Doff Kid Gloves With Students, Malliotakis Says

By JOSEPH MODICA

Republican mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis called today for stiffer penalties for disruptive city school students, including bringing back five-day suspensions on students as early as kindergarten.

In front of Tweed Courthouse, headquarters of the Department of Education, Malliotakis slammed Mayor Bill de Blasio over what she portrayed as a “forgiving” approach to disciplining students, calling his policies as “too progressive and took it too far.”

Her plan for a tougher approach came less than two weeks after Abel Cedeno, 18, allegedly killed classmates Matthew McCree, 15, and critically wounded Arian LaBoy, 16, at the Urban Assembly of Wildlife Conservation in the Bronx. The killing has left a school shaken and created fresh doubts in parents’ minds that schools can keep their children safe. Since then, there have been 20 requests from parents to transfer their children out of the Bronx school.

She urged the school system to revert back to former mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 2012 reforms, the restoration of school survey questions that left out questions such as how safe do students feel in their school. She proposed that more counsellors and an emphasis of discussion over punishment, referred to as “restorative intervention,” should stay, but that talking out problems should be “complementing, not replacing” discipline. She recommended that teachers and principals be empowered to suspend children from kindergarten to second grade for mid-level offenses.

When pressed by reporters, Malliotakis defended her stance, saying that it should be handled on a case-by-case basis, and that Bloomberg’s 2012 reform lowered suspensions in school from 69,643 in 2011-12 school year to 37,647 by the 2015-16 school year said a study done by the Manhattan Institute. She remarked that the 10 day suspension on kindergartners as harsh, but “effective.”

She also said that de Blasio’s, “policies put in place an environment where a student can do anything in the class and get away with it.” She called these policies as “jumping through hoops” for school staff and that it impedes teacher’s and principal’s ability to remove uncooperative and violent students, and it puts staff and students in danger.

She pointed out that de Blasio’s 2015 removal of suspensions on first-time, low-level offenses and that the maximum suspension was reduced to five days to 10 days. The mayor implemented his sweeping discipline reform in 2015, aiming to continue the downward trend of suspensions, arrests and summons while easing the aggressive and unforgiving reforms that characterized Bloomberg’s 2012 school reform.

“Young people need to be taught to respect their teachers at an early age” Malliotakis concluded.

A spokesperson for the DOE was not available for comment.

Photo by Joseph Modica