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City Council stalls ‘Avonte’s Law’ that requires school door alarms

The City Council is dragging its feet in enacting a law that would require alarms on the exits of public schools to prevent tragedies like the disappearance and death of Avonte Oquendo, The Post has learned.

Avonte’s Law has the support of 46 of the council’s 51 members but has been languishing in the Education Committee for two months.

Mayor de Blasio’s administration has also raised objections.

“I don’t think the department is going to support that bill,” Deputy Schools Chancellor Kathleen Grimm said at a March 18 hearing on the mayor’s preliminary budget.

“We do not think it’s a prudent use of funds to do every single door. Children are going to walk out of our buildings unless we know we have totally trained adults in the building who know what the procedures are.”

The delay has outraged parents.

“This mayor cares more about the health and safety of horses than students,” said NYC Parents Union head Mona Davids, referring to de Blasio’s support of a ban on horse carriages.

Avonte, a 14-year-old autistic boy, slipped out of a side door of his school in Long Island City, Queens, undetected last October and was found dead in January.

Since then, at least seven other young students have been found after walking out of their school buildings, said Brooklyn Councilman Robert Cornegy, chief author of the door-alarm bill.

Should the measure become law, alarms would be installed in school buildings housing 600,000 elementary and special-education students.

One Brooklyn principal didn’t wait for the council to act.

Dawn Best, of PS 59 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, had alarms installed on six double exterior doors at her school for $160 apiece, which she paid out of her budget, after a pre-K pupil slipped out and walked home in January.

“We knew we needed to do whatever it took to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” Best said.

Cornegy said installing alarms is even more necessary now given that thousands more 4-year-olds will be enrolled in public schools under de Blasio’s pre-K expansion in September.

Cornegy introduced the bill in March to much fanfare and overwhelming support from parent groups as well the union representing school safety agents, Teamsters Local 237.

He said Education Committee Chairman Daniel Dromm of Queens has promised to hold a hearing on the bill next month.

De Blasio’s office said it was reviewing the legislation.

“Ensuring that our school entrances are secure and our schools are safe are, of course, priorities for the administration,” a spokesman said.

Reps from the United Federation of Teachers attended a press conference to unveil the bill but declined to give Cornegy a statement of support, he said

Cornegy said UFT reps have since expressed concerns that installing alarms on every exit door would restrict teachers’ ability to leave the buildings.

“We haven’t been able to pin them down,” Cornegy said, referring to the UFT’s position.

The UFT’s director of safety and health, David Kazanzky, said in a statement, “Alarms can be useful as part of a comprehensive school-safety solution.”