Defining Discipline Down
In rolling out watered-down school-discipline rules Thursday, the city Department of Education pointed to recent gains in safety. Too bad those gains are bogus.
The mayor touted a decrease in suspensions and reports of school crime — even as state and NYPD data show violence and weapon possession at record levels.
Yes, City Hall cites some NYPD data of its own: statistics showing that 1,555 students were arrested in the 2014-15 school year, vs. just 436 in the first half of this year.
But, as The Post has reported, 1,751 weapons were recovered in city schools as of May 2016, a more than 26 percent increase — making the most recent school year the worst on record for weapon possession.
And state data show that 2015 was New York City’s most dangerous recent school year, with violent incidents up 23 percent.
As for the reported drops: Critics say school administrators are under heavy pressure to halt suspensions and not report crime.
Parents aren’t fooled: School-enrollment data show a steady flight from violent schools to safer ones.
What’s really driving the new discipline code? Mayor de Blasio’s campaign promise to dismantle the “school-to-prison pipeline” — that is, to stop suspensions, end arrests and eliminate metal detectors on the theory that it all condemns kids to lives of crime.
The DOE’s announcement stressed the most innocuous change, ending suspensions for K-2 students. Fair enough: Toddlers aren’t the ones bringing weapons to school and threatening other students and teachers.
It’s the rules for higher grades that mean trouble. Greg Floyd, head of the schoolsafety agents union, rightly blasts the softening of discipline policy as “playing with the lives of students and teachers and school safety agents.”
It’s all another betrayal of the city’s underprivileged, whose schools are most at risk.
The “school-to-prison pipeline” rhetoric makes it seem racist to take school discipline seriously. The reverse is true: Minority students have an equal right to a nonviolent, chaos-free learning environment. Too bad the mayor insists on putting politics above those students’ needs.