New York City will soon start spending millions of public dollars a year to provide unarmed security personnel at private and religious schools. The City Council voted 41 to 4 to spend $19.8 million during the first year, starting April 1, to reimburse non-public schools with at least 300 students for expenses they incur hiring security guards. The guards must be unarmed, registered with the state, paid a “prevailing” rate, and trained to work in elementary schools, according to the council.
According to the New York Daily News, there are more than 800 non-public schools in New York City, with a total of about 250,000 students. More than 110,000 of those students attend Jewish yeshivas. The initiative was introduced by council member David Greenfield, who represents parts of Brooklyn that have a number of Jewish schools and who has been pushing for it for several years. He had originally wanted the city to pay regular security officers who are part of the police force, at a cost of at least $50 million, but that idea was changed in a compromise with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
De Blasio’s — and the council’s — willingness to spend public money for unarmed security guards at private schools has drawn criticism from a number of groups, including the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, which notes that the city could have found better ways to spend taxpayer dollars and that public money has no business being used to help private and religious schools.
