One of the worst policies of the Bill de Blasio administration is his student discipline policy. Principals are no longer are allowed to suspend violent and misbehaving students without approval by Tweed and since the Mayor and Chancellor frowns on suspensions, far too many students are sent back to class to continue the reign of terror, Instead the violent or misbehaving student is required to attend the useless restorative justice session which they find as a joke.
To hide the unsafe climate at schools, the Mayor and Chancellor have made it clear that school administrators are not to report incidents and to quietly handle it at the school. The result is that fewer incidents are reported and the Mayor and Chancellor can claim that the schools are safer. Of course, if you ask students and teachers you would hear a different story. They would tell you that there is widespread bullying and intimidation as well as threats to students and staff.
The latest incident that school administrators tried to cover up was a middle school girl fight in the cafeteria at MS 158 in Bayside Queens. The school administration never reported the fight and it was only after a parent of the girl who was beaten up and reported to the police who then arrested the other girl, did the school administration report the incident. You can see the fight Here. In another incident, last year,at the same school a girl was sexually harassed and groped by a boy and the school administration did not take any action. The boy decided he could sexually harass the girl whenever he wanted and finally the girl told her parents who called the police and he boy was arrested. The school also failed to suspend a male student who sexually molested another male student.
At the meeting, a teacher cited the new discipline code for lowering morale and leaving teachers unable “to effectively manage classrooms,” adding that staff are “no longer respected and supported.”
Even the head of the usually dead-quiet principals’ union, Mark Cannizzaro, recently sounded the alarm, writing Carranza: “In many schools, misconduct is on the rise, leading some students to believe there are little or no consequences for disruptive, openly defiant and even violent behavior.” Principals and staff feel “unsupported” by system higher-ups, he complained.
Chancellor Carranza went to a town hall at MS 74 and when parents confronted him about the lax discipline policy he refused to respond and quickly left the meeting without addressing the parent concerns. The Chancellor's cowardly action shows that it may be time to find a new Chancellor who puts school safety first. Read the New York Post opinion article on the Chancellor's cowardly action at the MS 74 Town Hall.