Opinion

Staying nervous on school safety

Are the city’s schools getting safer? Don’t rely on the data on suspensions for the answer.

The city Department of Education says suspensions fell 15.6 percent last year and are down 46 percent over the last five years. But that’s partly an artifact of a softening in discipline rules that began in the Bloomberg years — and accelerated in the de Blasio era.

After all, Mayor de Blasio won office vowing to dismantle the “school-to-prison” pipeline — arguing that too-harsh treatment in school condemns kids to lives outside the law. His DOE has pushed responding to disruptive students via “restorative justice” rather than any zero-tolerance approach.

Yet some are still being bounced repeatedly, as Selim Algar revealed in Sunday’s Post: At least 55 city schools had at least 30 students who were either kicked out of class or suspended multiple times last year.

United Federation of Teachers chief Michael Mulgrew, a critic of the anti-suspension campaign, faults the intervention services for failing to “reach” repeat offenders.

Worse: Gregory Floyd, head of the school-safety agents union, notes that weapons seizures are up — with 2,053, including seven firearms, recovered this last school year.

For months, Floyd has warned that the softer approach is “playing with the lives of students and teachers and school safety agents.” Two recent assaults on principals suggest he’s on to something.

All city schoolchildren should have a safe, nonviolent and chaos-free learning environment. Let’s all pray that the mayor’s efforts to look like he’s delivering on a campaign promise aren’t moving schools in the opposite direction.