School Discipline Issues Rise As Suspensions Fall.

Since Bill de Blasio became Mayor of New York City in 2014. one of his priorities was to reduce the student suspension rate.  He and the Chancellor, Carmen Farina, implemented new student discipline policies that required that principals get DOE Central approval before suspending students.  Another layer of bureaucratic bloat, just what an already bloated organization needs.  As spring break ends, the de Blasio/Farina administration will be further weakling the student discipline code as student insubordination  and elementary school suspensions will virtually be eliminated.

A study done by Chalkbeat found that 22% of all Principal recommended suspensions were rejected by DOE Central under the new student discipline policy last year.  The numbers are probably higher since many principals who may have wanted to suspend students for repeated insubordination and school disruptions didn't bother to fill out the paperwork, knowing that DOE Central would not agree to the suspension.  Instead, many of these students were sent right back to the classroom to interfere with instruction

The Bill de Blasio administration's lax student discipline policy that has reduced  suspensions by 36%  has also seen a corresponding rise in student misbehavior.  The alternatives to suspension has been restorative justice, warning cards, and mediation.  Few teachers have been trained in alternative techniques, since it costs time and money for the training.  The result is that many schools suffer from chaos as misbehaving students are pushed back into the classroom to distract, disrupt, and destroy instruction.

Add the ever weakening student discipline policy with the ill-advised cellphone policy especially in high poverty urban schools,and is it any wonder that schools must resort to academic fraud to jack up their graduation rate while pushing out academically unprepared students into high education or the job market?

I'm glad I am near the end of my career and feel really sorry for the "newbies" entering the system as they will be blamed for the student's lack of academic achievement when its our progressive Mayor and his disappointing Chancellor that is the real blame  for the school's failure to provide a real educational experience.

Are Our Schools Really Safer? The Answer Is No!

If you read the newspapers, the De Blasio administration and Chancellor, Carmen Farina, will crow about how suspensions are decreasing and criminal arrests are way down from the Bloomberg years.  What both the Mayor and Chancellor fail to explain is the reductions are based upon policy changes and lax discipline procedures, not because the schools are a safer place for children.  Last school year the head of the school safety agents pointed out how weapons confiscated at school never seem to show up in the statistics.  Instead, the schools have been told to use restorative justice techniques or issue warning cards instead of suspensions or arrests.  In fact, the DOE has told principals not to include the "warning cards" and marijuana offenses in the OORS discipline report.  Obviously, to hide the truth about crime and drugs in the schools.

The Mayor and Chancellor simply made it more difficult for principals to suspend misbehaving and dangerous students and discouraged arrests.  This does not make schools any safer and probably makes them less safe as these students remain in the school to disrupt, threaten, and intimidate other students and staff.  See Flushing High School.  Where the threatened teacher received a one month suspension and loss of her position at the school.

Just take a look at what has happen the last week.  First, at Richmond Hill High School, a Renewal School, there was a gang fight.  See the YouTube video.  The school is one of the schools cited by the New York Post as having the most student crimes. is it any wonder that the head of the School Safety Agents told PIX11 that the Mayor is covering up crime and violence at the schools because he wants to show progress in an election year.

Yesterday, a student was knifed at John Browne High School.  Yes the same High School that has been in the news for the Principal Howard Kwait who has had another lawsuit filed against him by his Assistant Principal.  You can read more about Principal Howard Kwait Here. Yet Mr. Kwait still is the Principal, go figure.

The Mayor and the Chancellor may continue to manipulate the student crime and violence statistics but the truth is that the school are not becoming safer just because they want it to be.

Student Discipline Is Getting Worse Under The Mayor's Misguided Policies.

Over the last two years I wrote some posts about how school discipline has been getting worse since Mayor, Bill de Blasio took office who sees the New York City Public Schools from the perspective of his high achieving children who went to specialized high schools. You can find my posts Here, Here, and Here.

First, it was the ill-advised cellphone policy that allowed students to carry them in school.  Sure, he insisted that the students could not use in in the classroom but he put the responsibility squarely on the teacher, School administrators held the teachers accountable and not their own lack of enforcement for the cellphone use in the school.  The result was that students were distracted and a study showed that it caused a reduction in student academic achievement, especially in poor, minority schools.

Second, the Mayor allowed a lax student discipline policy with fewer suspensions and schools could no longer suspend a student unless DOE Central approved it.  Instead he pushed a restorative justice program and for more serious offenses a "warning card" program.  The result was a more unsafe school environment as misbehaving and even dangerous students were sent back to the classroom to continue to terrorize the teacher and students.

Finally, under Mayor Bill de Blasio's progressive policy, his emphasis to reduce arrests and suspensions in the schools allowed  students to run roughshod in the schools with little fear of punishment. 

The Bill de Blasio approach to school discipline is just like the  "broken window theory" just like real broken windows if the windows remain unfixed in houses on the block, eventually the rest of the houses on the block will experience lower property values, and have broken windows themselves. The same goes for the schools if the misbehaving and violent students are not punished and they continue to disrupt and disrespect the classroom, eventually other students will follow suit.  The result is an academically deteriorating school.

Max Eden of the Manhattan Institute did a detailed analysis of the Bill de Blasio student discipline policies and came up with the same conclusions as I have written about since the Mayor took office.  You can find the full report Here.  A summary of the report by Chalkbeat can be found Here.

When Statistics Lie About School Violence.

The Bill de Blasio administration has proudly announced that school suspensions and criminal arrests have dropped significantly since he took office and that's correct.  However, if one was to look into the lower suspensions and criminal arrests you would find that the tone of the schools have not changed, just the numbers have.


Under the Bill de Blasio administration, two programs account for the significant reductions in suspensions and arrests,  The first, is the School Justice Project, with an emphasis on Restorative justice techniques, combined with new student discipline regulations that make it difficult to suspend students without the DOE Central approving it.  Second, is the "warning card" program for students 16 years of age or older that allows schools to give out warning cards  for criminal behavior rather than be arrested.  71 schools, mostly in the Bronx are part of the program and will be expanded to another 37 schools throughout the City next year.

The new initiatives gives parents and students a false sense of security that the schools that their child chose is safe.  However, the head of the school safety agents that protect the schools, Greg Floyd, had this to say about the dropping suspensions and arrests.  "Crime statistics in public schools can be hidden. Weapons cannot".  Mr. Floyd was pointing out that there was no corresponding drop in students found to have weapons on them.  Moreover, Mr. Floyd stated that principals under report or miscategorize violent incidents to keep the suspension and arrest rates down for fear of the DOE closing their school.  This keeps the families in the dark about the potentially unsafe school environment there is for their children.


While nobody wants to go back to the "bad old days" of school to prison pipeline, hiding violent misbehavior and criminal actions by initiatives that have questionable value just make the schools more unsafe for the unsuspecting families that send their children to the school based on bogus statistics that hide the real truth about the school.

Too Bad Black Lives Matter Seem Not To Care About Black Children Shot By Gang Violence.

Over the last couple of years and especially after the Ferguson Missouri incident.  Black outrage against the police resulted in the rise of a new group called "Black Lives Matter".  This group was a vocal advocate of treating the young black men with the same respect as all other people,  However, the Black Lives Matter group slowly morphed into a political organization and seemed to move away from their roots.  While the Black Lives Matter movement still had a focus on anti-police action when they could exploit incidents that show the police abusing their authority and rightly so.  The movement has also taken an ideological slant that is quite disturbing to me.

For example the Black Lives Matter movement supports the Boycott Disinvestment and Sanction (BDS) organization against Israel, an anti-Semitic movement dominated by pro Palestinian, far left fringe groups.  Can anybody explain how the Black Lives Matter movement supports an organization that tries to DE-legitimatizes a Democratic country which has never discriminated against young black men in the United States?.

What bothers me the most is that the Black Lives Matter movement has been strangely silent about the escalating gang violence in Chicago that has resulted in 762 killing last year and 41 children under the age of 14 were shot. Most of these killings and the over 3,550 shootings in 2016 were black on black crime (75-80%).  Instead of protesting the occasional police misconduct or abuse, the Black Lives Matter organization should be protesting against the gang violence that plague the black neighborhoods of Chicago.  In fact, Black Lives Matter may have indirectly caused the skyrocketing of the crime rate in Chicago by stopping police from making stops of suspicious young black men for fear of being labeled a racist.

Back to the 41 innocent children shot who were in the crossfire of gang violence.  Because of neighborhood distrust of the Chicago police, only 3 of the 41 child shootings have resulted in an arrest.  According to the police, the distrust of the community makes it difficult to get witness statements even when people know who the shooter is.  Shouldn't the Black Lives Matter movement be protecting these children?  Try to clean up the neighborhood and eradicate gang violence?  Wouldn't the movement gain respectability by helping make the communities safe for families and children to walk to school and play on the street?  How about cooperating with the police to make communities safe?  Instead they continue to follow an ideologically driven anti-police agenda at the expense of the very communities that they should be supporting.

The bottom line is, if Black Lives Matter wants to be relevant then they must start with fighting gang violence in the Black communities of Chicago and not simply protesting the occasional police action.

Why Marriage Is Good For The Entire Family.

In our society fewer people are getting married and many children are being raised in a one parent (mainly mother) household.  While this troubling trend has become more acceptable in Western society, its not, for the most part, best for the family unit.  Long-term marriage offers many advantages when compared to unmarried family units.  These advantages are as follows:

• Financial
• Educational
• Behavioral
• Health
• Stability

When two parents are working, this gives greater financial support to the family and provides two positive working role models for the children to learn from.  Study after study shows that children from dual parent households do better in school than children from single parent households. In a two parent family, usually one, mainly the male, will be the disciplinarian while the other, usually the female,  being the nurturer and the children learn the various coping skills necessary to survive and thrive which is usually extended to their entire social world.  Finally, a two parent household provides financial, health, emotional, and educational stability to the family unit. Which greatly reduces the effects of poverty.

A committed relationship that two adults share with each other, under the same roof, gives their children a "head start" in being successful.  It doesn't matter if its between a man and woman or a same sex couple.  The bottom line is that their children will be better for it.

An interesting study shows that men benefit greatly when marrying and staying with a women.  It seems that married men enjoy better health and live longer since the women usually prods the man to take better care of themselves and go to the doctor when feeling poorly. Marriage also benefits women who feel they have a partner that lends them emotional support and giving them the feeling of responsibility in keeping their partner healthy.

It appears, for the most part, a long-term stable marriage benefits the entire family.  Too bad we seem to be going into an opposite direction when it comes to marriage. This might be one of the areas that we need to explore and reverse the trend if we are to reduce poverty and see better academic outcomes for the children.

The Daily News Unfairly Blames The Shooting Death Of Tysha Jones On The Teachers' Union Contract And Not On Gang Violence Where It Belongs.

The New York Daily News Editorial Board, in a misguided attempt to bash Public Education in New York City in general and the teachers' union in particular, has blamed the shooting death of Tysha Jones on the fact that the teachers union and the Department of Education negotiated a contract that made Brooklyn-Queens day a professional development day throughout the City. It is unbelievable that the Editorial completely ignores the gang-related issues that started the problem and unfairly compared the NYC Public School System with the Charter Schools, whom for the most part, had school that day.

Talk about hypocrisy! The Daily News Editorial Board is showing their political agenda while ignoring the cause of the shooting and killing of Tysha Jones, the ever continuing gang violence between what looks like the Bloods and Crips (many of them in their 20s and are no longer in school) that seemed to be the cause of the problem. In fact, the other five shooting victims are black males in their 20s and not school-age teenagers. What is even more hypocritical about the Daily News Editorial Board is their failure to acknowledge and condemn the "forced day off" the Charter Schools gave the students so they can protest for Charter School co-location on May 26th. Nowhere did I read in the New York Daily News or any other newspapers for that matter, complain that the Charter Schools took away valuable instruction time to protest a political agenda. Now that is hypocrisy!

The New York Daily News Editorial Board has shown its bias against the NYC Public Schools by reaching to a conclusion that is wrong while deliberately ignoring worse abuses perpetrated by the Charter Schools they support. They should be ashamed of themselves for their garbage editorial that blame the Public School System for the shootings and not the gang violence.

update: A 19 year-old high school dropout, with an extensive arrest record and a member of the Crips gang was arrested for the killing of Tysha Jones. So far no teachers have been linked to the killing.

Will The Closing Of Neighborhood High Schools In New York City Result In Increasing Violence To Students Like In Chicago?

I was watching NBC's Dateline on the violence perpetrated on teenagers, especially high school students. Shockingly, one of the primary reasons for the increased violence was the closing of many of the neighborhood high schools in Chicago, requiring students to travel long distances to other schools that may be in the territory of a rival gang. The result has been increased violence against these students and even homicide. In Chicago there were 280 major attacks on students and 32 homicides. The Chicago police believe that the violence wold be less if the students stayed in their own neighborhood but with so many high schools closed, more students are required to travel further away from the safety of their neighborhood to attend school. While the Superintendent of Schools claims that this is not true, the police, and parents of attacked students feel differently.

Now travel to New York City where the DOE wants to follow the example of Chicago in a mass closing of neighborhood high schools (19 were slated for closing until the courts stopped the DOE). Just like in Chicago, the replacement schools will limit the amount of "at risk" students to the schools and usually has a total school population of less than half of the closed school. This requires many students to travel long distances to get to the few schools who accept them. Since this means traveling into other neighborhoods and yes, different gangs in that neighborhood, what do you think will happen? Yes more violence.

For example, one of the high schools slated to close is in a "Crips neighborhood". One of the few schools who will take the "at risk" students from the closing school is located in a "Bloods neighborhood". I'm sure you can figure out what will happen in and out of the school as the students travel long distances into enemy territory. However, just like Chicago, the DOE has seemed to ignore that inconvenient problem and are closing their collective minds to the potential upsurge in student violence due to the closing of the neighborhood schools. Will it take a Dateline story to release that closing the neighborhood high schools just puts those students at greater risk to gang violence but then again it is not about the students but just part of Tweed's "children last" policy.