It was the start of my sophomore year at a new public high school in New York City. With its dark brick exterior and barbed wire on the roof, my school already resembled a small prison — and staff had just installed several metal detectors at the front entrance.
As my classmates begrudgingly walked through security in packed lines stretching out to the street, I asked why. One of the administrators said, “Because it will keep everyone safe.”
This was a majority-Black high school, and I knew what that meant: We, the students, were perceived to be a threat — and we were being punished for something we didn’t do.
Situations like this are the reality for too many students across the United States. Black middle and high school students are over three times more likely than white students to attend a school with more security staff than mental health personnel. And data has consistently shown disparities in school discipline practices. Black students, for example, are 2.2 times more likely to be referred for disciplinary action than white students for school-related incidents.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.
Meanwhile, the rising number of school shootings in our country has sparked an intense debate on how to best keep students safe. There’s a big push for more police in schools right now to provide an illusion of safety.
In my view, more law enforcement is not the answer. School safety doesn’t require more policing. Instead, schools need more structured support, such as access to mental health and counseling resources.
Increased police presence in schools is intended both to prevent and to disrupt active violence. But it can be woefully ineffective, as was the case during the Uvalde school shootings, when police not only delayed their response but also failed to adhere to safety protocols. The Uvalde disaster displayed the systemic challenges of using police in schools to create safety, including communication issues between a school district and law enforcement.
Yet despite research showing that increased physical security measures do not actually foster safe and inclusive learning environments, U.S. schools spend over $3 billion each year on security services and products, including surveillance cameras, metal detectors and armed guards or police, also known as school resource officers (SROs).
Disturbingly, SROs are more likely to be placed in schools with a high percentage of Black and Latino students, and the SROs who work in such schools are more likely to believe that the students themselves are the biggest threat, while those in white-majority schools are more likely to cite external threats. One study found that increased exposure to police in schools significantly reduced the educational performance of Black boys and lowered their graduation and college attendance rates.
Related: PROOF POINTS: Four things a mountain of school discipline records taught us
This extra policing of schools comes at a time when legislators are changing laws to subject young people, particularly Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds who are already overpoliced, to increasingly harsher criminal penalties. This trend includes Washington, D.C.’s anticrime bill and Louisiana’s slew of tough-on-crime bills.
The new measures reverse some recent progress: After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, many school districts listened to families and students and removed police from schools amid national protests about law enforcement.
But removing SROs wasn’t enough. Some students returning to school after the pandemic exhibited difficulty readjusting — a manifestation of pandemic loss, racial inequality, discrimination, mental health issues, loss or sickness of family members or caregivers and more. School districts should also have added the kinds of practices that are proven to create safer schools, such as including the voices and needs of students and families in the crafting of inclusive school policies, investing in restorative practices and social and emotional learning efforts, hiring and training culturally responsive school counselors or educators and creating multitiered systems of support.
After the pandemic, teachers didn’t have the resources essential to providing the care that students needed, most notably mental health support. As a result, school districts are now bringing school resource officers back, and it’s a mistake.
Effective approaches to school safety can give students a strong sense of belonging and support in handling conflicts appropriately — before they escalate to violence. To truly keep students safe, federal and state policymakers and school principals should champion policies that support students’ physical and mental well-being and consider proposals that provide federal funds to states and schools committed to reducing 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 divert federal funding away from placing police in schools.
Now is an ideal time for school leaders to rethink their discipline policies and create a safe and welcoming school climate. School shootings are terrifying, but the correct response isn’t more police and metal detectors, especially in majority-Black schools that are already hyper-criminalized.
Students should not have to look back on their middle and high school years, as I do, and associate images of prison with their educational development. All students deserve an education in an inclusive, nurturing environment where they are not only safe, but can also learn and thrive.
Manny Zapata is a former teacher and is now a Ph.D. student and a policy and research intern at EdTrust, working on social, emotional and academic development.
This story about safer schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.