Thursday, June 21, 2007
News from Washington Irving High School
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Walking by Washington Irving High School on a Tuesday morning, around 9AM, I was struck by the presence of four uniformed policemen, across the street from the school, seemingly watching the traffic. Bold as I am when on duty, I asked the sergeant if this was the policing group assigned to keep WIHS trouble-free. No, he told me without prompting, they were a task force; WIHS had its own detail of 14 officers inside, with a sergeant. Was this standard with a heavily troubled school? – he did not know, his group was due to check on seven schools this day.
Encouraged, I tried to call the school, and found a pleasant respondent, reader of this column, who passed to me the name of the principal, but ventured that the Department of Education’s Public Affairs office would be a better source. There my message prompted an instant callback from their police specialist who straightened me out – the 14 people I had heard of at WIHS would be a mix of uniformed officers and, predominantly, School Safety Agents, civilian employees of the NYPD’s SSA Division. They used to be with the Board of Education, which no longer exists. In January 2004 school safety was reorganized, and some ten or more schools came to be recognized as Impact institutions, a nice word which I assume to be a euphemism for "dangerous." Not too bad, with the city’s school count of about 1,450, 350-400 of them high schools. Alas, WIHS was part of that Impact group.
To continue with the numbers, NYC K- through-12th grade schools have a student population of 1.1 million, plus 80,000 teachers, more than what we used to think of as the population of a major capital. All schools have one or more agent assigned to them, with some uniformed policemen added, such as those in Impact schools. So far I have not met any SSAs; the young girls with Explorer over Police Department shoulder patches on their blue shirts that I saw turned out to be part of a 50 member career aspiration program, designed to acquaint the young with police work, remove their fears and bad perceptions of the cops, and, perhaps, after some obligatory college, recruit them into New York’s Finest.
In the last year or two WIHS has been removed from the Impact list (there are nine high schools remaining, three each in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens), which speaks well for the actions taken and discipline put into effect. Looking at the WIHS website, there were eight letters from parents and grads, dated 2004 through 2006, few pleased (one happy girl was admitted to New York University), but more cautionary – faculty members are well-meaning and serious, but the students, some bright and easygoing, largely tend to be troublesome , and the school is crowded. One parent suggested learning to navigate, to get the benefit of the many programs , activities and the dedicated faculty, but another cautioned parents to look elsewhere before coming to WIHS. WIHS has slightly more than 3,000 students, and a division in houses, or interest groups that reduces the impersonality of a large institution, a recent innovation. One expects that the letters date back to the troubled days, though there have been one or two bad gang incidents earlier in the year on Union Square.
Looking for some figures about the SSA organization, statistics of incidents and the hopeful intimations of attainment of controls and reduction of incidents, I tried to get data from the NYPD Public Affairs, who sent me to SSA Public Affairs, but no one was available, and they returned me back to NYPD, There an attempt to help was turned into a major project – with a demand for a written list of questions. I will try to cope, but maybe for a future article…Meanwhile a news report about 2,700 applicants for 289 SSA jobs in 2007/8 provided some comparison to the desirability of police recruit jobs – only 5,000 testing for 2,800 openings with the expectation of 800 remaining after completing the Police Academy. The SSAs start at $28,900/yr, topping out at $32,600, as compared to the Police Academy recruits’ $25,100 immediate pay, topping out at $59,000 (that’s without promotions).
Obviously, these kids are not there for a career as a SSA, and equally obviously the uniformed police starting pay must rise, else all the young cops after completing the PA courses will run off to high-pay Nassau County PD jobs.
Meanwhile, a call placed with the principal of WIHS, Dr. Denise DeCarlo, has not been returned. Not surprising, newspaper people looking for figures are not the most trusted characters in the school system. I am still hopeful, I used to be able to get through to her predecessor, Principal Robert Durkin, without problems. But that was in what I think of as slightly less troubled days, with different problems.
On the good news side, 3rd through 8th graders in NYC school system have improved their math averages, rising above the overall NYS numbers. The arriving generation of recruits for WIHS looks hopeful.
Walking by Washington Irving High School on a Tuesday morning, around 9AM, I was struck by the presence of four uniformed policemen, across the street from the school, seemingly watching the traffic. Bold as I am when on duty, I asked the sergeant if this was the policing group assigned to keep WIHS trouble-free. No, he told me without prompting, they were a task force; WIHS had its own detail of 14 officers inside, with a sergeant. Was this standard with a heavily troubled school? – he did not know, his group was due to check on seven schools this day.
Encouraged, I tried to call the school, and found a pleasant respondent, reader of this column, who passed to me the name of the principal, but ventured that the Department of Education’s Public Affairs office would be a better source. There my message prompted an instant callback from their police specialist who straightened me out – the 14 people I had heard of at WIHS would be a mix of uniformed officers and, predominantly, School Safety Agents, civilian employees of the NYPD’s SSA Division. They used to be with the Board of Education, which no longer exists. In January 2004 school safety was reorganized, and some ten or more schools came to be recognized as Impact institutions, a nice word which I assume to be a euphemism for "dangerous." Not too bad, with the city’s school count of about 1,450, 350-400 of them high schools. Alas, WIHS was part of that Impact group.
To continue with the numbers, NYC K- through-12th grade schools have a student population of 1.1 million, plus 80,000 teachers, more than what we used to think of as the population of a major capital. All schools have one or more agent assigned to them, with some uniformed policemen added, such as those in Impact schools. So far I have not met any SSAs; the young girls with Explorer over Police Department shoulder patches on their blue shirts that I saw turned out to be part of a 50 member career aspiration program, designed to acquaint the young with police work, remove their fears and bad perceptions of the cops, and, perhaps, after some obligatory college, recruit them into New York’s Finest.
In the last year or two WIHS has been removed from the Impact list (there are nine high schools remaining, three each in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens), which speaks well for the actions taken and discipline put into effect. Looking at the WIHS website, there were eight letters from parents and grads, dated 2004 through 2006, few pleased (one happy girl was admitted to New York University), but more cautionary – faculty members are well-meaning and serious, but the students, some bright and easygoing, largely tend to be troublesome , and the school is crowded. One parent suggested learning to navigate, to get the benefit of the many programs , activities and the dedicated faculty, but another cautioned parents to look elsewhere before coming to WIHS. WIHS has slightly more than 3,000 students, and a division in houses, or interest groups that reduces the impersonality of a large institution, a recent innovation. One expects that the letters date back to the troubled days, though there have been one or two bad gang incidents earlier in the year on Union Square.
Looking for some figures about the SSA organization, statistics of incidents and the hopeful intimations of attainment of controls and reduction of incidents, I tried to get data from the NYPD Public Affairs, who sent me to SSA Public Affairs, but no one was available, and they returned me back to NYPD, There an attempt to help was turned into a major project – with a demand for a written list of questions. I will try to cope, but maybe for a future article…Meanwhile a news report about 2,700 applicants for 289 SSA jobs in 2007/8 provided some comparison to the desirability of police recruit jobs – only 5,000 testing for 2,800 openings with the expectation of 800 remaining after completing the Police Academy. The SSAs start at $28,900/yr, topping out at $32,600, as compared to the Police Academy recruits’ $25,100 immediate pay, topping out at $59,000 (that’s without promotions).
Obviously, these kids are not there for a career as a SSA, and equally obviously the uniformed police starting pay must rise, else all the young cops after completing the PA courses will run off to high-pay Nassau County PD jobs.
Meanwhile, a call placed with the principal of WIHS, Dr. Denise DeCarlo, has not been returned. Not surprising, newspaper people looking for figures are not the most trusted characters in the school system. I am still hopeful, I used to be able to get through to her predecessor, Principal Robert Durkin, without problems. But that was in what I think of as slightly less troubled days, with different problems.
On the good news side, 3rd through 8th graders in NYC school system have improved their math averages, rising above the overall NYS numbers. The arriving generation of recruits for WIHS looks hopeful.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 2:58 PM 
