Local 237 President Carl Haynes told members of the City Council at a hearing on school safety that the full extent of the problem of violence in the city’s schools could not accurately be determined because the Department of Education does not report individual incidents.

The Local president testified in City Hall Feb. 27 at a joint hearing of the Council’s Public Safety and Education Committees. The lawmakers are looking into the underlying causes of school crime to develop strategic interventions to combat violence and disruptive behavior.

Haynes noted that the Education Department makes public only Police Department incident rates per 1,000 students.

“Based on 2001 student enrollment figures, we can extrapolate that there were 5,527 ‘incidents,’ but since these are only broken down as ‘major crime’ or ‘other,’ without definition, the public has no way of knowing how many weapons were confiscated, or how many assaults occurred in a school,” Haynes asserted.

The union official told the city lawmakers that many school safety agents, whom the Local represents, have been instructed by supervisors not to report violent incidents at their schools because such information might reflect poorly on the school.

“The problem is exacerbated by a chain of command that can be unclear and leaves the agent in an awkward position of deciding whether he or she must answer to the school or the Police Department,” Haynes contended.

In addition to this confusion, Haynes said, a survey of school safety agents made by the Local determined the following: