Teachers for Social Justice Statement on Obama’s Gun Control Plans
January 29, 2013
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In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, the Obama administration
proposed a series of gun control recommendations and policies. His four-point
plan includes "making schools safer" and "increasing access to
mental health services." The plan states "We need to make our schools
safer, not only by enhancing their physical security... but also by creating
safer and more nurturing school climates that help prevent school
violence. Putting school resource officers (specially trained police officers)
and mental health professionals in schools can help prevent school crime and
student-on-student violence."
Teachers
for Social Justice (TSJ) is an organization of educators who are committed to
education for social justice. We fight for classrooms and schools that are
anti-racist, multicultural, multilingual, academically rigorous curriculum that
is both caring and critical, and grounded in the experience of our students. We
believe that schools should indeed be a safe space for students, families,
teachers, and all community members.
While TSJ supports the call to
"make schools safer,” we must question what makes our schools
"safe." We do not support the idea that police in our schools, and
the criminalization of our students, creates a “nurturing school climate.” The
increased reliance of law enforcement and school resource officers often
translates school discipline into police records for students – indeed an
average of 25 CPS students per day are arrested on school grounds. These
arrests and out-of-school suspensions disproportionately affect students of
color, primarily African American and Latino students, and greatly increase the
chance that these young people will enter the criminal justice system. Although
most of the publicized school shootings have been by white shooters in mostly
white suburban neighborhoods, the proposed increase of police in schools will
only continue to criminalize African American and Latino city schools. These
close ties between schools and police work directly to strengthen the
school-to-prison pipeline.
Obama’s
plan calls to “put up to 1,000 more school resource officers and counselors in
schools.” TSJ believes we must act now to ensure that these thousand, and more,
are all counselors, not police. We know schools are safer without cops in them. We know schools are
safer when they have enough counselors, mental health workers, supportive and
supported teachers, and relevant and engaging curriculum. We know we must fight
for the “nurturing school climate” all teachers and students deserve—a climate
that dismantles the school-to-prison pipeline by saying No to Cops and Yes to
Counselors.
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