At Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting, members unanimously approved a $1 million contract authorizing the purchase of X-ray machines that detect firearms, knives and ammunition in small bags, backpacks and briefcases. According to vendor LINEV System’s specifications of the model contracted by CPS, the machines use artificial intelligence to identify weapons, but a spokesperson said the district won’t adopt that software.
At a board committee meeting last week, the district’s chief of safety and security, Jadine Chou, said the one-year renewal agreement will primarily fund the replacement of existing X-ray machines, which are present in 108 elementary and high schools. With the machines costing $14,000 each, according to Chou, the contract could allow for the purchase of up to around 70 units, not counting an unspecified amount to be set aside for installation, training and maintenance.
“It would be great if we come back and we don’t use all of that or any of that,” Chou said. “But I know the reality of our inventory is that inevitably we’re going to need some of that.”
The $1 million renewal agreement follows an initial two-year, $1.4 million investment in new X-ray equipment, approved by the board in 2021. (During the remote learning period of the COVID-19 pandemic, virtually none of those funds were spent, Chou said.) But, with six of seven members just appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson early this month, new leadership presides over the Board of Education. And in response to the district’s renewal request, some members initially questioned CPS’ reliance on the technology — though all members ultimately voted Wednesday to approve the funds.
At last week’s committee meeting, board member Mariela Estrada, a CPS parent and alumna, recalled attending Gage Park High School, where she said at least six X-ray machines greeted students. “How different it would be, if we only imagine, without those X-rays, how that student would feel walking into a space?”
A high degree of surveillance at schools — from detection equipment and cameras to security guards — can adversely impact student success, according to Odis Johnson Jr., executive director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Safe and Healthy Schools.
An education and public health professor, Johnson and research partner Jason Jabbari analyzed U.S. Department of Education data from around 750 U.S. high schools to understand the effects of surveillance on students. They found students in “high-surveillance” schools are less likely to enroll and persist in college than their peers in schools with low levels of surveillance. Suspensions are also more likely to be doled out among highly surveilled students — regardless of the frequency of student misbehavior at the school. Students at low-surveillance schools also perform better on tests, according to the research, which controlled for a range of demographic, economic, school, household and community characteristics.
“Schools that were in the top third of U.S. in their reliance on surveillance actually had lower academic outcomes in college-going rates compared to those schools that relied on surveillance the least,” Johnson said in an interview with the Tribune. “And this is after making sure that we were comparing apples to apples, that there weren’t any differences in the average student background characteristics, or the average school characteristics, or even the average neighborhood characteristics that kids come from. We wanted to take all of that into consideration to say: Comparing these two approaches to safety, this is what the cost is in terms of learning and college-going.”
At the CPS committee meeting, Chou noted an increase in security concerns that she said makes school communities feel X-ray machines are necessary. But she also cited the district’s “Whole School Safety” process, which she said emphasizes building trusting relationships between adults and students. If a school that doesn’t have X-ray machines currently wants to adopt the equipment, Chou said the district will discuss the pros and cons with the Local School Council, although the decision is left to school administrators.
“It’s tempting and often a little easier to say, ’Let’s put these at the front,’ thinking it will solve everything — and it doesn’t,” Chou said of the X-ray machines. “The vast majority of our schools don’t have these devices, and we’re still catching dangerous objects and we catch them through other means, like we have relationships with our students, so they tell us if something is going on. They’ll tell us if they’re going through something. And that’s really what we promote,” she said of building relationships with students.
The district’s Whole School Safety process isn’t perfect, though, said new Board President Jianan Shi, a former CPS teacher who was executive director of the advocacy group Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education until his board appointment in early July. “Unfortunately, for every amazing process that you share, I’ve also witnessed one where there’s one person at the meeting, one where the community was not engaged in. If this is such an effective lever, if this is the chosen lever … how are we going to include conversations about (school resource officers), include conversations on metal detectors and other strategies for safety and really invest in it so that there’s actual community dialogue on it?”
On Wednesday, the board also approved a $30 million contract, involving more than a dozen community organizations, to provide safe passage services as students travel to and from school. It’s often not what’s happening at school that compels some students to arm themselves, but what happens “as they’re traversing their path on the way to school,” Chou said.
This story has been updated to clarify that the new X-ray machines to be purchased by CPS will not use artificial intelligence, according to a CPS spokesperson.
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