Saturday, February 18, 2006
The Thin Blue Line
My father, after reading some of the incidents on this blog, will sometimes tell me stories about how different going to school was back when he was in high school here in the city. Back then, he tells me, there was only one police officer in the building and his role was relatively marginalized. Administrators were able to handle the vast majority of disciplinary problems.
Now granted, the school where he went was (and still is) one of the top academic schools around, a magnet which inexorably draws talent from all over to one central location, but regardless of where you went at that time, the need for school police was considerably less than it is today. Consider Underwood High, where I teach. As of last count, Underwood had nine police officers on staff, who are expected to contain the madness that threatens to consume the school. Fights in the lunchroom, attempts to smuggle in drugs or weapons, disruption in class, regardless of the exact manifestation of school-wide chaos, the administration relies heavily on the school police to deal with it.
Unfortunately, it is entirely too easy for reliance to turn into overreliance and a week ago last Thursday, things finally reached the tipping point. It was a particularly crazy day. Fights had broken out in the cafeteria. Students were roaming the halls. And apparently two honors students physically assaulted a school police officer who refused to let them leave the building, proving once again the fine distinction between wisdom and intelligence. The following day, five officers called out sick and the school sergeant was downtown handling another case.
With the school police's manpower diminished by 67%, the administration called all available support staff downstairs to help get students up to their homerooms. Perhaps the wide array of unfamiliar faces provided students with a clue that something odd was going on so far as security was concerned. Regardless of how they found out, the student body figured out long before the teaching staff did that the school was especially devoid of uniformed law enforcement personnel and the rest of the day was even crazier than before. During my planning period, students were in the hallway throwing things at each other and yelling loudly. Fights broke out all over the building and the my principal was running around the building desperately trying to hold things together.
By the end of the day, the only thing any of the teachers could feel was exhausted relief. But for those officers who did show up to work, it was time for a mixture of contempt and anger...at the students, at the administration, and perhaps most of all at their colleagues who they felt acted unprofessionally through their protest. I base this generalization on a conversation I had with one of these officers the following weekend who argued that the administration should do something to punish the officers who had left the school so vulnerable for the sake of their protest.
The question of how best to divide responsibilities so far as classroom and schoolwide climate management are concerned is a complex one, and certainly not one for which I consider myself qualified to provide a definitive answer. At the same time however, I can see both sides of the argument so far as the school police situation and no semblance of a solution in sight. It appears that the administration has a new plan or two up its sleeve that will hopefully lighten the load off the police, but knowing how inconsistent they have been in the past, I hold out very little hope for their success.
Of course I've been proven wrong before. So who knows?
My father, after reading some of the incidents on this blog, will sometimes tell me stories about how different going to school was back when he was in high school here in the city. Back then, he tells me, there was only one police officer in the building and his role was relatively marginalized. Administrators were able to handle the vast majority of disciplinary problems.
Now granted, the school where he went was (and still is) one of the top academic schools around, a magnet which inexorably draws talent from all over to one central location, but regardless of where you went at that time, the need for school police was considerably less than it is today. Consider Underwood High, where I teach. As of last count, Underwood had nine police officers on staff, who are expected to contain the madness that threatens to consume the school. Fights in the lunchroom, attempts to smuggle in drugs or weapons, disruption in class, regardless of the exact manifestation of school-wide chaos, the administration relies heavily on the school police to deal with it.
Unfortunately, it is entirely too easy for reliance to turn into overreliance and a week ago last Thursday, things finally reached the tipping point. It was a particularly crazy day. Fights had broken out in the cafeteria. Students were roaming the halls. And apparently two honors students physically assaulted a school police officer who refused to let them leave the building, proving once again the fine distinction between wisdom and intelligence. The following day, five officers called out sick and the school sergeant was downtown handling another case.
With the school police's manpower diminished by 67%, the administration called all available support staff downstairs to help get students up to their homerooms. Perhaps the wide array of unfamiliar faces provided students with a clue that something odd was going on so far as security was concerned. Regardless of how they found out, the student body figured out long before the teaching staff did that the school was especially devoid of uniformed law enforcement personnel and the rest of the day was even crazier than before. During my planning period, students were in the hallway throwing things at each other and yelling loudly. Fights broke out all over the building and the my principal was running around the building desperately trying to hold things together.
By the end of the day, the only thing any of the teachers could feel was exhausted relief. But for those officers who did show up to work, it was time for a mixture of contempt and anger...at the students, at the administration, and perhaps most of all at their colleagues who they felt acted unprofessionally through their protest. I base this generalization on a conversation I had with one of these officers the following weekend who argued that the administration should do something to punish the officers who had left the school so vulnerable for the sake of their protest.
The question of how best to divide responsibilities so far as classroom and schoolwide climate management are concerned is a complex one, and certainly not one for which I consider myself qualified to provide a definitive answer. At the same time however, I can see both sides of the argument so far as the school police situation and no semblance of a solution in sight. It appears that the administration has a new plan or two up its sleeve that will hopefully lighten the load off the police, but knowing how inconsistent they have been in the past, I hold out very little hope for their success.
Of course I've been proven wrong before. So who knows?
