It was the beginning of my second year at a new public high school in New York City. With its dark brick facade and barbed wire on the roof, my school already resembled a small prison—and the staff had just installed several metal detectors at the main entrance.
As my classmates reluctantly filed through security in tight lines all the way to the street, I asked them why. One of the administrators said, “Because it keeps everyone safe.”
This high school was predominantly black, and I knew what that meant: We students were perceived as a threat – and we were being punished for something we hadn’t done.
Situations like these are a reality for too many students in the United States. Black middle and high school students are three times more likely than white students to attend a school that has more security staff than mental health staff. And data consistently shows disparities in school discipline practices. Black students, for example, are 2.2 times more likely to be disciplined for school-related incidents than white students.
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At the same time, the increasing number of school shootings in our country has sparked an intense debate about how best to ensure student safety. There is currently a major push to put more police in schools to create an illusion of safety.
In my view, more police presence is not the solution. More safety in schools does not require more police presence. Instead, schools need more structured support, such as access to mental health resources and counseling.
Increased police presence in schools is intended to prevent and deter active violence, but it can be shockingly ineffective, as was the case in the Uvalde school shooting, when police not only responded late but also failed to follow safety protocols. The Uvalde disaster highlighted the systemic challenges of using police in schools to ensure safety, including communication problems between a school district and the police.
Although research shows that increased physical security measures do not actually contribute to a safe and inclusive learning environment, U.S. schools spend over three billion dollars each year on security services and products, including surveillance cameras, metal detectors, and armed guards or police officers, also known as school resource officers (SROs).
Worryingly, SROs are more commonly deployed in schools with high populations of black and Latino students. The SROs who work in such schools are more likely to believe that the students themselves are the greatest threat, while those in white-majority schools are more likely to cite external threats. One study found that increased police presence in schools significantly worsened the academic performance of black boys, decreasing their graduation and college attendance rates.
Related: EVIDENCE POINTS: Four things a mountain of school disciplinary records taught us
This increased surveillance of schools comes at a time when lawmakers are changing laws to subject young people, particularly black and Latino students and students from low-income families who are already over-policed, to increasingly harsh punishments. This trend includes the anti-crime law in Washington, DC, and a series of anti-crime bills in Louisiana.
The new measures reverse some recent progress: After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, many school districts listened to families and students and withdrew police from schools amid nationwide protests against law enforcement.
But eliminating SROs wasn’t enough. Some students who returned to school after the pandemic struggled to readjust—a reflection of losses from the pandemic, racial inequality, discrimination, mental health issues, the loss or illness of family members or caregivers, and more. School districts should also have adopted the practices proven to lead to safer schools, such as considering the voices and needs of students and families when crafting inclusive school policies, investing in restorative practices and social and emotional learning efforts, hiring and training culturally responsive school counselors or educators, and creating multi-tiered support systems.
After the pandemic, teachers lacked the resources needed to provide students with the care they needed, especially mental health support. That’s why school districts are now bringing school resource officers back on board – and that’s a mistake.
Effective approaches to school safety can give students a strong sense of belonging and help them manage conflict appropriately—before it escalates into violence. To truly keep students safe, federal and state policymakers and school principals should advocate for policies that promote students’ physical and mental well-being and consider proposals that provide federal funding to states and schools that work to reduce harmful disciplinary practices.
As part of this effort, they should support the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act and the Ending PUSHOUT Act, which would reduce federal funding for police deployment in schools.
Now is the perfect time for school leaders to rethink their disciplinary policies and create a safe and welcoming school climate. School shootings are horrifying, but the right answer is not more police and metal detectors, especially in majority-black schools that are already heavily criminalized.
Students should not look back on their middle and high school years as I did and associate images of prison with their academic development. All students deserve an education in an inclusive, nurturing environment where they are not only safe, but also able to learn and thrive.
Manny Zapata is a former teacher and now a doctoral student and policy and research intern at EdTrust, where he focuses on social, emotional and academic development.
This story about safer schools was produced by The Hechinger Reporta nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Subscribe to Hechinger’s Weekly newsletter.
