A recent survey of New York City high schools showed that at more than half the schools, safety agents are experiencing radio equipment failures, including dead spots, poor quality radios, or not enough radios.

The survey, released March 16, was conducted by Congressman Anthony D. Weiner (D-Queens & Brooklyn), who also announced plans to seek $2 million in federal funds to help the city build a new and more extensive network of radio repeaters for school safety radios. Weiner also plans to seek $500,000 in federal funds to secure 500 new radios.

Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s new school safety plan, in effect since January 5, the survey of 250 schools found that 137 schools, or 55 percent, reported problems with their radios. Twenty of these schools are on the NYPD School Safety Division’s most violent list. “When your cell phone goes through a dead spot it’s irritating,” said Weiner, “but when an emergency radio does, it could be a matter of life or death.”

School safety agents often confront situations they can’t handle alone. In emergencies, such as gang fights or assaults, agents are trained to use their radios to call for backup. Too often, the radios don’t work, due to equipment failure caused by old technology, and dead spots inside the school facility. Dead spots are usually caused by insufficient radio repeaters -- the antennas that broadcast radio signals to other radios.

For several years, Local 237 has asked the NYPD to upgrade the aging radios that are issued to many of the 4,000 school safety agents. “We are disappointed that the NYPD, which has the state-of-the-art communication system, has been unresponsive to our request that they share that technology with school safety agents,” said President Carl Haynes in a statement following the release of the survey.

Haynes also cited NYPD School Safety Assistant Chief Gerald Nelson, who at a City Council hearing Feb. 27, 2003, testified that the radios were indeed inadequate. As a result of that hearing, Weiner discussed the issue further with Local 237 and asked how he could be of help.

In response to Weiner’s survey, the NYPD was reported in the Daily News as saying that radios are available to replace missing or broken ones, and all school supervisors have radios with citywide capacity. Separately, a school safety agent, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the radios are “not serviced properly,” adding that the NYPD “used to pick up the phones for servicing once a year, but now they don’t. Now they just change the battery.”