Educational Unsafety

By Douglas Marolla

Social Justice is a scam.  It’s a grift. It doesn’t mean anything.  Like “equity”, or “restorative justice”, or “climate justice”, these words are simply sayings that are trendy and acceptable.  They allow you to avoid consequences if you’re in a state like New York.

They sound good.

I keep going back to the Thomas Sowell quote where he wrote, quite effectively, about how the school systems of the country “stopped doing what worked and started doing what sounded good.” That’s what has happened over the last 40 years.  For the last 25 years, when it comes to school reform, what works has been completely ignored and is never on the table. What sounds good is always on the table.

This is a story about what happens in regular schools.  There will be no movement or protest.  No one will be on TV talking about “educational neglect” or a student’s “educational safety”.  The school-to-prison pipeline will be running at full capacity, but not for the reasons you think. 

My school has been flagged for student suspension “disproportionality” by the NY State Education Department.  We have recently heard that our building leaders are undergoing training for ASD – alternatives to suspension. The New York State government has determined that our high school has a disproportionate number of Black SWD (students with disabilities) getting suspended for violence. An Educrat in Albany, with a computer and a spreadsheet, holding progressive values, has determined that we are suspending students disproportionately based on race.

In the school business, this means that the root causes, to use a favorite term of the progressives, will not be addressed.

It turns out our Administration is doing things right. I’m going to say that again because it’s very common for teachers to complain about Administration. Teachers will badmouth the APs and the principals for all kinds of things. Sometimes it’s warranted, but not in this case.

They’ve been handling discipline correctly. They’ve been suspending students for violent acts.  We are a school.  If you bring in a razor blade, vaping equipment, or a knife, you should be suspended.  If you’re in a fight, the norm is that you get 5 days, and you don’t get to come back until you have a superintendent’s hearing with a parent or guardian present.  Our administration has been holding the line.

Here’s the interesting part.  Our principal isn’t hiding. She isn’t sweeping the suspension data under the rug. The principal is doing it right, following the rules, and trying to make things happen for the betterment of the students.  Your child’s building leader is tasked with making the building a better, safer place.  This is common sense.

But the State bureaucrat, who has never visited Mount Vernon, sees a racial percentage on a spreadsheet regarding suspensions that he doesn’t like, and we get slapped for it. The flaw in this reasoning is that we are an urban High School. You can imagine the thought process from the NPR listening, NY Times reading bureaucrat:

Oh, wow, they’re only suspending black special education students for violent acts – they must not be suspending the white students.

But we don’t have any white students. 

We might have between four and zero white students in the building every year, if that.  They’re just not in the building.  Is a student from Brazil, who looks white, but can’t speak English, last name Dasilva, white?  Your guess is as good as mine. 

People talk about white flight.  This district is the poster child. The Jewish population left by the late 1960’s.  The Italians, who used to run Mt. Vernon, bailed by the late 1990’s.  We are a Caribbean and African American district and have been for the past 25 years.

My colleagues and I were talking about this situation, and we were wondering if those are the percentages the State sees, who do they think the other percentage is? The current rules of the woke / DEI movement pits the school results of whites (and sometimes Asians) against everyone else.  Who are the other people to which the data is being compared?  We’ve had an influx of Spanish-speaking migrants.  I have a much higher percentage of students from Yemen.  Are our violent offenders being compared against them?  The numbers don’t figure.

We have no idea what the State Education Department is doing, except slavishly following the data – the latest buzzword in the School Business.  We must comply with their solution to our problem, and that’s where student destruction and Educational Unsafety begin. The message reads:

We are currently reviewing preventative and restorative responses to student behavior. These interventions include Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), restorative circles, return from suspension procedures, and restorative in-school suspension (ISS).

Alternatives to suspension.  You may have noticed that the other buzzword, “restorative”, is placed throughout the message.

This will lead to chaos and failure, and everybody knows it.  We are teaching students that they will have no consequences.  A straight razor under the tongue, a small knife in the bookbag, a multi-student brawl in the cafeteria or hallway.  A bloody and battered student taken away in an ambulance.  Our building leaders are being told to find alternatives to suspension. 

And why?  Because a spreadsheet shows a racial discrepancy.

What comes next will be terrible.  Our students will go out into the world thinking that there will be no consequences.  It’s going to be bad. For everyone. 

Why would an 18-year-old think that if he confronts someone in the street, or steps to a police officer, that there would be nothing to worry about?  For years that young person has been put in a room with a caring adult and talked things through.  Or they’ve gotten bonus points on their PBIS ledger.  Perhaps they were in a restorative justice circle that taught them to connect with the other person’s feelings.  After all, according to the educational philosophy of the day, if the young offender could only connect with the other person, they would realize the error in bringing a weapon to school to get revenge.

When you see a young adult on TV, or in a video on social media acting foolish, dangerous, and violent in front of law enforcement, it will be indicative of what they’ve been taught in school.  The young person, from the urban high school, will be arrested and carted off to jail.

It is doubtful that they will be put in a room with others to “talk it out” and see if they can come to a solution.  More likely they’ll be booked and spend time in prison.  

You can almost hear school-to-prison pipeline spigots turning, getting opened wide, running full blast.