WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, on Thursday held a press call with Connecticut reporters on the reintroduction of the Counseling Not Criminalization Act, legislation he introduced today with U.S. Representative Ayana Pressley (D-Mass.), U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Jamal Bowman (D-N.Y.) that would invest in safe and nurturing school climates that support all students and address the over-policing of our nation’s K-12 schools.
“My concern is creating safe, healthy environments in schools for our kids. School is a complicated place. These days, kids are often presenting with more serious issues than ever before. But it's time for us to really look at the data when we make a decision about how to create a healthy, safe climate for kids in schools. The data increasingly tells us that police in our schools don't always work to the benefit of kids safety,” said Murphy.
“Too often, we fund the back-end interventions, police officers who come in at the end of the misbehavior rather than social workers and psychologists who can be there at the outset. So our legislation is pretty simple. It says that federal dollars from here on out will be used to hire those support workers—counselors, in particular—instead of police officers. And so our legislation includes significant new grant funding for schools to hire counselors,” Murphy added.
Murphy also laid out some glaring statistics about how police officers in schools end up disproportionately hurting students of color or those with disabilities: “Nationally, students with disabilities are arrested at a rate nearly three times higher than their non-disabled peers. Black students on a national basis are arrested at a rate three times that of white students. In Connecticut, while there is a higher arrest rate for African Americans, the biggest disparity is Latino students. It was a report recently by Connecticut Voices for Children that found that the presence of police in the school meant an average arrest rate for Latino students six times greater than for schools that didn't have police and that study controlled for the size of the school, demographics, and other related factors.”
Murphy also laid out what the legislation does not do: “It doesn't prohibit states and local municipalities from investing in police officers. It just says that federal dollars should be directed towards hiring counselors instead of police. I've had a number of conversations with school administrators and police chiefs in Connecticut. And I also want to be clear that I understand the need for school security. My kids school has security officers, but they don't have police. I think there's a need for us to make sure that we have trained security officers in the schools that need them. I just don't believe that we need so many security officers with the power of arrest. Even as we've tried to reform our processes in Connecticut, to make sure that police officers are only intervening in the situations that absolutely are necessary of arrest. We have not seen a significant enough diminution in our numbers, especially as it applies to children of color.”
Murphy concluded: “So I know we've put in a lot of work in Connecticut to try to be better and more nuanced, to try to be more targeted in the ways that school based arrests are used. And we've seen the numbers come down in Connecticut, there's no doubt. But that disparate treatment is still very, very concerning to those of us who want to make sure that when a child of color walks into a school, they're not treated any differently than anybody else.”
The data shows that counselors, social workers, psychologists and other trained professionals actually improve social and educational outcomes for kids in schools—whereas the involvement of police in schools leads to the criminalization of students, particularly students of color and students with disabilities. The Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act would prohibit the use of federal funds to increase police presence in schools and instead provide $5 billion in new grant funding to help schools hire more counselors, social workers, and other behavioral health personnel and implement services in schools that create positive and safe climates for all students.
The Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act:
Full transcript of Murphy’s remarks is below:
“This call is relative to legislation that I'm reintroducing later today, the Counseling Not Criminalization Act. I'll be introducing it with a host of my colleagues, Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Tina Smith from Minnesota. In the House, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts will be the lead sponsor. This is an issue that I've worked on my entire career as the parent of two public school kids, as the husband of a former teacher and legal aid lawyer who worked in education.
“You know, my concern is creating safe, healthy environments in schools for our kids. School is a complicated place these days. Kids are often presenting with more serious issues than ever before. But it's time for us to really look at the data when we make a decision about how to create a healthy, safe climate for kids in schools. The data increasingly tells us that police in our schools don't always work to the benefit of kids’ safety.
“I'll readily admit that there's no one uniform story about the utility of having police in our schools. I've talked to a lot of parents and administrators who have positive experiences with police in schools. But the data is hard to refute because what we continue to see in Connecticut and across the country is a very concerning pattern where kids of color and kids with disabilities are being arrested at school by police officers at a rate very different than their white peers.
“Nationally, students with disabilities are arrested at a rate nearly three times higher than their non-disabled peers. Black students on a national basis are arrested at a rate three times that of white students. In Connecticut, while there is a higher arrest rate for African Americans, the biggest disparity is Latino students. It was a report recently by Connecticut Voices For Children that found that the presence of police in the school meant an average arrest rate for Latino students six times greater than for schools that didn't have police and that study controlled for the size of the school, demographics, and other related factors.
“My legislation recognizes that the best way to support students is to surround them with support staff like social workers and psychologists. Right now we are in desperate need of more social workers, more school nurses, more psychologists, the kind of professionals that can you know, help address the underlying needs of students that often result in their misbehaviors. Too often, we fund the back-end interventions, police officers who come in at the end of the misbehavior rather than social workers and psychologists who can be there at the outset.
“So our legislation is pretty simple. It says that federal dollars from here on out will be used to hire those support workers—counselors, in particular—instead of police officers. And so our legislation includes significant new grant funding for schools to hire counselors. We know the need is great. Nationally, the student to social worker ratio is more than 2,000:1. Now, professional standards recommend that that ratio not be greater than 250:1. Yet nationally, we have schools with thousands of kids and one social worker. And I can tell you that that ratio will not be unfamiliar to students who go to our urban school systems. Nationally, the school psychologist ratio is 1,500:1 and the nurse to student ratio is 900:1. So clearly, schools are lacking resources to be able to hire counselors. We need to support them, and that's what our legislation does.
“Now important to say what the legislation doesn't do. It doesn't prohibit schools from hiring police officers. It doesn't prohibit states and local municipalities from investing in police officers. It just says that federal dollars should be directed towards hiring counselors instead of police.
“I've had a number of conversations with school administrators and police chiefs in Connecticut. And I also want to be clear that I understand the need for school security. My kids’ school has security officers, but they don't have police. I think there's a need for us to make sure that we have trained security officers in the schools that need them. I just don't believe that we need so many security officers with the power of arrest. Even as we've tried to reform our processes in Connecticut to make sure that police officers are only intervening in the situations that absolutely are necessary of arrest, we have not seen a significant enough diminution in our numbers, especially as it applies to children of color.
“So I know we've put in a lot of work in Connecticut to try to be better and more nuanced, to try to be more targeted in the ways that school based arrests are used. And we've seen the numbers come down in Connecticut, there's no doubt. But that disparate treatment is still very, very concerning to those of us who want to make sure that when a child of color walks into a school, they're not treated any differently than anybody else.
“So I'm eager to move this legislation through the process. I do think it is an important piece of legislation as we talk about the broader topic of racial justice. And I hope that as we move forward a conversation about criminal justice reform that this will be part of the conversation. Again, the intent here is to take the relatively small amount of federal money that's spent in schools compared to state local money and targeted towards counseling instead of instead of policing.”
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