If you go into a restaurant and order up a cheeseburger, New York City insists you have the right to know its calories.
The city also insists you have the right to know how many crimes were reported in each precinct every week — and what type.
But if you are a mom or dad sending the most precious thing in your life — your child — to public school, the city gives you only a general grade for the violence there.
It keeps secret important details you’d like to know, such as if the school is a haven for drug dealers, rapists or thugs with weapons.
That’s the message from New York state’s recent release of its list of “persistently dangerous” public schools. Our city has 40 of the 47 schools — a leap from 25 of the 33 the state identified two years ago.
The city’s Department of Education claims overall safety is improving, pointing to drops in arrests, school suspensions and total crimes reported over the last two years.
Of course, one problem is that we really don’t know, because schools have an incentive to underreport.
Even that New York should have 40 “persistently dangerous” schools is outrageous, especially when our pols spend so much time denying the trapped students escapes to, say, a safe charter or parochial schools.
Does anyone believe public problems are dealt with better when they are hushed up? The city has shown it can’t keep these schools safe by hiding the criminal details.
Let parents know what’s really going on — and maybe we’ll see some improvement.