OPINION: 7 million students attend schools with police but no counselor — ACLU report
Over-policed schools increase a student’s likelihood of entering the criminal justice system
LOS ANGELES — Teachers are demanding more counselorsand mental health support to better meet the needs of students, with Oakland’s educators becoming the latest to join in the red wave of those striking for better conditions.
Here in California, many counselors are responsible for supporting more than 1,000 students each, and this is quadruple the ratio recommended by the American School Counselors Association. In Los Angeles, teachers launched a historic strike in January, in part because 80 percent of elementary schools do not have a full-time nurse.
Why don’t schools hire more counselors? A report out today from my organization, the ACLU, shows that schools are indeed hiring: police officers. Instead of spending their money on a long-proven solution, counseling, they are putting their resources into enforcement and discipline, even though there’s little evidence that these measures keep students safe, much less improve their emotional well-being. When educators fail to address students’ record levels of depression, anxiety and trauma, schools become a conduit into the justice system, and then into prisons, instead of to a better life.
Related: LA’s school counselors strike back
The U.S. Department of Education, for the first time in history, recently required every public school to report the number of social workers, nurses and psychologists employed. Our study is the first to analyze and compare some of this data at the state and national levels. We found that more than 90 percent of the 93,000 public schools in our analysis failed to meet professionally recommended student-to-staff ratios in the 2015-16 school year.
The national student-to-counselor ratio was 444:1. This suggests counselors are seriously overworked, with student caseloads 78 percent greater than what is recommended by experts. Arizona (758-to-1), Michigan (693-to-1) and California (682- to-1) had the highest CONTINUE READING: Providing police over school counselors leads to disastrous consequences
