From the NY Daily News:
Suspensions for 4- to-10-year-olds soared by 76% since Mayor Bloomberg took control of city schools, the Daily News has learned.
Elementary school-age students were hit with 6,119 suspensions in the 2008-09 school year – up from 3,469 in 2002-03, a New York Civil Liberties Union analysis of city stats shows.
“All the research … says this sort of frequent reliance on removing kids from school backfires,” said education researcher Daniel Losen of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. “It doesn’t work as a deterrent.”
City Education Department officials attributed the increase in suspensions to a “zero tolerance” policy that began in 2005 requiring suspensions for any kid caught fighting.
A report released in January showed special-needs students and black students were more likely than other kids to be kicked out of class.
Last year, the agency began allowing principals “the flexibility” of meeting with parents – instead of imposing suspensions – for a variety of offenses.
That doesn’t always happen, critics say.
Last month, Vilma Limani‘s then-5-year-old son was suspended for a week for hitting a teacher as he tried to flee from his kindergarten classroom.
“He’s suspended and he’s 5. I think there could have been a better reaction,” said Limani, 28, worrying over her son’s permanent school record. “I’m angry.”
In December, Limani asked officials at Staten Island‘s Public School 13 for help with the difficulties her son Alvi was having in kindergarten, she said. He had just started at the school after living with his grandparents in Albania for seven months.
A teacher’s statement described Alvi as uncontrollably upset after he tried to flee from his classroom last month.
“He then threw himself onto [the] floor against [the] door and was thumping his head on [the] door as he screamed and cried,” the document reads.
An advocate for the family, Robert DeZego, said the school was aware the student had emotional problems.
“The [Department] of Education lost touch with a common-sense approach to handling the behavior of a kindergartner,” he said.
Margie Feinberg, an Education Department spokeswoman, said the principal “followed protocol and offered counseling.”
