“Police should enforce the law — they shouldn’t enforce the law in schools as a matter of course,” says Chancellor Richard Carranza. Huh?
This was Carranza’s “explanation” at a press conference announcing yet another weakening of the discipline code, with suspensions now limited to 20 days, max, in all but the most serious cases.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, has ordered cops to stop arresting or summonsing students for crimes including drinking, smoking pot and vandalism on school grounds.
Instead, City Hall is relying on expanded “Social-Emotional Learning” and “Restorative Justice” programs to teach children greater emotional control and better social skills. This, when those same kids struggle to learn basic math and English.
And if that doesn’t give you confidence, first lady Chirlane McCray’s ThriveNYC initiative is also part of the solution, as it sends 85 special social workers (along with 115 more already funded by the City Council) into the schools to counsel “students facing emotional distress.”
Yes, Thrive, with its near-perfect record of . . . being unable to show results.
The one silver lining here is that the rewrite of the decades-old memorandum of understanding between the Department of Education and the NYPD still leaves school safety agents under the supervision of the NYPD. But it further limits what the agents or the cops can do.
Misbehaving kids will most likely get warning cards or mandatory counseling for pot possession and other crimes: Suspension and arrest are last resorts that City Hall strongly discourages.
All this is a doubling-down on years-long softening of discipline — policies that have produced the first murder in a city school in decades, and (per state Education Department data) a 27% rise in “dangerous instruments” (i.e., guns and knives) confiscated in the schools over four years.
De Blasio insists that the drop in school crime rates proves his policies are working — skipping over the fact that his policies basically order much less reporting of crime.
Carranza loves to claim that his policies help black and brown kids, yet they’re the ones most at risk from in-school violence.
This is all about ideology and politics, and nothing to do with protecting the children.