In yet another de Blasio administration school safety failure, it turns out the city Department of Education has failed to live up to its commitments on combating bullying.
To settle a lawsuit over its inaction on bullying, the DOE agreed almost two full years ago to set up an electronic system to keep parents updated on responses to and resolutions of bullying incidents. But the parents are now back in federal court telling the judge that the DOE failed to deliver — which means its court-mandated report will in all likelihood underreport school bullying incidents.
State Sen. John Liu (D-Queens) slammed the DOE for taking “a ridiculously long time” to comply with the bullying hotline settlement, noting: “Bullying and harassment in our schools is aggravated many times over by DOE ineptness.”
Team de Blasio simply refuses to take school safety seriously.
The DOE’s own school climate surveys show that teachers as well as students feel increasingly unsafe — yet new discipline codes have basically eliminated real punishment for serious offenses. Instead, administrators are reduced to non-punitive “restorative justice” practices — counseling and de-facto bribes to induce better behavior.
Such rules are why Bayside’s Marie Curie Middle School failed to suspend the aggressors in two now-infamous cases — a student arrested for groping a female classmate in school, and another student involved in a caught-on-video cafeteria beat-down of her classmate.
It’s easy to see why Chancellor Richard Carranza fled a community meeting rather than answer outraged parents: The failure to protect victimized students is intrinsic to the discipline codes he believes in.
Punishments such as suspension allow innocent students to learn in a nonviolent, chaos-free environment. Letting disruptive students stay in school only gives them license to keep acting out.
What will it take before the mayor and chancellor admit that “Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows” is no answer to bullying?