The Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) says while it sup­ports the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to place po­lice of­fi­cers in high-risk schools from Sep­tem­ber as a way to curb vi­o­lence and delin­quen­cy among stu­dents, deep­er and more sus­tain­able strate­gies must be part of the so­lu­tion.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, NPTA pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art de­scribed the move as a nec­es­sary short-term re­sponse to re­store or­der but warned that it was not a cure.

“The de­ploy­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers in schools is ‘putting plas­ter on the sore’ which may cov­er or sup­press the prob­lem, but cer­tain­ly will not heal the sit­u­a­tion,” Stew­art said.

He ac­knowl­edged the ur­gent need to ad­dress school vi­o­lence but urged the Gov­ern­ment to go fur­ther by fo­cus­ing on the root caus­es of in­dis­ci­pline. He stressed that mean­ing­ful and long-term change will come on­ly through strength­en­ing the school sup­port sys­tem and plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on pre­ven­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

“Tak­ing a deep­er dive, di­ag­nose the is­sues and ap­ply the ap­pro­pri­ate ‘med­ica­tion’ will re­sult in greater and long-last­ing yields,” he said.

Stew­art said this ap­proach would in­clude boost­ing the num­bers and in­volve­ment of school so­cial work­ers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors, safe­ty and tru­an­cy of­fi­cers. He al­so rec­om­mend­ed the ex­pan­sion of coun­selling ser­vices, men­tor­ship pro­grammes, peer me­di­a­tion, con­flict res­o­lu­tion train­ing, and more reg­u­lar parental en­gage­ment to build pos­i­tive school cul­tures.

He said the NPTA is hop­ing to meet with Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath to dis­cuss the specifics of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan, in­clud­ing the role, func­tion, and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of po­lice of­fi­cers un­der the new arrange­ment.

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia reached out to As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Wayne Mys­tar for a com­ment on how the plan will be rolled out and whether there will be suf­fi­cient po­lice man­pow­er, but he di­rect­ed ques­tions to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro. How­ev­er, Gue­var­ro did not re­spond to mes­sages.

Ear­li­er this week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said po­lice of­fi­cers would be as­signed to schools iden­ti­fied by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry as high-risk, based on da­ta such as sus­pen­sions and in­juries. The Gov­ern­ment said it hopes to be­gin the ini­tia­tive by the start of the new school term in Sep­tem­ber.