A troubled Bronx high school with a violent past is seeking on-campus security guards — on Craigslist.
“Security professionals wanted for a High School in the Bronx!” states an online ad for scandal-scarred DeWitt Clinton High School. The school has been targeted for possible closure and grabbed headlines for academic problems and on-campus mayhem for years.
“DeWitt Clinton High School seeks to employ professional security (personnel) for a large comprehensive High School located in the Bronx, NY!” says the effervescent May 11 posting. “We seek to employ professionals who enjoy working with high school students in a fast paced and exciting environment.”
DeWitt Clinton, on W. Mosholu Pkwy S. in Jerome Park, has long struggled with safety issues and other problems.
The school was the site of violent gang clashes in 2010,it reported the most city students caught with weapons in 2012 and it racked up the highest number of student arrests in 2015.
Principal Santiago Taveras was removed for changing grades in 2016 and current Principal, Pierre Orbe, was recently cleared in a similar probe.
The Craigslist ad, which was still up Tuesday, said the school will pay $18 an hour for workers to “maintain a safe environment inside of a school,” “patrol hallways and staircases” and “respond to emergencies.” Campus security duties are typically handled by NYPD school safety agents who are trained, paid more than $18 hour and also earn benefits.
Education Department officials said the workers DeWitt Clinton seeks would be more like hallway monitors than cops.
But Local 237 Teamsters president Greg Floyd, whose union represents school safety agents, said having untrained security at schools is dangerous.
“Schoolchildren throughout the nation are being slaughtered,” he said. “This is certainly not the time — if there ever was one — for schools to have anything less than fully trained, fully vetted safety officers.”
Orbe didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on the ad. But students said they’d prefer proper NYPD-trained security.
“It’s crazy, ridiculous, unbelievable,” said senior Mahamdou Castro, 18. “Why would they put that on Craigslist?”
The online marketplace is widely used without snags, but some transactions have gone horribly wrong. Among the worst, New York model Julissa Brisman was killed in 2009 by a man in Boston who hired her as a masseuse.
Education Department spokeswoman Miranda Barbot wouldn’t say whether schools were allowed to hire security personnel through the site. She also wouldn’t say if other schools were engaged in such hires.
“DeWitt Clinton High School is seeking to hire an additional staff member to assist with daily tasks, including monitoring smooth transitions in the hallways between classes,” she said. “We are working with the school to ensure they are appropriately staffed and that any listings accurately reflect the needs of their community.”
