SUMMARY
Inaugurated by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in January 2004, the Impact Schools initiative has brought increased police and security presence into 22 New York City middle and high schools to introduce more stringent enforcement of the Department of Education’s discipline code. The schools targeted for inclusion in the Impact Schools initiative were selected by the New York Police Department and the Department of Education for their higher than average number of criminal incidents, transfers of students due to safety violations, and what the Department of Education terms “early warning problems” such as low school attendance and disorderly behavior. This report finds that high levels of crime and disorder are not the only characteristics that distinguish the Impact Schools from the rest of the New York City public school system. Based on an analysis of the 2003-2004 Annual School Reports released by the Department of Education, this report concludes that, as a group, the Impact Schools were more overcrowded than the average city high school, were far larger than most city high schools, received less funding per student for direct services, had more students over-age for their grade, and served a student body that was disproportionately comprised of poor and black students as compared to the average New York City public high school.

IMPACT SCHOOLS: A HISTORY AND OVERVIEW
New York City launched the school safety initiative known as Impact Schools in January 2004. A joint effort by the New York Police Department, the Department of Education, and the Mayor’s Office, the program was initiated in 12 schools with high levels of reported crime. The Impact Schools initiative brought three police department strategies for reducing crime into the public schools: dispatching large numbers of uniformed police officers into targeted areas, cracking down on even minor incidents of disorderly behavior, and quickly punishing those who repeatedly violate the rules. In April of 2004, the program was expanded to an additional four high schools and six more joined the program in January of 2005. Also in 2005, five of the initial Impact Schools saw sufficient crime reduction that they were declared “ready to begin the transition out of Impact status” and had their numbers of police officers and school safety agents reduced.

Explicitly modeled on the New York Police Department’s “Operation Impact” that employed crime data from the COMPSTAT computer system to identify and target high crime areas in the city for intensive policing, the Impact Schools were selected based on their higher than average number of criminal incidents, suspensions, and what the Department of Education terms “early warning problems” such as low school attendance and disorderly behavior.

According to the Mayor’s Office, the initial twelve Impact Schools, while comprising less than 1 percent of the schools in the system, accounted for 13 percent of all serious crimes in the school system. The NYPD created a school safety task force of 150 uniformed officers dedicated exclusively to the Impact Schools. In 2005, the task force was increased to 200 officers. The targeted schools also received increased numbers of school safety officers and implemented stepped-up scanning and security measures.

The Impact Schools initiative is informed by the “Broken Windows” theory of crime prevention, which holds that visible disorder and minor quality of life offenses, if not addressed, will lead to more serious crime. Students who have been suspended more than twice in two years are singled out as “spotlight students” and subject to a threestrikes- and-you’re-out policy that removes them from the school immediately upon the fourth offense, even if a minor offense. This adaptation of the NYPD’s “Operation Spotlight” initiative streamlines the suspension process and
lengthens suspensions, increasing the numbers of Off-Site Suspension Centers, After- School Instruction Centers for detentions, and Second Opportunity Schools for students who have been suspended for an entire year.

The cost of the Impact Schools initiative has never been fully explained by the Office of the Mayor or the Department of Education. In September 2004, the City received a $6.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to pay for 50 new police officers on the school safety task force, but city officials have maintained that other than this, the program merely shifts existing resources and thus has no additionacost.

To date, the results of Impact Schools initiative are mixed. While the city boasted in January of 2005 that major crime was down 43 percent overall at the sixteen schools where the program had been implemented so far, these gains were concentrated in a subset of the Impact Schools, while others, like Christopher Columbus and Evander Childs high schools, actually saw an increase in crime while in the program.

CONCLUSION
When the City of New York first explained its rationale for selecting schools that it believed would benefit from the Impact Schools strategy of increased police presence and more rigorous enforcement of school discipline, it noted that these schools accounted for a disproportionate share of the crime and disorder in the city school system. In a written statement, the Mayor’s Office also pointed out that the original twelve Impact Schools had above average suspension rates and below average attendance rates compared to high schools citywide. This report concludes that the 22 schools selected to participate in the Impact Schools program also shared some other distinguishing features.
Relative to the average city high school, the average Impact School had:

• More students over-age for their grade;
• A more heavily poor and Black student population;
• Less per capita spending on direct services to students and a smaller increase in this spending;
• A much larger student body;
• An increase in overcrowding even as city high schools overall saw less crowded conditions.

Is there a relationship between the rapid overcrowding of a school like Christopher Columbus, the tremendous proportion of overage students at a school like Walton, the low level of per student spending at a school like Franklin K. Lane, and the high levels of crime and disorder that led to their designation as Impact Schools? A more thorough study is necessary to determine the extent of a causal relationship, if any. What we can conclude, however, is that in addition to being “schools with some of the highest rates of disorder in the school system,” 2 the Impact Schools share a host of other challenges.

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