De Blasio Panel Offers Blueprint for School Discipline Reforms

A panel assigned to review how New York City handles school discipline released its first set of recommendations on Thursday to widespread, if orchestrated, praise.

The Mayor’s Leadership Team on School Climate and Discipline said in its report that the city should focus on the relatively few schools that see the most arrests and suspensions, adding social workers and re-training school leaders to resolve conflicts differently. It also said educators and police need to reduce disparities in who's disciplined. Right now, a disproportionate number of black, Latino and special-needs students are suspended from schools. 

"By emphasizing de-escalation and conflict resolution, we can address bullying and school incidents and enable all our young people to reach their full potential,” Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said in a statement, just one comment in a wave of applause from educators, police, civil rights advocates and children's advocates.

Some of the suggestions already have been adopted, such as a new mission statement on school discipline. Others require school and police officials to collect accurate data, and make it public, before they can change anything.

For example, there are 80 school buildings with metal detectors but, despite a dramatic drop in school violence, not one school has removed a scanner. One reason: there is no protocol for evaluating scanners, much less removing (or adding) them.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would have a timeline for implementing other changes before the new school year begins in September. 

There has been a national trend away from school suspensions. After New York City saw a 63 percent increase between 2000 and 2010, school officials have shifted toward "restorative justice," including changes to the discipline code, and the numbers have gone down.

According to the panel report, there were about 36 percent fewer suspensions, 68 percent fewer arrests and 72 percent fewer summonses issued between the school years 2011-12 and 2014-15.

Still, a high number of suspensions and arrests continued at a small number of schools. Just 10 school campuses accounted for 49 percent of all summonses and 19 percent of all arrests made, the report said.

Here are some of the panel's recommendations:

• Support the highest-need schools. Approximately 10 percent of all city schools account for 41 percent of all suspensions, and the vast majority of arrest and summonses issued by police. The city should invest in more social workers, counselors and training at these schools.
• Offer system-wide support.  The city should hire staff to work at the borough level to help schools shift to the new approach.
• Improve data collection and use. At present, no city agency captures the full number of students who are arrested, issued summonses or handcuffed in New York City schools. This needs to change. 
• Implement protocols for metal detectors, remove them where appropriate. Despite a 48 percent reduction in total crime in public schools over the last decade, virtually no schools have removed a scanner. 
• Make Collaborative Problem Solving the rule. The pilot program that emphasized de-escalation and trained staff in what's known as "collaborative problem solving" should be applied across the school system.
• Create teams to better connect students and families with support. Currently, schools with limited staff resources and capacity must piece together independent relationships with mental health, housing, preventative services and other organizations. They need help.
• Reduce disparities in disciplinary practices. Despite overall declines in suspensions, arrests and summonses, disparities have increased.
• Improve training on needs of special-needs students. Students with special needs were suspended 2.6 times as frequently as students without disabilities this past school year. 

You can read the complete report here. The panel's next report, looking at the city's school discipline code and the memorandum of understanding between the New York Police Department and the Department of Education, should be released this fall.