It's Sunday and the New York Post's Susan Edelman has published another important article on the New York City Public Schools, this time its about weapons in the schools. According to the article there has been a 26% increase in weapons confiscated for this school year compared to last. Of the 1,751 weapons confiscated, 698 came from schools with metal detectors, yet the Mayor is under pressure to eliminate these safeguards. Imagine what these schools would be like if there were no meta detectors? How more unsafe would these schools be? As it is, most of the weapon confiscations are from schools without metal detectors or 60% of all confiscations.
Sure, under the Bloomberg administration there were weapon confiscations and many principals hid violent incidents, while the DOE looked the other way An example was HIllcrest High School where staff knew not to report incidents and they received a safety award for being a safe school. However, the Mayor understood that suspensions, arrests, were necessary and no electronics by students in school were important for him to achieve his educational goals. Unfortunately, with our progressive mayor school suspensions are down 32%, cellphones are being used indiscriminately, and restorative justice meeting that students take as a joke allows disruptive and violent students back into the classroom to continue to make havoc in the classroom which hurts student learning.
Schools need to be safe and the classroom peaceful for real student academic achievement, neither is possible if the De Blasio administration continues to ignore what is really going on in the schools. Giving a pass to student destructive behaviors and hiding the real statistics that show how unsafe schools really are and yet teachers are blamed when these behaviors go unchecked.
You don't need a gun to have a weapon. This past week, 2 students, on 2 different days, found a meter stick in the classroom I was covering and brandished it in my face, coming dangerously close to my eyes. They also threatened to strike me with the meter sticks. When I went to call the dean on the phone about this, one student reached across my face to disconnect the phone. I reported to the school's chapter leader that I felt unsafe in the school. He told me to report any such activities to him and gave me a phone number. Great, unless another student disconnects the phone.
ReplyDeleteThe students in this school are absolute thugs. You cannot even cajole them to behave in a remotely human way. They do nothing, even in a regular class, but play with their phones, grab each other, get into fights, etc. I covered a CTT class with a "regular" teacher in there with me. This man did absolutely nothing but sit on his fat rear end and work with Skedula. The other teacher, who I was covering for, had not left work. Mr. Skedula made absolutely no attempt to assign any work. Meanwhile, 98% of his students were texting, making actual phone calls, watching movies on their phones, walking out of the classroom unchallenged, etc. When I leave this school at 3:15 each day, the first thing I want to do is to take a shower to wash off the figurative filth from myself and bless that I was not injured.
The cell phones were allowed in by. Mayor D...so kids could contact their parents...? They use them for everything but that, and it's impossible for most schools to prevent them from using phones for other purposes. Mayor D. should revisit his thinking on this one. Also...according to this article, it could be wise to install metal detectors in ALL public schools in NYC. Reducing detectors is irresponsible to the task of protecting students during school hours.
ReplyDeleteImagine the true number of weapons being brought into NYC high schools, especially in high schools without metal detectors. At Marie Curie HS in the Bronx, a student was attacked with a knife in the bathroom. Last year at the campus building that houses Bronxwood, a teacher car was shot full of bullet holes by a disgruntled student. Both had no metal detectors. Most incidents are not being reported.
ReplyDeleteOn the Columbus Campus in the Bronx you can pick various staircases for multiple entertainment such as marajuana sections and the gambling sections. There is so much dice playing going on that it's literally insane. All you smell is weed and all you hear are the sounds of dice hitting the floor and walls. I have to try and get it on video.
ReplyDeleteThe answer is too bad, deal with it. School wont do anything, neither will the union. Like the UFT tells me, Im lucky to have a job...
ReplyDelete6:17,
ReplyDeleteIt's on video, no one cares. I walked down a stairway last week and a student was orally servicing another student. I backed up and went to the security office. They were watching it on the monitor. Some of the girls are prostituting themselves for a few dollars. Stay away from the back stairwells in large schools.
What bugs me about the whole metal detector issue is that they're usually only in place at high schools with mainly low-income students of color. Granted, those schools tend to be the most violent due to the neighborhood they're in, the schools' bad rep, and also because such schools are usually not selective leading to their student population to be very needy.
ReplyDeleteBut it's frustrating, because there are some high schools in the city that don't need metal detectors but have them just because. And then there are some high schools in the city that are known to be violent but DON'T have metal detectors (Martin Van Buren for example). So, either give ALL schools metal detectors (yes, even the "safe" ones to make them "safer") or take out metal detectors from certain schools and give them to others that need them more.