STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A teacher at Susan E. Wagner High School said students there are “afraid,” after a spate of violent incidents -- the most recent being a fight outside the school that involved a gun.
The teacher, who spoke at an online town hall meeting Wednesday, said her student was the boy in the Dec. 6 video whose attacker put a gun in his face after getting the upper hand in the fight. On video another attacker continues pummeling his victim after he appears to go limp on the ground.
She said the school didn’t inform her about the incident until the next day, and the boy who had the gun in his face didn’t return to class for a week.
“These incidents occurred with my personal students who were targeted outside of the school. ...However, I feel like we’re the last ones to be notified of what’s going on ...I feel like my whole class -- everyone’s afraid,” the teacher said.
“What’s the protocol for notifying staff and parents about what’s going on in school? .... My student had a gun to his head and I had to call and see how he was doing. The kid didn’t come in the whole week. That’s traumatizing,” she added.
The focus of the Zoom-held New York City School Safety Coalition (SSC) town hall -- that brought together Staten Island families, teachers and officials -- was safety across the Island. However, most speakers remained focused on the series of incidents at Susan E. Wagner High School that’s occurred in recent months.
Mona Davids, a member of the Coalition, said one of the biggest concerns raised during the meeting was the inadequate degree of communication families receive from the Department of Education when incidents of violence happen at their kids’ schools.
“They’re very angry,” she said of the parents at the meeting. “It’s a problem and it’s a problem that we hope incoming [Schools] Chancellor David Banks is going to address and improve.”
Another speaker during the town hall identified herself as the teacher of one of the students attacked last week just yards from the school in a brutal incident caught on video.
Assemblyman Mike Reilly (R-South Shore), a former NYPD officer and member of Community Education Council 31, made the call for improved communication last week during a press conference outside Susan Wagner and again during Wednesday night’s town hall.
“When it’s determined that the incident is safe and we have enough information that we can share with our communities — meaning the staff, the parents and the students themselves — then it should be shared,” he said. “We all have to work for transparency and communication.”
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/South Brooklyn), Assemblyman Mike Cusick (R-Mid-Island), and City Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island) joined Reilly during the town hall, and called for school safety.
Locally, elected officials have presented a united front on the issue regardless of party. Most of the elected officials joined Borough President-elect Vito Fossella outside Susan Wagner last week for a press conference decrying the violence, and Fossella said the ones who weren’t there also voiced their support for the initiative.
“Something happened outside this school recently that was horrific, and was a brutal beatdown,” Fossella, a Republican, said. “The one fundamental thing that every parent on Staten Island should feel secure and confident about is to know that their child when they go to school is going to be in a safe and secure environment.”
Davids, who lives in the Bronx, applauded the local elected officials for their outcry against school violence, something she said she hadn’t seen in another borough with all elected officials at every level of government.
Though violence in New York City schools dates back generations, Davids, a long-time advocate for school safety, said the current situation is among the worst she’s seen. In addition to the Wagner incident caught on video, she pointed to a series of other incidents affecting the city’s young people.
“It should never get to any of those points when it comes to the safety of our kids. None of those incidents should have happened,” she said. “We need our incoming chancellor, our incoming [police] commissioner, and our incoming mayor to pay attention and protect our children in and out of school.”