Recently, some 500 students walked out of one of Los Angeles’ best known high schools to protest inadequate security at school. The walkout took place the day after two students were stabbed at John Marshall High School in Los Feliz, which reportedly followed another on-campus assault.
This is not what high school pressure should be about. The question, and it is a question, is what to do about it.
On one side of the debate are proponents of more police in school, along with more security in the form of cameras, fencing and other target hardening.
On the other side are the teachers unions, United Teachers Los Angeles, the ACLU and other public interest groups who wrote to the superintendent last month opposing efforts to add more school police on the grounds that they create a climate of distrust and of fear.
Which side are you on?
I understand that there are many kids who don’t see the police as their friends or their family’s friends. And that is especially true in inner-city high schools with disproportionate numbers of poor kids, many of them Black and Hispanic.
But there is, sadly, a reason for that which does not put all the blame on racial profiling, true as that is as well.
The most dangerous schools are not in the suburbs. Fights take place everywhere, but they are more likely, and more likely to be deadly, when you add gangs and drugs to the mix, which is what you find in many inner-city schools.
Shouldn’t the police be focused on the most dangerous schools, on gang members and not band members?
And if we accept security without a climate of fear, school police do not create the climate of fear in schools today. Reality does. National tragedies like the Uvalde shooting mixed with local horrors including kids overdosing as well as getting stabbed leave parents everywhere worried, and none more worried than those who go to schools where kids bring weapons and drugs with them.
Do you do random searches of lockers and backpacks for weapons and drugs? Neither are allowed on school property. When you walk into any courthouse today, you are screened. Shouldn’t schools be just as safe, particularly those in high-crime areas? If we can screen for COVID, why not for other public health threats?
How do you balance one student’s expectation of privacy with her fellow student’s expectation of security? Should students really expect privacy when they come to school, even if their parents go through screeners routinely when they go to work?
There are too many questions, and the answers don’t really satisfy. When I was a kid, it never occurred to me to be afraid of violence at school. Kids have enough to worry about; they should be focused on learning, not on how they will defend themselves.
Certainly, a society that cruelly ignores mental health in our midst is likely also paying short shrift to the mental health needs of kids. Expecting police officers to function as social workers is unfair to everyone. Nor is it the job of teachers: They are there to teach, not to police or to cure mental illness. The one thing parent groups and civil libertarians and teachers unions all agree on is more attention to the mental health needs of students. Because few things are as frustrating as knowing a student is in trouble and having no resources at hand for help. That happens every day.
In the meantime, I stand with those arguing for more, and better-trained, school police. We shouldn’t need them. But we do.
