VIOLENCE

presented the father in that case.

Albany School District officials declined to comment due to the pending legal action.

In May, at Troy Elementary School P.S. 16, a student ran across the gym screaming that he was going to kill a female fifth-grade student. There was no significant response from school officials and the student who made the death threat was not punished, according to the daughter’s mother.

“If someone literally threatens to kill another student and then the student gets to come back to school, that is a problem,” said the mother, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her child’s privacy.

The Troy City School District said it could not comment on the incident due to privacy concerns.

According to the Troy district’s code of conduct, administrators, principals, teachers, counselors, the superintendent and other school personnel are required to address issues of harassment, including verbal threats.

Similar outcomes involving violent incidents stretch beyond the Capital Region and across the state.

In June, state Attorney General Letitia James’ office filed a lawsuit against Niagara Wheatfield Central School District for failing to respond to incidents of sexual assault and bullying in its schools. In October 2017, a Sullivan County jury ordered the Eldred School District to pay $1 million to the family of a student who was routinely bullied because they failed to protect the student, according to published reports.

In 2015, the state comptroller’s office conducted an investigation that found schools across New York have underreported violent and disruptive incidents to the state. Since 2017, the number of reported incidents in the Capital Region has decreased, according to state Department of Education data.

It’s unclear why the reported number of violent incidents have declined. An auditor for the state comptroller’s office suggested the drop could be a result of better, more clear directives from the state Education Department about when and what to report.

The state Education Department revised the categories of the types of reportable incidents prior to the 2017 data. The intent was to make reporting less complicated and to place greater emphasis on accurately identifying violent incidents to facilitate accurate reporting, state officials said.

Still, student discipline experts suspect that underreporting is an issue nationwide, including in the Capital Region.

In the 2018-2019 school year, the Niskayuna School District reported 24 physical assaults, and one severe physical assault. That is more than 2.6 times more incidents than any other year since 2012 the district has reported.

While a five-day suspension might seem insufficient for a physical assault that was as severe as what the 14-year-old boy endured at Niskayuna High School, schools face a difficult decision when trying to decide how long to suspend a student, experts said. It has been widely documented that suspensions may not be a productive means of punishment for the students who engage in violence and often result in them entering the juvenile justice system rather than graduating high school, in particular for students of color.

“Schools are under a lot of pressure to not use expulsions and to not suspend students for more

“

Schools are under a lot of pressure to not use expulsions and to not suspend students for more than two weeks because they are losing a lot of classroom time.”

Lucy Sorensen, a professor at the state University at Albany

than two weeks because they are losing a lot of classroom time,” said Lucy Sorensen, a professor at the state University at Albany who studies school discipline records and how schools deal with student misconduct.

“Simply removing the student from the school is unlikely to address that student’s underlying trauma or cause of that misbehavior,” said Chris Curran, a professor at the University of Florida who studies school discipline issues.

For incidents that rise to the level of a crime, including the assault that injured the 14-year-old boy, schools should suspend the student longterm or take more severe measures, some experts said. But for some student-on-student assaults, many superintendents do not impose the more severe punishments, even for students repeatedly involved in unprovoked violence.

Samantha Viano, a professor at the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University, warns that physical assault, which results in severe injuries, should not be grouped into the same category as other more minor disciplinary matters that often are at the center of the controversy around school discipline.

“The broader push toward restorative justice are for the vast majority of incidents that are just a code of conduct violation, like disrespect to teachers, tardiness, etc.,” Viano said. “What this is is an assault.

“While it is negative for students to be suspended, there is also strong evidence that violent victimization at schools is very negative for the victim,” Viano said. “Schools should respond strongly to those incidents ... and shouldn’t take expulsion off the table for those incidents.”

Rather than expulsion, students may be transferred to a different school, according to a review of the codes of conduct in place at Capital Region school districts, including Niskayuna.

But when the football player returned from his five-day suspension, he allegedly assaulted another student in a locker room, according to Snider.

“This kid is going to end up in jail (without intervention),” the attorney said. “He needs services ... and he has none of it. He has none of that because no one will say it because they are afraid of losing their job or afraid of a lawsuit.”

The victimized boy would also benefit from services, said his mother. “His return to school was very, very nerve-racking.

“Are we waiting for someone to die to say, ‘Oh, our school has a (bullying) issue’?”