A backlash against L.A. schools as high-security fortresses
SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS An L.A. school policy of mandatory bag checks and random metal detector scans fits a nationwide trend of schools beefing up security. But a coalition of educators says that the trend has gone too far.
Students (from l.) Zahnki Woods, Jimmy Escobar, Carlos Fructuoso, Gissell Gomez, and Jesse Vargas stand with their teacher, Vitaly (2nd r.), outside their classroom at Central High School, a Los Angeles Unified School District continuation school in Culver City, Calif., on Thursday.
CULVER CITY, CALIF. — Vitaly refuses to use a metal detector on his students.
The educator runs the Culver City site for Central High School, a Los Angeles Unified School District continuation school for students at risk of dropping out. To engage his class of ninth- through 12th-graders – all of whom identify as people of color and working class or low-income – Vitaly says he has to earn their trust.
Complying with the district policy to conduct random searches with a metal detector wand, he says, would do just the opposite.
“On my campus, there has never been a violent incident,” says Vitaly, who goes by one name. “Here they are, supposedly high school dropouts, and they’re learning, bettering themselves. They’re doing what the system hasn’t been able to make them do in traditional schools. They relax and let their guard down.”
“And I’m supposed to search them with metal detectors?” he asks. “That’s the most counterintuitive, counterproductive thing I could dream up. I would be like all the other adults in their lives that have traumatized them.”
Vitaly is one educator in a coalition of teacher’s unions, charter schools, civil rights groups, and educational organizations across Los Angeles that is urging the district to revise its school security policy, which calls for daily, random metal detector and locker searches at all L.A. Unified secondary and co-located charter schools.
The request, school safety analysts say, is part of an ongoing debate over how to protect students in an era of violence without turning campuses into fortresses. The question is central to a broader nationwide struggle to reconcile zero-tolerance policies in the juvenile and criminal justice systems with those that focus on community engagement and relationship-building, they say.
“There’s an inherent tension between beefed-up security on one end of the rope and maintaining a welcoming, supportive school climate on the other,” says Kenneth Trump, a school security consultant who runs National School Safety and Security Services, a private consulting firm based in Cleveland.
In the wake of high-profile mass shootings like the 2012 tragedy at Sandy A backlash against L.A. schools as high-security fortresses - CSMonitor.com: