Mayor Mamdani wants to pull 264 school safety agents out of New York City schools in the coming fiscal year, even as felony assaults inside those same buildings are rising and weapons keep turning up in the hands of students.
New York City Council Education Chair Eric Dinowitz disclosed the proposed cuts Monday at the fiscal year 2027 budget hearing, laying out numbers that should trouble every parent with a child in the city's public school system. The reduction is part of a Department of Education savings plan that would leave schools unable to fully staff safety positions even if they wanted to.
The timing could hardly be worse. Police data show felony assaults in city schools climbed 5% in the first half of this year, 109 serious assaults, up from 103 in the same period a year earlier. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, the NYPD's school safety division recorded nearly 20 weapons arrests of individuals younger than 21, including 16 knife possession arrests and two box cutter possession arrests.
Dinowitz, who chairs the council's education committee, did not hold back about the current state of school safety staffing. As the New York Post reported, the councilman laid out a picture of a system already stretched thin before any cuts take effect.
"The DOE savings plan calls for a vacancy reduction of 264 school safety agents, meaning that schools would not be able to fully staff SSAs if desired."
He went further, describing conditions parents rarely hear about in official press releases:
"Currently, having just one School Safety Agent for every thousand students is not uncommon. Students are routinely late to class because of delays at scanners, and there are not enough SSAs who speak the languages of the students and families they serve."
One agent for a thousand kids. That ratio alone should give any city official pause before proposing further reductions. Instead, the Mamdani administration is moving in the opposite direction, cutting positions at a moment when the data says schools need more coverage, not less.
Jean, a Queens parent who asked that her last name not be used, captured the anxiety many families feel. She said the proposed cut made her uneasy about her child's safety.
"This makes me feel very uneasy for my child's safety, if the number of safety agents are cut, who would their responsibilities fall upon? The admin? Staff? They already have their hands full."
It is a fair question, and one the administration has not publicly answered. School safety agents are NYPD civilian employees. They staff metal detectors, monitor hallways, and serve as the first line of defense when violence breaks out. Removing 264 of them does not make the threats they handle disappear. It just means fewer adults are standing between students and danger.
Parent groups have warned that the reduction could "spell disaster" given the trajectory of violence in schools. That language may sound alarmist until you look at the weapons data from the NYPD's school safety division: knives, box cutters, and other weapons seized from young people in just the first three months of 2026.
Mayor Mamdani has faced a string of controversies in recent months. His administration has drawn scrutiny over everything from a push to strip Ed Koch's name from an iconic NYC bridge to questions about transparency in city governance.
The DOE has pointed to one data point as evidence that its approach is working: suspensions fell 8.3% from July through December 2025 compared with the same period the prior year, dropping to 9,193. The department attributed the decline to the use of restorative justice practices.
But fewer suspensions and rising felony assaults are not the success story the administration seems to think they are. If serious violence is climbing while formal discipline is falling, the most straightforward explanation is that schools are absorbing more disorder without acting on it, not that students are behaving better.
Restorative justice has become the preferred framework for progressive education officials across the country. Its premise is that dialogue and mediation reduce conflict more effectively than traditional discipline. The problem is that when felony assaults tick upward and weapons keep appearing, the framework starts to look less like reform and more like wishful thinking.
The administration's own numbers tell a contradictory story. Suspensions went down. Assaults went up. And the proposed response is to cut the people tasked with keeping order.
This pattern of controversy is becoming familiar. Recent reports have raised questions about alleged efforts by the Mamdani administration to suppress unfavorable information, adding to a broader picture of a City Hall more interested in managing optics than managing outcomes.
Consider the scale. The city's public school system serves over a million students. Dinowitz says a ratio of one safety agent per thousand students is already common. Cutting 264 positions from that baseline does not trim fat. It removes muscle from a system that is already running lean.
The fiscal year 2027 budget hearing where Dinowitz revealed the cuts was tied to a broader Mamdani budget plan that has drawn its own criticism for hidden fee hikes tucked inside headline savings numbers. The school safety reduction fits that pattern: a line item that looks good on a budget spreadsheet but shifts real costs, in risk, in disorder, in parental anxiety, onto the people who can least afford them.
No one is arguing that city budgets don't require hard choices. But choices reveal priorities. And a mayor who cuts school safety agents while felony assaults rise is telling parents exactly where their children's physical security ranks on his list.
The political dynamics surrounding Mamdani have grown increasingly complicated. His relationship with the Trump administration has drawn attention, including a recent announcement that caught many observers off guard. Whatever the mayor's broader political calculations, the school safety cuts land squarely on the families who send their kids into city buildings every morning and trust that someone is watching the door.
The proposed 264-position reduction has not yet been enacted. It remains part of the DOE savings plan headed for council review. Whether the City Council pushes back, or whether Dinowitz's public criticism signals real legislative resistance, is an open question.
What is not open to debate is the direction of the data. Felony assaults are up. Weapons are being seized from minors. And the city's answer, so far, is to cut the uniformed civilians who stand at the school entrance with a metal detector and a mandate to keep trouble out.
The broader pattern of Mamdani's tenure has raised alarms across the political spectrum, with recent revelations about the mayor's communications adding fuel to questions about whether City Hall is leveling with the public on any front.
Jean, the Queens mother, asked the right question: if safety agents go, who picks up their responsibilities? The administrators already have their hands full. The teachers already have their hands full. The answer the budget implies is simple, nobody.
When the people in charge cut the guards and call it savings, the bill doesn't disappear. It just gets paid by the kids walking through the door.
