Flaherty erupts in anger at youth violence hearing
South End News, Wednesday, October 31, 2007
By Justin A. Rice

A Boston City Council hearing on youth violence grew tense last week when At-Large City Councilor Michael Flaherty lectured youth advocates for their failure to endorse his proposal to extend the Boston Center for Youth and Families Street workers program into the Boston Public Schools (BPS).

“I have to tell you I am saddened,” Flaherty said. “I know each one of you personally and professionally. I have an entire folder here of criminal activity taking place in schools. Not one person at this hearing said ‘We should do more, we could do more.’ This is a call to action. It’s clear to me that violence is stemming from schools and it’s clear to me street workers are a special niche.”

Flaherty convened the hearing Oct. 25 in the Education Committee to discuss a pilot program that would place streetworkers in BPS high schools. BPS Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Jim McIntyre, Streetworkers Director Christopher Byner, Sergeant Mike Talbot of BPD’s School Police Unit, BPS Director of Unified Services Carolyn Riley and BPS’s Chief of School Police, John Cisco all testified at the hearing.

Part of the at-large councilor from South Boston’s anger was sparked by a Harvard School of Public Health study released last week that found two-thirds of BPS students have witnessed violence and one-third of students have been involved in a fight themselves. That, in turn, means teachers are spending precious time breaking up fights in the hallway and tending to behavioral issues. Flaherty argued that teachers should teach, guidance councilors should help students with SATs and college admissions and social workers should deal with mental health and substance abuse issues.

“They shouldn’t be street workers,” a flustered and red-faced Flaherty said, wrapping up his initial statement by dropping his pen on his legal pad and shaking his head. “We’re at a six-year [homicide] high folks, I don’t need to tell you stats you already know — what are we doing about it?”

Cisco said he thinks anyone working for the school should be under the principal’s leadership.

“One of the keys to success is having everyone on the same page,” he said, “to bring in people not on the payroll [isn’t helpful].”

On this point, chair of the City Council’s Education Committee Chuck Turner, who moderated the hearing, disagreed.

“It seems to me that if we had street workers in the schools it would be no different than [school] police officers in the building,” Turner said. “One of the concerns with 26 street workers is they seem to be stretched to a breaking point. When there’s a crises street workers are asked to pull resources from one neighborhood to another. Given how thinly their resources are stretched, those workers are not really intimately involved in what’s going on.”

But Byner still maintained that streetworkers best served students on the streets and not in the school hallways.

“The most important part with our relationship with schools is to be able to be at schools once they dismiss to build relationships with students and personnel,” Byner said, to which Flaherty responded: “Street workers showing up at [school] dismissal time is like a firefighter showing up to a fire with no water.”

“Close proximity to a school, being around the corner, it’s not enough,” the at-large councilor continued. “It’s a fly by; we’re stopping by the school and giving it a big wave. You weren’t there during the middle of the day building relationships, coming in in the morning and hanging your hat for the day.”

Initiated in 1990, the street worker program has received national recognition for its work inside BPS and the neighborhoods, reaching troubled youth, intervening between out-of-control youth and fearful residents, brokering peace between rival gangs and finding jobs for dropouts. But after playing an instrumental role in citywide effort to reduce violence in the 1990s know as the Boston Miracle, street workers were reduced from a staff of 45 to 25 and pulled out of the schools.

When Flaherty finished, a dressed-down McIntyre, returned to his original argument.

“On the broader issue there’s no doubt we need to do better,” McIntyre said. “I think what we’re saying is there are a variety of adults in the school who can play that roll, it doesn’t just have to be street workers, is, I guess, what we’re saying. I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, we’re just disagreeing on the way to do it.”

Byner, who said the three or four South End street workers are some of his best, also agreed with everything Flaherty said, and didn’t take his words personally.

“I know how passionate he is about that and I’m okay with it,” Byner said after the hearing ended. “I’ve been dressed down before and it won’t be the last time. I don’t need a kick in the butt; every time a young person gets harmed that’s a kick in the butt for me. When I respond to an issue at 1 a.m., that’s a kick in the butt for me. I don’t have to come in here to get to get kicked in the butt. Really [Flaherty’s comments] speaks to bigger issues. That’s political, which I don’t get involved in.”

Two BPS headmasters were also on hand (Rudy Weeks of the Academy of Public Service in Dorchester and Michael Owen of Charlestown High School) and said that they would welcome any extra adult presence in their buildings as long as the work they did coordinated with that of the administrations.

Last time street workers were in Boston’s schools Flaherty was an Assistant District Attorney for Suffolk County and often met those original Street workers at intelligence-sharing sessions, also attended by BPS officials and BPD and State Police and MBTA officers. At those meetings, the name of an impact player would be thrown out and officials would go around the table saying what they knew about that individual in an effort to connect dots.

“You got the most information, the most intelligence from street workers,” Flaherty remembered after the hearing.