Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

As 95 spe­cial­ly trained Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers en­ter their fi­nal week of train­ing ahead of their de­ploy­ment to schools deemed high-risk on Sep­tem­ber 8, stake­hold­ers are ex­press­ing con­cerns about the new mea­sure.

As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals of Pub­lic Sec­ondary Schools (APPSS) pres­i­dent Shar­lene Hicks-Rae­burn yes­ter­day said some prin­ci­pals were not in favour of po­lice of­fi­cers in their schools and en­vi­ron­ment. She said the method is not uni­ver­sal­ly re­gard­ed as an ef­fec­tive mea­sure to ad­dress vi­o­lence and in­stead called for ad­di­tion­al sup­port for stu­dent su­per­vi­sion dur­ing lunch pe­ri­ods.

“Fur­ther­more, some prin­ci­pals sug­gest that SRPs might be more ef­fec­tive if de­ployed out­side schools in the morn­ings and af­ter­noons to mon­i­tor stu­dents and re­duce loi­ter­ing and fight­ing in key ar­eas,” she told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Hicks-Rae­burn added that there was al­so a need to strength­en re­sources for Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices (SSS) to en­able a more proac­tive ap­proach, adding her mem­bers were in­stead look­ing for­ward to the in­tro­duc­tion of a more de­tailed Code of Con­duct, with clear guide­lines on how stu­dent in­dis­ci­pline should be man­aged.

She al­so called on the min­istry to fo­cus on par­ents and par­ent­ing be­cause they must take greater ac­count­abil­i­ty for their chil­dren’s ac­tions.

Al­so high on the agen­da for the prin­ci­pals is the place­ment of staff and the fill­ing of va­can­cies, and while they know that this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty falls un­der the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, they await the long-an­tic­i­pat­ed ap­point­ment of prin­ci­pals fol­low­ing the in­ter­view process and be­lieve this re­quires in­creased rigour and ef­fi­cien­cy.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said 247 of­fi­cers took their oath of ser­vice af­ter more than 450 hours of aca­d­e­m­ic and prac­ti­cal train­ing. The of­fi­cers, it said, will fo­cus on curb­ing school vi­o­lence, sup­port­ing peer coun­selling, and en­sur­ing safer learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments.

But child rights ac­tivist Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye has called on the Gov­ern­ment to scrap the idea, not­ing re­search stud­ies show po­lice in schools do not achieve in­tend­ed re­sults but rather crim­i­nalise prob­lems for­mer­ly dealt with by school per­son­nel.

In a let­ter to the ed­i­tor, Thomp­son-Ahye said for­mer US Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s Task Force on 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing (2015) urged po­lice to lim­it in­volve­ment in school dis­ci­pline and fo­cus on pos­i­tive youth in­ter­ac­tions. She said re­search by Mal­let (2016), Kupchik (2010), Na & Got­tfred­son (2011), and Thu­rau & Wald (2010) shows that school po­lice of­ten in­crease ar­rests for mi­nor mis­be­hav­iour, re­in­forc­ing the school-to-prison pipeline due to in­ad­e­quate train­ing in youth de­vel­op­ment.

Thomp­son-Ahye added that SRP de­ploy­ment will al­so in­crease the in­equities suf­fered by al­ready dis­ad­van­taged stu­dents, and giv­en the lim­it­ed time be­fore the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new pol­i­cy, she had some ques­tions.

“Have the po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to schools re­ceived suf­fi­cient train­ing in the ar­eas list­ed above? Who were in­volved in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, re­cruit­ment, and train­ing of these of­fi­cers to de­ter­mine their suit­abil­i­ty to work in a school en­vi­ron­ment? What re­search guid­ed the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of their nec­es­sary char­ac­ter­is­tics? Who will mon­i­tor the im­ple­men­ta­tion and im­pact of these of­fi­cers? Do the ex­pe­ri­enced school so­cial work­ers have a role to play here?” Thomp­son-Ahye asked.

Thomp­son-Ahye said train­ers work­ing with chil­dren must un­der­stand not on­ly the Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its Gen­er­al Com­ments but al­so key UN guide­lines on ju­ve­nile jus­tice and lo­cal child pro­tec­tion laws. On­go­ing ed­u­ca­tion and skill de­vel­op­ment are es­sen­tial to up­hold chil­dren’s rights ef­fec­tive­ly, she said.

Just days ear­li­er, on Au­gust 20, more than 125 sec­ondary school prin­ci­pals and 18 school su­per­vi­sors gath­ered at the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters for an event ti­tled Lead­er­ship in Mo­tion: Ac­tion Plan Fo­rum.

This fo­rum was host­ed by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath and se­nior ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of his team.

Top­ics dis­cussed dur­ing the fo­rum in­clud­ed staffing and va­can­cy man­age­ment, in­fra­struc­ture im­prove­ments, school se­cu­ri­ty, pro­mo­tion­al pro­ce­dures, and en­hanc­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels be­tween the min­istry and school lead­er­ship.