Two weeks after city officials hailed a drop in violent crimes at public schools, the state echoed that message – labeling nine fewer city schools as “persistently dangerous” compared to last year.
Sixteen city schools – of 19 statewide – earned the dubious tag for reporting an elevated number of serious crimes and incidents for two straight years.
And while six city schools were newly identified as unsafe by state officials, 15 reduced their number of incidents enough in 2007-08 to get off the list.
“This is further indication we have fewer dangerous schools – the number came down significantly,” said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. “By the same token, we have a lot more work to do. Every kid and every family in this city is entitled to a safe school.”
The newly identified schools include three in Manhattan (Marta Valle Secondary School, MS 246 and the the Tito Puente Education Complex), two in Brooklyn (the Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence and PS 35) and a Staten Island special education school (PS/IS 25 South Richmond HS).
All but three of the 10 city schools that stayed on the list from last year – PS 14 on Staten Island, and JHS 44 and Powell Middle School in Manhattan – were special education District 75 schools.
“We do our part and report, we do not hide anything, we follow the rules and that’s probably what got us there,” said Donna Coppola, a United Federation of Teachers chapter leader at PS 14, which was first named to the list last year.
“Would I consider it a dangerous place? No. I take my 3-year-old there,” she added.
Students in the 16 schools are entitled to transfer elsewhere, while the schools will receive extra money and support to address school safety issues.
State officials also said they would continue to monitor and audit schools to make sure they’re not sweeping incidents under the rug – something that a number of city officials and the UFT have claimed school leaders were doing in order to keep themselves off the naughty list.
City Comptroller William Thompson released an audit last year that found that nearly 21 percent of school incidents – including 14 percent of those considered “serious” – hadn’t been properly reported during the 2004-05 school year.
Among the schools that improved enough to shed the “unsafe” label, state officials highlighted Jamaica HS in Queens – where staffers from the outset dismissed the assertion that the school was among the state’s most dangerous – as having taken significant strides in student safety.
“We’ve maintained all along that we were given a bum rap – that they mischaracterized our zero-tolerance policy,” said Jamaica HS social studies teacher James Eterno. “I’m elated that we’re off the list, but we should have never been on there in the first place.”
UFT president Randi Weingarten also took a jab at the unintended consequences of the federal law that created the state’s dangerous list, but she emphasized that its main result should be turning troubled schools around.
“This will send the signal that these lists usher in help rather than resulting in a scarlet letter,” she said.