From the Press and Sun Bulletin, May 4, 2019:  https://www.pressconnects.com/story/opinion/readers/2019/05/04/opinion-broome-county-schools-need-fewer-officers-more-counselors/1090288001/

 

OPINION

Your Turn: Broome County schools need fewer officers, more counselors

Bill Martin, Guest columnist Published 7:49 a.m. ET May 4, 2019

 

An Owego Free Academy student was arrested by a Student Resource Officer on Nov. 2. A portion was caught on video. Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

 

How can we best educate and protect Broome County’s kids? Do we spend thin funding on more teachers or nurses? Or guidance or mental health counselors? Or protect them against armed attack?

Unfortunately fear, and not what harms kids, drives today’s calculations. One in three parents fear for the safety of their child at school. Students and teachers practice turning off lights, locking classroom doors, pulling down window shades, and huddling quietly in closets to hide from active shooters.

Fear dictates protection. In Broome County, the number of armed School Resource Officers (SROs) and civilian security staff has grown steadily. What does this cost? And has this reduced or prevented harm?

Bill Martin (Photo: Binghamton University photo)

Incomplete responses to Freedom of Information requests and public sources produce a rough total for Broome County schools of $1.3 million per year. This largely excludes civilian security staff, the “hardening” of schools, staff training, consultant fees, etc.

For many, this is not nearly enough. State legislators, led by our Senator (and former undersheriff and current police officer) Fred Akshar, have long pushed for more police. Senate Bill S1330, cosponsored by Akshar, proposes that the state fund a force of retired police officers in all public and private schools outside of New York City — and raising SRO pay by over 60%.

The cost? Close to $200 million a year.

As an employment program, adding 4,000 part-time retirees to the state payroll is impressive. Nationwide, we’ve seen billions spent on policing schools. Meanwhile, 14 million students go to a school with a police officer but no counselor, nurse, psychologist or social worker.

Even worse, as reports by security firms, scholars and the Congressional Research Service tell us, deaths in schools from active shooters are a minuscule subset of school fatalities, less than 5 percent, and an even smaller percentage of youth homicides or suicides by firearms. Students know this: Their fear of attack or harm while in school has been falling for over two decades. The harms students may face are those that armed police can do little to prevent or resolve: transport accidents, suicide, bullying and hate crimes.

Indeed armed police often exacerbate these problems. For more policing is associated with more detention and arrests. And as local and national statistics suggest, policing reinforces racial disparities, with racially disproportionate rates of detention and arrest.

In the Binghamton School District, which spends the most on armed and private security ($360,000), African-American students are suspended at 2.5 times the rate for white students and suffer a 26% dropout rate. Countywide, African-Americans are 10 percent of youths but 43% of juvenile detentions, with 50% of those on probation supervision.

It is simply too costly a system: too many police in schools, too many poor, disabled and students of color channeled into the criminal justice system, and too few counselors, nurses and mental health workers to really help kids address the conflicts and harms of growing up in these troubled times.

Bill Martin teaches at Binghamton University, and is a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier.