Mary Levy, Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs
Testimony to the Committee on the Judiciary on the Metropolitan Police Department School Safety and Security Act of 2004, Bill 15-725
March 29, 2004

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ON BILL 15-725, THE "METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT SCHOOL SAFETY AND SECURITY ACT OF 2004"

March 29, 2004

Mary Levy
Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs

Good morning. I am Mary Levy. I direct the Public Education Reform Project at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. My testimony this morning deals with the aspects of this bill related to the structure for governance and control of the schools. It will not deal with the wisdom, effectiveness, or specific role of police in school security. On that subject, I defer to the people in the schools - parents, teachers, students and principals - and I hope you will too. I have studied the literature of school governance and the governance of the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) for some years, and on that basis I see three important issues:

• Is the organizational structure proposed by this bill workable in practice?
• Would this structure promote, or further cloud accountability for security?
• Who will pay for the inevitable increased costs?

Attached to this testimony are two charts showing the current structure of DCPS governance within the District and the structure as it would appear if security and facilities are removed from the control of the Superintendent and Board of Education. The charts usually evoke laughter. Unfortunately although they look comical, they are not really funny. The system is fragmented - - more of a contraption than a system -- and this legislation would further Balkanize it.

Issue 1: Dividing control over and within school buildings is likely to cause confusion, dissension, and disruption in the daily operations of schools. In DCPS, as throughout the country, principals control operations in their buildings. Historically, when principals or program directors have shared a DCPS building, there has been trouble, even when both report to the same supervisor. They disagree about rules, common areas, entrances, student behavior, employee behavior, and many other matters. Security is a highly fruitful source for disputes. Their supervisors, sometimes the Superintendent him- or herself, have to mediate and ultimately resolve these disputes. With the police reporting to the police chief who reports to the Mayor and Council, and the principal reporting to an assistant superintendent who reports to the Superintendent and Board of Education, what will happen when principals and police disagree? Who prevails? Who will make the rules in each building? Who will have the final say in handling matters like fights or threats that require immediate and decisive action? Will the Superintendent and Chief of Police have meetings to work out various differences of opinion? What happens if they disagree?

Issue 2: Splitting off yet another line of control will further diminish accountability. District leaders and citizens are in the midst of a public debate over accountability for DCPS performance, in which everyone seems to agree that the separation of responsibility for funding schools from the responsibility for running them makes it difficult for anyone to hold any public official accountable for their failures. All the talk is of creating clear lines of accountability. This bill runs in exactly the opposite direction to that goal. Right now the Superintendent is accountable for security. If the police take it over, it is predictable that the schools will blame the police for any security problems, and that the police will blame the schools for lack of cooperation, and the public will be even more uncertain of who is accountable than now.

Issue 3: Who will pay for the increased costs? Uniformed police are the most expensive security guards available. The contract security guards are paid little and it is unlikely that much money can be squeezed from the contract without diminishing the number of security guards. The school system has cut central offices about as far as they can go, and local school budgets are eroding, causing schools to cut out art, music, PE, science, foreign language, and other subjects. We are informed by sources within the system that these budgets will have to absorb this year's 9% teacher pay increase next year, and that hundreds of teachers are expected to retire or be laid off and not replaced. The police department has its own financial constraints and appears to have difficulty in maintaining the desired number of policeman on the streets. Will there be new funds to pay the extra costs?

None of this means that uniformed police cannot play a useful role in school security. They have, and should continue to. It may even be that security would be so much better if the police ran it that the problems above are worth bearing. But where is the evidence of that?

The problems in security management are merely one more symptom of the worsening disarray in DCPS management generally, a situation with many causes, both internal and external. Looking at the consequences one piece at a time leads understandably to a temptation to farm out one piece at a time. But if the separate pieces do not fit together, both students and the system will continue to flounder. You need to look at the entire system, and act on the entire system.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

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