with individuals. When teachers are available, it is usually by appointment and for a very limited time. This often results in a feeling of alienation on the part of the student, which makes the school a likely target for student unrest.

One way to increase teacher involvement might be through a training course such as the one described in a large Western city. Teachers had formerly regarded each defiant remark of flouting of authority as a personal affront. They felt punitive action was required in order to avoid showing signs of weakness. After a series of mock demonstrations, participants not only became desensitized and learned alternative methods of handling confrontation, but they also began to reconsider the previously unalterable and unsuitable curriculum and to take a hard look at some of their teaching methods. After a time, some of the teachers discovered that they could teach differently without loss of classroom control. Several teachers voiced satisfaction about beginning to feel competant and effective again as teachers as their efforts began to pay off.

B. ROLE OF THE CUSTODIAL STAFF

The custodial and maintenance staff frequently are in a position to know more about what is going on in a school than anyone else. As a result, these personnel, who often have a special feeeling of pride in "their" school, can be the first line of defense against bombing, breaking-and-entering, assaults and intrusions. In many cases, they are important sources of information about future trouble.

The Panel recommends that custodial and maintenance staff be given an active role in the school safety program.

In order to prepare them to serve in a safety function, the Student Service personnel should develop a brief program to train this custodial staff in the general techniques and procedures for:

1. Detecting bombs and reporting suspicious objects;

2. Scrutinizing intruders and suspicious individuals without confronting them;

3. Determining physical evidence of unauthorized entry into school premises;

4. Preserving physical evidence of felony behavior;

5. Watching for drug traffic;

6. Deciding when and how a physical change in the school premises would affect future school safety plans and requirements;

7. Reporting immediate physical dangers on the premises;

8. Sensing any unusual mood in the student body;

9. Performing emergency repairs to critical school emergency systems;

10. Referring all parent, community, or mass media inquiries about incidents to appropriate officials;

11. Using community contacts to keep informed about incidents in the school;

12. Maintaining the confidentiality of their activities.

The Panel recommends that the School Safety office develop a training course to make custodial staff aware of the safety-related features of their job.

C. ROLE OF STUDENTS

Those students who do come to school, who are not truant, mass every hour in the crowded hallways, struggle up or down the right staircase to reach classes many floors above or below, and congregate by cliques in the jammed lunchroom where there is noise, heat, bad food, and no ability to get away from people. After circulating each day in this physical and social environment, the students go "home." In probably 5 to 10 percent of all cases, this means no home at all, but a semi-nomadic drifting in the streets. In 25 to 50 percent of all cases, there is an extended family unit in which one or both parents are missing. Thus many live a life that is manic, crowded, tense, and full of what they themselves perceive as difficult problems. That these tensions erupt into disturbances in the school is hardly surprising-and unfortunately the schools are inadequately equipped to soothe these real life situations.

If the key to urban school safety lies in effectively mobilizing those who use the school. then the strategy for enlisting students and their organizations through which loyalty, power, and action are influenced and allocated must emerge from the School Safety Committee and School Safety Plan, in which students must be actively involved.

Hopefully, one result of student participation on the Committee and in drawing up the Plan will be an understanding of their need to take some of the general responsibilities of citizenship upon themselves, and to step out of the isolation that characterizes the relationship of most inner city dwellers to civic life.

The decision to form student patrols or to designate Student Service Aides as support for the Student Service Officers can only succeed if the initiative comes from the students themselves. This will mean that the channels of communication have built an atmosphere of trust between students and the administration. Where such an atmosphere exists, Student Service Aides may be the single best solution to the safety problem.

Ideally, all safety should rest in the hands of members of the regular school community-students, teachers and administration; no special safety personnel or educational funds should have to be devoted to this problem. Taking steps to legitimize what these students do, and taking whatever additional steps that are possible to reduce peer group and community pressures, are absolutely critical in any attempt to establish a student safety patrol. Only a careful assessment of the total school situation by the Safety Committee can determine whether it is feasible to try to take these steps. For instance, community leaders should probably be involved at all stages of the planning process which culminates in establishing the patrol since the community attitude may affect student attitude. The Panel recommends that students play an active role in the safety program if the students themselves opt to do so through their representation on the School Safety Committee.

Where a school has not encouraged or permitted student rapping or other means for voicing student concerns, efforts to enroll Student Service Aides will be seen by many students as efforts to coopt students by the school administration. It is particularly important that enough student participants be chosen so that the student safety group does not become an isolated, tiny minority in the school and vulnerable for that reason. Any school safety program which makes substantial use of the students themselves must be prepared to cope directly with childhood and adolescent peer group pressures against informing on friends.

Once the decision to use students in the safety program has been made, specific steps should be taken to minimize adverse peer group pressures on the group of Student Safety Aides, such as:

-carefully limiting their role
-prohibiting any use of violence

outlining clear instructions so that persistent trouble can be quickly referred to the proper authority

-training student safety personnel carefully before they try to do their job. If students are to be used as Student Service Aides, they need formal training. This training, which might supplement or replace their current civics course work, might provide a new and more relevant type of citizenship training at the high school level. Among the topics and emphasis which might be included in a training program, the following appear crucial:

1. Sensitization to the kinds of personal conflicts and stresses participants will experience as they discharge school safety responsibilities. This sensitization should be specifically directed to deal with peer group pressure problems, and it should emphasize the limits on the activities of participants;

2. Formal instruction and rehearsal in those parts of the School Safety Plan and general operating procedures which will influence the actions of participants, and to which participants will make contributions through their actions;

3. Orientation to the school as a community and to the problems of building a school community;

4. Practice in working jointly with school and police officials under crisis conditions;

5. Analysis of the potential emergency situations which participants may confront;

6. Some formal academic instruction in human relations, conflict and crisis management, and community government institutions.

The Panel recommends that a training program for Student Service Aides be developed.

Several school security directors across the country suggested to the study staff that all students, not only those involved in the safety program, attend a safety-related course which would include information on students' rights

and responsibilities; the school's rights; when a policeman or school safety officer may arrest them; what may happen to them if they are arrested; and what are the probably long-range implications of arrest for participating (a) in a criminal act or (b) in a demonstration. Other security directors report that the shock effect of a visit to local jail or even a day spent in court has served to make certain students less prone to be troublemakers.

Staff interviews revealed that students themselves feel that the level of violence in the schools would be reduced if more counseling help were available, if the curriculum were more flexible, if the teachers were more sensitive to student needs, if more alternate programs were offered, and if the "system" were more responsive. One student reported writing four letters to various school, City, and Board of Education officials, none of which were even acknowledged after two months. The primary complaint among students was that teachers gave students the minimum hours and effort and failed to update their teaching approach to meet the needs of students in the '70's.

D. ROLE OF PARENTS AND THE COMMUNITY

The realities of the community, it groups, needs and tensions must be recognized and its strengths utilized to increase building and personal safety. Thus, it is essential that the School Safety Plan involve parents and the community, and students as well. Such involvement will develop in them the proprietary interest in the school which is its best protection. The student or neighbor who stops the vandal from harming "my" school is far more effective than any roving patrol. In order to find ways to inform and involve as many parents and local adults as possible in the life of the school, the administration must become aware of the forces, both established and changing, which play significant roles in the life of the community. Only through such awareness can community leadership be counted on to work for the school and its safety rather than to attack it.

The Panel recommends that the maximum possible number of parents and other persons from the community be brought into the school as school aides, and to serve as members of the School Safety Committee.

The School Safety Committee represents an initial step toward bringing these groups into the planning and execution of a safety program. Hopefully, the leaders who sit on this committee will spread the word among their formal and informal constituencies and interest in the school and its safety problems will grow.

It is clear that enlisting community participation will reflect many dynamic forces which are working to redefine the meaning of the school in local communities. School officials must understand that in maintaining continuing coordination and control of all elements of their security program, they are themselves attempting to influence a process of community-building at several levels. Once rapport has been established and the School Safety Committee has the active participation of its community members, care must be taken to guard against "leaks" of information or rumors on sensitive subjects. In an atmosphere of trust, the Safety Committee members can provide critical intelligence and can suggest concrete tactical approaches which would never otherwise be part of the mainstream of planning in the school. At a time when community persons increasingly "control the action," this insight and information is indispensable in the safety planning process.

If Committee participants have been carefully chosen and trained, and if they have standing among the community constituencies from which they come, then there may be much they can do to "cool it." On the other hand, they should never be involved in physical attempts to break up a disturbance. Given proper organization and numbers, their mere presence may in some situations be a controlling influence on roving bands of truant youths who come in to disrupt the school.

Even with maximum community support, police will be needed in certain specific security situations. But the key to reducing many safety incidents, particularly at the secondary level, rests in understanding how the schools are changing as communities and as organizational forms, and how the members of these communities can be committed to and involved in supporting and protecting their school.

E. ROLE OF POLICE

To the degree that a school becomes a village which must be patrolled by uniformed constabulary in order to provide safety from physical harm to students and staff, it has ceased being a school which reflects not only New York City's but America's historic values of public education. Thus, the job is to make school safety essentially an educational process rather than to consider it a police function. However, it must be recognized that there are times when police should handle police functions in a school.

Police never surrender their legal rights and responsibilities when entering the school community but they do function, at least temporarily, as members of a school community, and their presence in schools must be understood from that point of view. The entry of police into a school, for example, is at the discretion of the principal unless there is some clear and obvious danger requiring direct police action. A School Safety Plan which is oriented to the school community recognizes that the police role should be limited to those missions for which the police are professionally trained and legally responsible. Police are members of and participants in a total plan, in which they have specific, limited missions at definable times.

One widespread response to the security crises which have occurred in the nations' schools has been the demand for more police in the schools. This demand is likely to be vigorously asserted by some parents, the UFT, and some administrators following every major incident. Indeed, approximately 250 uniformed police were on duty in New York City schools in 1971–1972; some will continue to be there during the foreseeable future. This is not considered desirable either by the police or by the schools. However, Board of Education personnel should not be performing strictly police functions any more than the police should be used to enforce school discipline.

In fact, as a result of the new school safety program announced in August, the Police Department has withdrawn many of the patrolmen who had regularly been assigned to the schools. The Panel, while recognizing the shortage of police, views this as an unfortunate development which may undermine the effectiveness of the new program. While safety personnel in the schools have been upgraded, their numbers have not increased greatly and they have not yet had the experience which will assure that they can provide safety, particularly in the most volatile schools which is where the majority of police had been assigned. The Panel, therefore, urges the Board of Education to request the reassignment of police to the schools until such time as the principals and the local precinct commander agree that continued police presence is no longer necessary.

Many police problems can be resolved on the local level between school and precinct. Every school principal is acquainted with the local commander and most principals describe excellent relationships between the school and the police. Where they are not already established, the Panel recommends that regular meetings be held with the precinct commander, the principal, the staff member in charge of safety, the narcotics coordinator, and the custodian.

In addition to their law-and-order function, police frequently function in a guidance and pedagogical role in the schools. In many schools, students turn to the policemen for help with incipient or actual criminal activities. This police role has been formalized in two Community School Districts which now have a pilot Police-Liaison program. Originating in Flint, Michigan, this program has trained New York police who are assigned to junior high schools on a full-time basis and who visit the elementary schools to serve as a resource. They are not responsible for patrolling but enter each classroom and have guidance hours available. This approach has enhanced the police image in many communities and has provided youngsters with informed help on police-type problems.

VIII. SAFETY OFFICE AND PERSONNEL

The Interim Report of this Panel, submitted in June to the Chancellor and the Mayor's Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, dealt almost exclusively with the immediate need for safety personnel in the schools when they opened in September.

Following is a summary of the recommendations in that report and a description of the action taken by the Board of Education thus far. The Panel then goes on to make further recommendations to strengthen the safety staff.

1. Responsibility for the application of the guidelines designed to meet the designated objectives should be delegated by the Chancellor to an Administrator for School Safety whose sole responsibility would be to administer the safety program.

This recommendation was implemented on July 27 with the appointment of Eldridge Waith, former Assistant Chief Inspector of the New York City Police Department and Commissioner of Public Safety in the Virgin Islands. Mr. Waith is in charge of the safety personnel assigned during school hours.

2. Specialized personnel should be assigned in the schools to work in the safety program. It is not desirable to build a paramilitary force which would have a tendency to become institutionalized and thus might persist long after the societal conditions which called it into being have disappeared. Personnel should, therefore, be selected for a finite period and the program should have built-in opportunities for them to move up either in the school system or into roles in the City. Personnel to be selected should include:

a. Student Service Officers-in the number to be determined by the Administrator for School Safety in consultation with high school principals and District Superintendents. Present security guards who are requested by a principal should be rehired; others should be selected by the principal from among those persons known in and to the school community.

b. Student Service Coordinators—twenty professionals—former teachers, lawyers, policemen, etc.—to serve in teams of two as sources of information, advice, supervision, and emergency aid. They would provide a continuing liaison between the Central Board and the high schools and Community Districts on matters of safety.

Approximately 175 of the previous security guards plus 125 new recruits are now serving as Student Service Officers in the 96 high schools. In addition, about 115 guards have been employed in the junior high schools by the 31 Community School Districts. No guards have been assigned to elementary schools by the local Districts but they are clearly needed.

New Student Service Officers are high school graduates although former guards have been retained and are encouraged to get high school equivalency diplomas. Prior to this there have been no formal procedures or criteria for recruitment and selection of security personnel.

The role of the Student Service Officers is unlike that of the former security guards employed in the schools in that the emphasis is on understanding and forewarning of problems rather than primarily on punishment for infractions; that is, the Officers should be more skillful in community relations and people management than the stereotypical security guard.

The job description for Student Service Officers stresses their contribution to the educational mission of the school, their role as supportive of teachers and other staff, and their ability to get along with students. The principal, assistant principal, or student dean determines the tasks to be performed by each Officer. The assignment involves the identification and establishment of a relationship with as many students as possible. Hopefully this will enable the Officer to build a cadre of student aides. However, he must not become so friendly that he is unwilling or unable to stop misconduct on the part of a student/friend.

In addition, there are now 22 Student Service Coordinators. Among them are several community leaders, former police and former teachers. Four are former security guards who, while they do not have the requisite college degree, have demonstrated strong leadership qualities and a high degree of rapport with the students and Student Service Officers.

Coordinators should have a broad spectrum of talent in communications, insight into personal and group dynamics, a keen interest in community relations, and training in mediation techniques. They are expected to develop rapport with members of the school staff, parents and other community leaders, the local police, and students representing the variety of backgrounds within the school register. Among their assignments are:

... Providing continuing liaison between several high schools and Community Districts and the Board of Education. They perform the same function for the Chancellor as the Mayor's Education Task Force does for the Mayor.