a 46% dropout rate (and only half of those remaining actually get “diplomas”) really doing, as you say, such a great job? It is the only transfer school in the city (there are about 30 others) to make the State’s Registration Review list (not a good thing). Make the Road NY helped start this school five years ago and the article everybody is oohing and aahing over is co-authored by one of their members! Hmm, I wonder why they chose to include BCHS in this article (could it be their fighting for their life to keep this “school” open?). They’re your tax dollars too so if you believe this is a “great job” then who am I to argue? But I think this is an example of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” at work.
June 6th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Lets be realistic. Bushwick Community is on the SURR list and is in danger of closing down for being a poor academic institution. No one can dispute this.
They also have a policy of throwing out students who are disruptive. They do not follow the DOE regulations-they give the kid their papers and tell them they must leave. I know because I have had some of their students attempt to attend the school I work at.
So sure they have no incidents-when you have 250 students and you throw out who ever is disruptive, what do you expect. Too bad they do not concentrate on improving their academics.