New York schools have been failing to educate children for decades. Now the system may be ready to fail on its other duty to kids: keeping them safe.
As The Post’s Yoav Gonen reports Tuesday, a mayoral task force on school safety has a draft plan to limit in-school arrests for vandalism, graffiti, criminal mischief and other offenses. The NYPD and school-safety agents couldn’t act without the principal’s OK.
In fact, administrators couldn’t even tell school-safety agents about bullying and disorderly conduct. Security’s to be notified only for “immediate threat of physical injury.”
This is nuts. The line between “disorderly conduct” and “physical injury” can be razor-thin. From bullying to violence, thinner still.
As Sam Pirozzolo, No. 2 at the New York City Parents Union, told The Post, “If you can be arrested outside schools for this type of behavior, you should be arrested inside school for it as well.” The plan is “truly ridiculous.”
Dangerous, too.
Mayor de Blasio has firmly resisted calls from his left — including many on the City Council — to rein in Broken Windows policing. Yet now his own task force is proposing the same thing — in schools.
If the mayor cares about the safety of vulnerable children, he’ll immediately disavow this plan — or at least see it quietly buried.