In January 2026, three students were found carrying guns at three separate New York City schools. Felony assaults in city schools jumped 5% in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025. Queens recorded roughly 20 weapons arrests of people under 21 in the first quarter alone, plus 16 knife possession arrests and 2 box cutter arrests.
So naturally, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is cutting 264 school safety agent positions from the budget.
Mamdani's proposed FY2027 budget clocks in at $124.7 billion — a figure that exceeds the entire state budget of Florida by $10 billion, despite Florida having roughly three times New York City's population. Somewhere in that mountain of spending, the mayor decided school safety was the place to tighten the belt. Not administrative bloat. Not consulting contracts. The people who stand between children and the weapons they keep smuggling past the front door.
This is the same Zohran Mamdani who tweeted in June 2020: "We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD." That wasn't a late-night rant from a random activist. That was a sitting state assemblyman broadcasting his governing philosophy to the world. Now he's the mayor, and the philosophy hasn't changed — it just wears a budget line instead of a hashtag.
Gregory Floyd, president of Local 237 Teamsters, which represents school safety agents, put the staffing crisis in terms even a city council member could understand. "We're down 2,000 school safety agents, and it's only getting worse," Floyd told reporters. "We need scanning equipment that works. We need more bodies." Instead, his members are getting pink slips.
Democrat Councilman Eric Dinowitz, a former NYC teacher who chairs the education committee on the City Council, confirmed the math is as bad as it sounds. "Currently, having just one School Safety Agent for every thousand students is not uncommon," Dinowitz said. "Students are routinely late to class because of delays at scanners." One agent per thousand students. In a city where kids are bringing firearms to school in January and knives in March.
One parent, speaking to AMAC Newsline, didn't bother with policy language. "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 administration's answer, apparently, is a new "community safety office" Mamdani announced in March 2026. No additional officers. No upgraded scanning equipment. A new office — which in New York City governance means a new bureaucracy, a new commissioner, a new letterhead, and a new layer between the problem and the people who might actually solve it. Floyd asked for bodies and working equipment. He's getting an org chart.
Governor Kathy Hochul and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch have both remained conspicuously quiet on the cuts. Neither has publicly challenged Mamdani's decision to reduce safety staffing in schools that are already averaging one agent per thousand kids during a documented spike in weapons incidents. The silence from Albany is the kind that means either they agree with the policy or they've decided the political cost of opposing the new mayor isn't worth the trouble.
The pattern here isn't complicated. In 2020, Mamdani said defund the police. In 2026, as mayor, he's defunding the people who keep weapons out of schools. The language evolved — nobody says "defund" at press conferences anymore — but the budget tells you everything the talking points won't. You don't need a hashtag when you have line-item authority.
A $124.7 billion budget, and 264 school safety positions didn't make the cut. Three kids brought guns to school in a single month, and the city's answer is fewer agents and a new office.
That's not a policy disagreement. That's a priority statement.