Safety in NYC Schools: Parents & Teachers Voice Concerns
Public school safety has become an issue in the recent weeks.
When your child is at school, their safety is the utmost priority. You send your child to their classroom, hoping that they will engage with their peers, learn from their teachers, and thrive in a nurturing environment. However, for some New York City parents, this has not been the case.
Psst…Check out Meet New NYC Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos
Earlier this week, parents gathered at one of many to come town halls in Manhattan.
New Door Locking Systems Aren’t Helping
Concerns have been building, following a series of questionable and controversial actions by the city schools. Back in October, Chalkbeat announced that schools were spending over 90 million dollars on school door-locking systems, set to go into place by the end of the year. Former NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks announced that the initiative was to prevent intruders, saying at a town hall “It’s a Herculean task, but what that is meant to do is to prevent intruders from getting into our schools, and it’s another layer of safety.”
This revelation sparked worries from parents regarding school safety. “I don’t feel like it should be shut up like prison gates,” Curtis France, the father of two children at Brooklyn’s P.S. 235, told the outlet. “I don’t feel any more safe with the doors closed.”
Following the tragic death of Avonte Oquendo, an autistic student who went missing from his Brooklyn school in 2013 after exiting through the doors, the city implemented alarms to 18,000 school doors to ease safety problems that could arise out of unmonitored doors. Still, teachers feel like it’s not enough.
“It feels like everyone has access to the school, and security isn’t tight enough,” says one elementary charter school teacher from Brooklyn, who wished to remain anonymous for safety and retaliation reasons. “Parents can just walk into the school and sometimes security just lets them through without knowing what they are there for, and they could attack a teacher.”
Bullying Is on the Rise
At the recent town hall, many parents brought up bullying, concerned that their children were not being properly assisted. Earlier this year, a poll conducted by the Department of Education found 355 thousand K-12 students reported bullying this past spring. 51 percent said harassment, bullying and intimidation by classmates was common, which was up from last year’s number of 48 percent.
“On the ground, however, schools are constantly trying to put out fires,” says a former teacher at Liberty Avenue Middle School in Brooklyn. “The hypocrisy here is obvious. The principals, superintendents, and politicians would never allow this level of violence and bullying at the schools their children attend. However, in the south Bronx, it is fine as long as the number of students being suspended is low enough to keep their superiors off their back.”
Ethnic and Migrant Students Are Often Targeted
As tensions such as the Israel-Hamas war rose, students of certain ethnicities and backgrounds found themselves at the center of bullying. A 2024 report found that Muslim students in New York City public schools face high levels of discrimination in school, and the Council on American Islamic Relations-New York found that 60% of students surveyed were bullied by another student for being Muslim. While the migrant crisis continues to weigh down the city’s budget, migrant students also find themselves at the epicenter of bullying.
“They grabbed my hair, they punched me in the head, kicked me in the stomach,” 13-year-old Odilys Torres, a student at junior high school 226 in Queens told CBS News. “And they did tell me to get out of this country and leave this bus.”
Meanwhile, school threats have risen within the last year, with just earlier this week a Bronx school receiving social media threats from students. In the 2023-2024 school year, school safety agents seized nearly four thousand dangerous instruments, the New York Post reported.
“Administrators are understandably fearful of angering difficult parents (even ones who use aggression and violence as their form of communication) and do not take logical steps of discipline,” the Liberty Avenue teacher quipped. “This leads to some of the most troubled children from the most troubled neighborhoods freely roaming the halls of schools, which in turn causes an incredible amount of stress and pressure on their peers. Either way, students do not feel safe and are not able to fully engage in their academic lessons.”
Chancellor Ramos Wants to Implement New Strategies
As the city strategizes its new school system with new schools chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, they are placing new strategies to combat bullying.
“What was important to me in creating the structure was a tool to capture all the things that people are saying,” Ramos told The Daily News during the week’s town hall, addressing parents’ concerns. “We’re not going to be able to solve everything, but where are we identifying those trends and patterns, and where can we do better?”
Back in October, the city launched the anti-hate hotline, designed to combat bias in schools. The Department of Education has also emphasized its Respect for All initiative, packed with resources for students and parents about bullying.
Still, administration and teachers believe more can always be done, for the sake of the children.
“What needs to happen to help make schools safer is increased support of mental health counseling and clear steps in place to escalate students who are documented as being violent so they can get the support they and their families need,” the Liberty Avenue teacher concludes. “I can’t say this is all to blame on the school, but certainly promoting the same behavior in schools that gets students killed or incarcerated outside of school is not a good strategy.”
Psst…Check out 21 New York Schools Named Blue Ribbon Schools by U.S. Department of Education
