Educators are demanding the city provide more guards and weapons scanners to make schools safer and combat “persistent” delays — which can lead to fights and poor attendance.
More than 120 principals, deans, union leaders and other staffers from 84 schools across four boroughs signed onto a letter to officials including City Council members, schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos and Department of Education security director Mark Rampersant Friday.
“Persistent delays at the beginning of the school day routinely undermine our efforts to create safe, welcoming, and academically challenging environments,” they wrote.
“Long lines, whether during morning entry or after drills, increase frustration among students, heightening safety risks such as line-cutting and student conflicts,” it continued.
The wait times also cause students to arrive late or miss class, which can impact academic performance, sports eligibility and post-secondary opportunities. It also hinders kids from making it in time for free breakfast programs.
The Theodore Roosevelt Educational Campus (TREC), which houses six high schools in the Bronx, has only three stations that scan 150 kids every 10 minutes, administrators said.
On Friday alone, there were only six safety agents on the campus, which used to have 18.
“To have enough agents at the entry points means that we have no agents on the perimeter of the building during the morning arrival … and we know that their presence protects students,” one TREC principal told The Post.
“About every six weeks a machine will malfunction and we don’t have backups so we’re down to two entryways for 2,700 students,” one TREC principal told The Post.
A machine failure at the Walton Campus in the Bronx, which houses five high schools, led to doubled wait times in October, according to the letter.
The Lehman Campus on East Tremont Avenue, which houses six schools and more than 4,000 students, received more than 40 calls in one hour regarding recent delays.
Schools have difficulty recruiting students because of known entry delays, the employees said.
“Our four-year graduation rate has been over 95% for several years,” the Bronx principal said. “But when parents come to the school, the first thing they talk about is the entry process.”
There aren’t enough school safety agents to operate schools’ scanning stations — the city cut agent classes in half amid budget cuts last year — forcing faculty to perform their duties.
Administrators say the City Council should lead the charge to incentivize people to become school safety agents, and retain them, the Bronx principal said.
“Our [Council of School Supervisors & Administrators] safety agenda every month asks the city for agents, agents, agents,” a Washington Heights principal told The Post. “But the city pays them less than McDonald’s and it’s a much tougher job.”
A Brooklyn principal lamented, “The mayor and chancellor do not have a plan to provide a safe environment for our 900,000 students and 150,000 staff. We have a shortage of 2,000 safety agents and there are no SSA academy classes to hire more.”
School safety agents seized 278 weapons including guns and knives and 3,695 other dangerous instruments like pepper spray and box cutters last school year.
“Despite numerous prior communications, ongoing concerns from parents and guardians, and several meetings with NYCPS and NYPD officials, these issues remain unresolved,” the letter stated.
The DOE did not respond to inquiries from The Post.
