Mayor Orders More School-Scanning; Union Wants More Safety Agents

After five guns were found in city public schools over two days, Mayor de Blasio announced Oct. 25 that there will be an increase in random scanning—but the leader of the union representing School Safety Agents argued that the rising safety concerns proved that the Agents should not be transferred from the Police Department to the Department of Education's control.

A .32-caliber pistol was found at FDR High School in Brooklyn, while a pink handgun was confiscated at Junior High School 98 in the Bronx.

Detectors Where Needed

The alarming number of weapons found over the short period of time resulted in the announcement that more unannounced metal-detector scanning will occur in “schools that need it.”

“We've obviously talked now for months about the fact that since COVID began, we've seen a proliferation of weapons in the community in general. This is a huge problem,” the Mayor said during his daily press briefing. “We know there's some schools where there's been some real issues lately, and we need to make sure we're adding extra protection to make sure there's never violence, never any incident where a child is harmed.”

NYPD Neighborhood Coordination Officers and Youth Coordination Officers will also be posted outside of schools during arrival and dismissal times, when fights—such as the wild brawls that recently occurred outside of Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens—have often occurred.

The Mayor and Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter praised the School Safety Agents for their work confiscating the weapons.

'A Problem Out There'

“School Safety, NYPD they have done a great job of finding these weapons before they could do any harm, thank God,” Mr. de Blasio said. “But there is a problem out there, and that's why we have put these measures in place.”

Ms. Porter said the fact “that we got those weapons off the street also recognizes that our systems are working.”

But the number of School Safety Agents has dwindled significantly: while before this school year there were 5,500 Agents working across the city’s 1,800 public schools, there are currently 4,100, according to DOE.

The 25-percent drop in staffing was due to attrition, including a recent spate of retirements. But another factor was the cancellation of a 475-person School Safety Agent class proposed early this year. After advocates for police-free schools opposed the new class, the City Council and the Mayor knocked the plan out of the budget deal reached in late June.

The coronavirus-vaccine mandate exacerbated the problem: although 92 percent of School Safety Agents complied with the requirement, hundreds of the Agents have been taken off payroll.

2 Key Shortages

Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, found a fundamental flaw with the city’s efforts to boost safety: “They don’t have enough scanners, and they don’t have enough School Safety Agents to do the scanning,” he said.

He warned the city long ago that schools would be left vulnerable when students returned to in-person classes full-time because there was a shortage of Safety Agents.

“You can get away with not having enough School Safety Agents when you have remote learning. But you knew September 2021 was coming, and yet you didn’t prepare,” he said.

A 250-person class was announced this past August, and will be ready to be placed in schools Nov. 30, the Mayor stated.

Under the de Blasio administration, city schools have moved away from suspensions and reduced the use of metal detectors.

A Know-It-All Mayor

Mr. Floyd noted that he told the Mayor “eight years ago” to increase the use of scanning in schools. After a student was stabbed to death at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation in 2017, the union leader called for metal detectors in every high school.

“They thought they knew more about school security than I do. I’ve been representing School Safety Agents for 27 years,” Mr. Floyd said. “Their restorative-justice nonsense has resulted in chaos in our schools.”

The city is working to transfer oversight of School Safety Agents from the NYPD to the Department of Education by July 2022 in response to calls to remove police from schools. Many advocates have claimed the high suspension rates among black and Latino students and metal detectors contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline. But the plans for increased scanning essentially rebuke these efforts.

“I didn’t think I would see the Mayor backtracking on his way out,” Mr. Floyd said.

'Respectful' Scanning

Mr. de Blasio argued that “you can do scanning in a way that is respectful and communicative.” 

“I think that's a smart measure that doesn't cause some of the concerns that some of the advocates are raising the same way,” he stated.

He told NY1 political anchor Errol Louis on "Inside City Hall" Oct. 25 that it was the “City Council that really wanted to make the change.”

“Clearly, I thought they were doing well under the NYPD,” the Mayor said.

Nathaniel Styer, a DOE spokesman, noted that “School Safety Agents are a crucial reason why our schools are safe—the transition to DOE will allow for even greater integration into school communities.”

DOE Missing the Point

But Mr. Floyd, who has fiercely opposed to transfer since it was announced in mid-2020, believed the uptick in safety incidents demonstrated why the shift was a bad idea.

“Under the Mayor’s watch, school security has grown significantly worse,” he said. “It’s going to be up to the next Mayor to figure this out.”

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