Arrests For Low-Level Crimes To Be Limited In NYC Schools

NEW YORK — Police officers and school safety agents will limit arrests of New York City students for low-level crimes under a new agreement between the NYPD and the Department of Education.

The two agencies have revised a memorandum of understanding that governs the NYPD's policing of the city's public schools. The deal, which Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration announced Thursday, marks the first major overhaul of the city's school safety practices since former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's tenure.

The agreement puts teachers on the first line of response when students act out and favors alternatives to criminal enforcement, as opposed to the zero-tolerance discipline approach of the Giuliani era, city officials said.

"We have now changed the presence of policing in our schools," Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said at a news conference. "Police should enforce the law. They shouldn't enforce the law in schools as a matter of course. There are better ways of producing good academic and social-emotional results that don’t require law enforcement."

For example, the memorandum says NYPD cops and school safety agents should use "diversionary responses" whenever feasible instead of giving students summonses or arresting them for offenses such as marijuana possession, alcohol consumption or graffiti.

Additionally, teachers and other school personnel should not get safety agents involved when they can safely handle student misconduct such as lateness, class-cutting, unexcused absences or smoking, according to the agreement.

School staff will still be able to ask school safety agents for help when it would be appropriate for them to step in, according to the memo.

The new policies will also be enshrined in the NYPD's patrol guide, a step that Carranza said is significant because every officer has a copy of that document. The DOE also wants to limit student suspensions to fewer than 20 days except in cases of violent or serious incidents, the mayor's office said.

"This agreement memorializes best practices that the Police Department and the Department of Education have developed over the last 20 years," NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill said in a statement.

The new memorandum incorporates recommendations from a task force that de Blasio commissioned to tackle racial disparities in the school discipline system.

Black and Latino students accounted for 88 percent of arrests in schools and 92 percent of summonses in the 2017-18 school year — even though those two groups comprised just about two thirds of the city's student body, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which was involved in the task force.

"Today’s announcement is about treating kids like kids, allowing them to recover from mistakes, and teaching them the tools to manage emotions and behavior," said Johanna Miller, the director of the NYCLU's Education Policy Center, in a statement.

The de Blasio administration also plans to provide students with more resources meant to help stave off misbehavior and improve school climate.

Every elementary school will get support for so-called social-emotional learning programs, which aim to teach students how to communicate and get along with each other, city officials said. The programs will be provided through a partnership with Sanford Harmony, which offers a nationally recognized curriculum for community-building, according to the mayor's office.

Moreover, every middle and high school in the city will implement restorative justice practices, which emphasize problem-solving and conflict resolution rather than traditional punishments, officials said. And 85 clinical social workers will be available to help students when they need earlier intervention, the mayor's office said.

"We’ve heard from students, teachers and parents across our city, and as a result, we’re revolutionizing our school system and giving our kids the social-emotional tools they need to ensure they develop into healthy adults," de Blasio, a Democrat, said in a statement.

The new initiatives are evidence that the city is listening to its students, said Rikya Theresa Kee, a youth leader with the Urban Youth Collaborative who said she "felt isolated" in most of her school experience.

"Now, we must move to fully end racial disparities and the criminalization of young people in our schools," Kee said in a statement. "We still have work to do."