Road to School Homicide

Max Eden’s exposé in Friday’s Post is a damning indictment of the de Blasioera school-discipline “reforms.” For the first time telling the backstory to the tragic stabbing death of a student at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation, the Manhattan Institute’s Eden shows how UA Wildlife leaders turned a safe school into a dangerous one.

Back in 2013, the grade 6-12 school was doing fine: 86 percent of teachers said order was maintained, and 80 percent of students reported feeling safe. By the 2016-17 school year, just 19 percent of teachers saw order maintained, and 55 percent of kids felt safe.

What happened? Mayor de Blasio and then-Chancellor Carmen Fariña imposed a new “restorative” approach to discipline. They ordered schools to first use nonpunitive responses until students had racked up multiple offenses — and even then to get clearance from the central office before issuing a suspension.

UA Wildlife resisted at first, but then new principals embraced the changes. Kids sent to the vice principal returned to class announcing they’d been told they could stay on their phone — and even found they could get away with cursing at the principal in the hall.

As veteran teachers transferred out of the school, the chaos grew. By 2016-17, log entries in the Skedula student-tracking system showed kids threatening teachers, and even hitting them — without consequences.

Meanwhile, the principals pointed to their low suspension rates as progress. “Some teachers stopped recording misbehavior on Skedula, seeing no point to it. Others continued, hoping against hope for support that never came,” noted Eden.

In the aftermath of Matthew McCree’s slaying, years of Skedula records were wiped (one teacher had kept them and provided them to Eden), and the system was redesigned to delete every record after 14 days.

And the school remained unsafe, with one student warning on social media that nothing happened even when outside kids ran around the halls wielding knives.

McCree isn’t the only victim: His attacker’s life has also been grievously marred, and students across the city suffer from the chaos de Blasio and Fariña invited.

Parents have every right to fear that, if the city doesn’t change course, it’s only a matter of time before another life is lost.