BREAK IT UP, CARRANZA!
Mom fumes: This is no way to give kids a fighting chance at education!
Newly released video of an allout punching, kicking, hair-pulling, girl-on-girl assault in the cafe teria of a Queens middle school is just the latest sign New York’s schools are out of control — and
it has parents fuming, teachers wringing hands and the scschools chancellor literally walkining the other way.
“I really don’t think he cares,” the mom of the victim in the caught-on-video cafeteria fight told The Post Friday, a day after Chancellor Richard Carranza walked out on her when she tried to confront him about the brawl at a town hall meeting.
“He didn’t say a word — he just sat there,” as she pleaded for action, said the mom, Katty Sterling, whose daughter was attacked at MMS 158 in Bayside last week.
Video of the beating shows the older of the two girls, a 14year-old, taunting Sterling’s daughter, who is 13 — goading, “Let’s start, bro!”
Then she continues the attack, slapping the younger girl in the face, then appearing to grab her by the neck and throw her into a cafeteria table.
When the younger girl falls to the floor — and as other schoolkids shriek or cheer in the background — the older girl grips her victim by the hair with one hand and pummels her with her other fist.
Amid the chaos, teachers either stood by or made feeble attempts to intercede. Their efforts were so weak the attacker was able to leap onto her victim from on top of a table like a WWE fighter.
The video ends with the 14year-old standing on a table and raising her hands in victory to the
cheers of classmates.
“And they can’t stop this? How is this possible?” Sterling said of the teachers. “The girl even gets up on a table and jumps on her. It’s unbelievable.”
As for Carranza, “He had no answers for what the parents were asking,” Sterling said of Thursday’s town hall. “And then he left.” The Post knows how Sterling feels — when a reporter tried to speak to Carranza before another event on Friday, the chancellor kept right on walking, and one of his two bodyguards interceded with instructions to call his press office.
But while Carranza stays protected, students, teachers and parents at MS 158 describe an atmosphere that is the opposite of safe and secure.
“It’s a dangerous place to work,” one teacher at the top-tier school, also known as Marie Curie Middle School, told The Post on Friday, asking not to be named. “The administration isn’t doing anything.”
Last year, administrators failed to punish a male student accused of sexually abusing a male classmate, the victim’s parents said last week, referring to an assault detailed inn documents obtained by The Post.
In November, a girl reported that after months off sexual bul-bullying by a 13-year-old male classmate, the boy exposed himself to her inn a school, grabbed her and demanded sex.
In none of the three instances — all of which happened on school property — were students suspended, outraged parents say. Instead, parents had to call the cops to get action, according to documentation reviewed by The Post. The kids are running the school, complained Jenny Suarez, the parent of a Marie Curie sixthgrader. “I guess they’re afraid oof getting involved and losing their jobs,” she said of the video’s do-nothing teachers. At the very least, school administrators should alert parents when assaults happen, and they do not, said Andrena Mcrae, 38, whose daughter is in eighth grade.
“I would like to be a little more aware when things like that happen versus hearing it on Facebook or the New York Post.”
Rep. Grace Meng, the US congresswoman whose district includes Bayside, said she asked Carranza’s office about the November sex assault a month ago, and still hasn’t heard back.
“This is not acceptable,” she said, adding that parents like Sterling were justified in being furious.
“I would never personally get up and leave a meeting like that,” she said of Carranza ditching Sterling at the town hall.
Meng, too, has been getting the runaround by Carranza, she said.
“We’ve been playing phone tag,” she said.
Other Queens pols have been livid — including Councilman Robert Holden, who blasted Carranza as “toxic” and urged the mayor to consider replacing him.
“Handling criticism is part of his job, and it’s embarrassing that he can’t do that with more composure and instead turns his back on the parents of the children he is supposed to be helping,” Holden said.
“We share the concerns raised by parents about Marie Curie and are addressing them immediately by adding more safety agents and counselors to the school and retraining staff,” mayoral spokewoman Jane Meyer responded.
A Department of Education spokeswoman said Carranza is “taking decisive action” and only left “once it became clear the town hall was no longer going to be a productive conversation.”
Chancellor Richard Carranza on Thursday night fled rather than face parents’ fury over growing discipline and safety problems at city schools. At a packed Community Education Council meeting in Queens, Carranza took direct fire from two parents whose kids were victims of separate physical and sexual assaults at MS 158/Marie Curie in Bayside.
Once a highly regarded school, MS 158 has seen a string of ugly incidents in recent months, including a vicious caught-onvideo lunchroom fight last week and a classroom sexual assault last month.
Video of the fight shows a relentless assault by one female student on a classmate who plainly doesn’t want to fight — with the aggressor repeatedly escaping adults’ lame efforts to restrain her.
At the CEC meeting, that victim’s mother told Carranza and school officials that the violent assault left her daughter too afraid to return to school. Yet the attacker goes unpunished and continues to attend class. The distraught mom yelled at Carranza: “We’re not getting answers! Nobody is giving answers!” But the chancellor gave none, either.
The sexual-assault case saw a 13-year-old boy arrested and charged with misdemeanor forcible touching. Carranza also ignored questions from that victim’s father.
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.
Most teachers and staff sympathize with the reforms’ goals but not the actual changes that left them helpless in handling the most disruptive and dangerous students.
The mother of the lunchroom victim tells The Post that the school refuses to take any action — saying it’s up to the NYPD to handle the attacker.
Carranza needs to rethink his priorities: Restoring fundamental school order had to be Job One. Without it, nothing else matters.