“This comes down to one thing for me,” said Anthony Giordano, a recent mayoral appointee to the panel, also known as the PEP. But other panel members spoke up in favor of voting on the proposal Wednesday, citing its urgency. The chancellor said he sympathized with the concerns of panel members who wanted more specifics and said he wouldn’t mind tabling the vote if necessary. “That’s what this was an attempt to try to deal with,” he said. She also noted that school safety agents would not use the system to prevent parents from visiting the building to talk with school leaders.īanks indicated that the proposal was an attempt to prevent school shootings. Schools will not be expected to keep the main entrance locked during arrival and dismissal, or during emergency situations or drills, according to Jenna Lyle, an education department spokesperson. “You want to be responsive, and you want to have some sort of cost-effective approach - and at the same time not do something that will harm our communities or make people feel iced out.”Ĭity officials shared some details about the policy.
“There are some people pushing really hard for some sort of safety measures,” panel member Kaliris Salas-Ramirez told Chalkbeat prior to the vote. There are also downsides, including financial resources that could be spent elsewhere and the message it may send to visitors that they are not as welcome on campus. “If the issues are happening around our schools, I have questions about whether this system of locking our doors will actually do anything to address that issue.” An attempt at preventing school shootingsĮducation department officials declined to offer any examples of dangerous situations that would be prevented by the new buzzers and video intercoms, and much remains uncertain about how they will be implemented in practice, including the timeline for upgrading buildings. “I want to make sure the solutions we’re providing actually solve for the issues we’re having,” said Tom Sheppard, a parent-elected panel member from the Bronx. Several members also pointed out that many of the most concerning violence targeting youth has taken place outside of schools. But some experts said there is little rigorous evidence about whether those measures are effective, a point echoed by some panel members Wednesday night who said they wanted more information before making a decision. School districts across the country have steadily “hardened” their campuses in recent years, with the vast majority of schools reporting that they control access to buildings, meaning that they are locked or monitored. The proposal was included in the mayor’s preliminary budget last month, which indicated the building upgrades will cost about $78 million total.
Locking entrances during the day has been a major priority of schools Chancellor David Banks, who has emphasized the need for new safety measures in the wake of last year’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and a spate of other violent incidents near school buildings that have claimed the lives of young people in New York City.
But a larger contingent of panel members, including all of the mayoral appointees present at the meeting, rejected that idea and pushed the proposal through Wednesday night, where it passed handily. Those panel members - all of whom were appointed by borough presidents or parent leaders - pushed to table the contract vote for another month to gather more information. The vote came after some panel members protested that they didn’t have enough information yet to evaluate the effectiveness of the initiative or potential downsides. that would equip schools with video equipment and buzzers monitored by school safety agents.
#Nyc lockdown measures free#
Subscribe to our free New York newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.Ī contentious proposal to lock the front entrances of New York City public school buildings won approval Wednesday evening by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, a move that represents one of the biggest school security changes in recent years.Īfter a vigorous debate, the panel, whose majority is appointed by the mayor, greenlit a $43 million contract with Symbrant Technologies, Inc. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America.
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