Teachers, parents want real discipline as NYC student suspensions fallBy Mary Kay Linge and Kathianne Boniello
June 4, 2022
A progressive push to soften school discipline has caused student suspensions to plummet — and made city classrooms more chaotic and dangerous than ever, parents and teachers charge.
Suspensions of five days or more meted out by principals and superintendents plunged more than 42 percent from the fall of 2017 to the fall of 2021, from 14,502 to 8,369, Department of Education data shows.
As suspensions declined, taxpayer money allocated to “restorative justice” — a system that sends badly-behaving students to mediation, conflict “circle” meetings, and guidance counseling, rather than boot them from classrooms — soared. The city in February pledged to sink $1.3 million more into such programs.
“That’s the reason everything’s in the toilet,” one Queens educator, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Post. “They were saying people of color were disproportionately affected by suspension, but to completely take [suspensions] away from everybody in every instance is doing more harm than good.”
Black and Hispanic kids are suspended more often than their peers, according to a 2021 report, and some advocates have cheered the drop in kicking kids out.
But fewer suspensions mean more mayhem in the classroom, according to educators and parents.
“We have teachers getting kicked at, spit at, cursed at, things thrown at [them] and the kid is back the next day like nothing happened,” said the teacher, who didn’t give her name for fear of retaliation. “And the teacher is asked, ‘What did you do to trigger the child?'”
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/06/04/teachers-parents-want-discipline-as-nyc-student-suspensions-fall/
