Interim Schools Chancellor Harold Levy — reacting to a 10-year-old Bronx student’s suicide — says school officials have to implement tough new graduation requirements carefully to avoid causing similar tragedies.
“These are blunt instruments that can have enormous personal consequences, which are often unknown and unanticipated at the time of implementation,” Levy said of tough new school rules.
In a letter to Assemblyman Steven Sanders — who had called for an investigation into whether school troubles prompted the suicide — Levy said he has ordered his staff to review “whether our emphasis on standards and performance may have such inadvertent consequences.”
It was Levy’s first comments since Anthony Richards — a fifth-grader at PS 42 — hanged himself Tuesday with a belt in his bedroom. He was apparently distraught over his schoolwork and classroom problems.
Levy, who said it may never be known what caused the child to kill himself, said he met with the boy’s father, the school principal and the child’s teacher, Tina Johnson.
No one at the school said they noticed any “unusual behavior” before the boy killed himself, Levy said.
“Although clearly upset,” Levy said of the teacher, “she was also unable to identify any indication that the child was in any serious stress.”
The father, also named Anthony, “repeatedly alleged that the teacher was too demanding,” Levy said, and “was very upset that the teacher had required the parent to sign his son’s homework every night.”
The chancellor also said that Anthony’s father told him that “he regretted not having a better relationship with his son” and that the boy “would mostly talk with his mother.”
Levy said school officials should look to learn from Richards’ death at a time when standards for promotion and graduation are being toughened.
City schools recently mailed an estimated 300,000 letters to parents warning that their kids may be held back if they don’t do better. And high school seniors have to pass tougher Regents tests to earn a diploma.