Students packed the lobby of Chicago Public Schools headquarters Thursday to deliver a critical report on school discipline policies that contends the district spends more than 14 times as much on school security as it does on student counseling.
The report, produced by Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, a student-led “education justice” advocacy group, claims that CPS’ approach to discipline and disproportionate security and guidance budgets hurts graduation rates and deprives the cash-strapped district of revenue.
“Even with all the security in our schools, students don’t feel safer,” said O’Sha Dancy, a rising sophomore at Dyett High School. “We are not in a prison.”
The report is the result of a year-long effort in which VOYCE members and The Advancement Project, a civil rights organization, studied discipline policies at schools around the country and conducted a cost-analysis of the CPS budget to determine how much was being spent on security and police services in schools. Among the findings is that the district paid $51.4 million for school security guards in Fiscal Year 2011 compared to $3.5 million for college and career counselors.
“I feel like way too much money is being spent on having police officers in every school,” said Jasmine Sarmiento, a student at Kelvyn Park High School and core leader for VOYCE.
Last month, CPS officials said the district had been substantially under-paying the Chicago Police Department for in-school support and updated its budget deficit projection to include a $70 million reimbursement to the police. Police currently serve 96 high schools at a cost of $8 million per year, which breaks down to roughly $80,000 per school. Chief Operating Officer Tim Cawley said that amount has “not been close” to adequate and the sum should be closer to $250,000 per school. The VOYCE report does not include those recently added costs.
Dancy, the rising sophomore, said there are eight security guards but only two counselors at his school. He said it’s hard to form a relationship with counselors because the student-counselor ratio is so high and students are required to switch counselors as juniors.
The Office of Safety and Security has a $67 million budget and 1,086 full-time employees, according to the report and the district’s budget figures, while the Office of Teaching and Learning has a budget of $800,000 and eight full-time employees.
VOYCE leaders also spoke out against the “zero tolerance” discipline policy in place at many CPS schools.
The policy, said Dave McEvers, who works with students in VOYCE, is like “using a 50-caliber gun for a bow-and-arrow crime.”
Though the district formally eased its discipline policy in 2007, many schools continue to take a zero-tolerance approach to punishment, reflexively resorting to suspensions and expulsions according to VOYCE and High HOPES, another organization that has worked to overhaul CPS’ discipline policy.
CPS officials said expulsion rates have declined by more than 28 percent over the past two years. Officials also said they expect suspensions to be down, though they did not provide any current figures.
In an e-mailed statement, CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said “the Student Code of Conduct is reviewed every year and CPS has been working on proposed changes that encourage positive student behavior and ensures that interventions and consequences for the least severe violations are instructive and corrective.”
Carroll said new CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard is committed to finding ways to reduce suspensions in Chicago.
Brizard substantially lowered the number of suspensions during his nearly three-and-a-half years running the Rochester, N.Y. public school system, though his methods were criticized. Brizard switched all short-term suspensions from out-of-school punishments to in-school punishments, preventing students from falling behind. Critics said the drop in suspensions did not adequately address student behavioral problems.
“At the start, his goal was to lower the numbers, which we all agree with,” Jonathan Hickey, treasurer of the Rochester Teachers Association, told the Chicago News Cooperative in May. “But the biggest lacking piece was any kind of support for the kids.”
CPS officials said VOYCE’s request to meet with Brizard and other district leaders was “given to staff.”