Brooklyn middle-school teachers told city lawmakers yesterday they were ordered not to expel students no matter how severe the crime under the Education Department’s school safety plan….
The directive came from a principal during a September staff meeting, he told admittedly “shocked” City Council members in a hearing on school safety. Students have choked each other, stabbed each other with pencils, and shot off bottle rockets in the cafeteria, but weren’t punished, teachers at J.H.S. 258 testified. In some cases, there were under-the-table suspensions where a troublemaker was walked home and kept out of school for five days, but there’s no record of a suspension, according to another J.H.S. 258 teacher, Dorian Hunter Jr. [NYSun, January 29, 2004]
An article the following day reports that “Whistle-blowers who share tales of woe about school safety, micromanagement, and other education issues with Chancellor Joel Klein have suffered a backlash from their superiors…”