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Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox. <\/em> Though they usually aren\u2019t in his classroom, Joe Bennett, a Syracuse City School District teacher and candidate<\/a> for the Onondaga County legislature, said he\u2019s seen the way sentries and Student Resource Officers have policed students and observed the guards around the building. <\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like they\u2019re usually not engaging as much unless somebody calls them but I think once you call them you risk criminalization,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cIt\u2019s better to call a social worker or somebody who can try to understand the issue instead of instantly criminalizing our students.\u201d<\/p>\n In its 2022-23 District Safety Plan<\/a>, SCSD proposed an increase in sentries in schools. Following a period of public comment<\/a> that ended in late August, the district added 40 sentries. <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Sentries are responsible for \u201call facets of safety and security\u201d within a school building, according to the plan\u2019s emergency management<\/a> component. Sentries are not police officers but uniformed security guards that the District Department of Public Safety employs, the plan writes. Sentries also screen students and their bags using a metal detector.<\/p>\n <\/center><\/p>\n Precious Walker, a parent of a fifth grader in the district and the moderator of a Facebook group<\/a> for SCSD parents, said she and other parents are trying to figure out how the plan is going to help.<\/p>\n Walker added that no effort can stop everything, and pointed to transportation to school as an area where added security could be more useful. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you add more (sentries), well, can we add more bus aides? To like, kind of stop it at that layer?\u201d Walker said.<\/p>\n Marsha Weissman, the author of \u201cPrelude to Prison: Student Perspectives on School Suspension\u201d and a parent in the district, said though the district has made improvements in recent years, using resources to increase police presence isn\u2019t moving in the right direction. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Though the district gets some say who gets placed in schools as a sentry, she said, sentries ultimately report to the police and are not school employees. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s disappointing is that the scarce resources are being directed to personnel that still help play a more law enforcement type role, even if they\u2019re not official police, rather than getting mental health counselors and social workers,\u201d Weissman said. <\/p>\n In her research, Weissman \u2013 who is also an adjunct sociology professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University \u2013 said increasing law enforcement measures and policing in schools is connected with higher rates of suspension in students. In SCSD and nationally, she said, suspensions for subjective behaviors are more common than suspensions for violent crimes.<\/p>\n \u201cKids get suspended for things like being disruptive in class, \u2026 pushing and shoving. You don\u2019t want those things to happen, but the response doesn\u2019t have to be law enforcement intervention and or school suspension,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Weissman continued that kids who get suspended are much more likely to drop out of school, which makes them statistically<\/a> more likely to end up in the criminal justice system later in life.<\/p>\n SCSD 2022-23 Safety Plan<\/a> by The Daily Orange<\/a> on Scribd<\/p>\n
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