Violence has spiked in city public schools, with wild brawls, shootings and weapons seizures across the five boroughs. Meanwhile, the city’s leaders have produced a huge drop in the number of active safety agents.
The City Council — led by Speaker Corey Johnson, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and members Brad Lander and Helen Rosenthal — nixed a plan to hire 475 new safety agents last February. The city then canceled a scheduled school safety agent training class that would’ve barely dented today’s 1,800-agent shortage.
Without new hires, attrition and enforcement of a vaccine mandate have reduced the corps of agents from 5,500 in 2018 to 4,100 today.
Great: The number of weapons seized in schools is up 28 percent this year compared with the same period pre-COVID. Most alarming: rising gun seizures — nine from July 1 to Oct. 24 this year, vs. only one in the same quarter last year and two in 2019. Students looking to protect themselves from the growing mayhem are also carrying pepper spray and tasers.
When shots rang outside Brooklyn’s Midwood HS recently, it was unarmed, Kevlar vest-less safety agents who responded and flagged down a police car, told cops where the 16-year-old shooter had taken refuge and secured the scene.
The left hates real school-safety enforcement, though 90 percent of agents are minorities and community residents. And also hates the idea of the NYPD overseeing the agents: Education Committee Chairman Mark Treyger backs the transfer of school security to the Department of Education and wants resources directed to social workers and guidance counselors instead.
Asks Rosenthal, “Why would we want anyone who is part of a paramilitary organization to be in our schools?”
One veteran council member says the lefties have “wrapped themselves around the ‘no police anywhere’ talking point and school safety agents were the easiest target.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio is on the same page. He’s allowed agents’ ranks to fall and gone along with the drive to put them under the purview of the DOE — though hiding incidents and juking stats to conceal trouble was commonplace when it last had that authority. De Blasio’s response to the rise in school violence is more metal detectors — at best a Band-Aid. But guess what: The progressives hate those too.
School safety is never just about the student holding the gun or the knife, or their direct victims. It’s about the environment for hundreds of kids. If children are worried about violence, they aren’t learning — or they’re leaving. Why can’t these politicians understand this?
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