UWS middle school copes with new ‘dangerous’ label

According to parents, MS 256 is normal. According to New York State, it is “persistently dangerous.”

The school, located on 93rd St. between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues whose formal title is MS 256 Academic and Athletic Excellence, shares the danger label with nine others in New York City this year. But it also received an A on its annual progress report conducted by the city, including a high score for school environment.

The school—which, parents say, does not have an extreme number of disciplinary incidents—is one example of how the many definitions of school safety can classify schools very differently, while statistics show that schools are generally safer than they’ve been in years.

Twelve-year-old Lilin Alba, a student at MS 256, said that she thinks her school is secure. “It’s calm. There’s a lot of security people,” she said. “There’s security in the front and in the back, and in the cafeteria. ... When you leave they have security up to two blocks away to make sure nothing happens.”

According to 13-year-old student Katherine Nunet, the school reports every disciplinary issue. “Those booklets they’re handing out about everything you do wrong—they write you up for everything,” she said. “You could get detention for throwing a ball of paper.”

Those incidents—regardless of whether they are criminal or not—are what go into determining if a school is classified as persistently dangerous, although throwing a paper ball wouldn’t count.

New York has developed a system through which schools self-report incidents ranging from weapons possession to homicide, weighted by level of seriousness. Those numbers go into a formula that accounts for the number of students to determine a “School Violence Index.”

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, states must identify their most dangerous schools, but they are given the freedom to evaluate danger by their own standards.

A different list of “impact schools” within New York City classifies schools by their levels of actual crimes. No schools on that list are located in Manhattan.

Still, MS 256’s PTA president Tanja Johnson said she isn’t happy with the explanation she’s been given about the school’s label.

“I already spoke to the kids about it, and they say they feel safe,” Johnson said. “I am here every day, and I don’t see no problems with the school … I just received a letter.”

Johnson’s daughter goes to the school, and she says if she thought the school was at all dangerous she would have taken her out immediately.

“I don’t see any child bringing any weapons into the school. If they’re talking about that, I mean come on. Is this the only school they’re having problems with? What about other schools having problems, why are they picking at this school?”

The principal at MS 256 could not be reached for comment.

Still, State Coordinator for Safe and Drug-Free Schools Greg Bayduss said that the criteria are clear.

“It’s not a secret,” he said. “It starts with homicide which is 100, then forcible sexual touching, other sex offenses, robbery, assault with serious physical injury, arson, kidnapping, reckless endangerment, and weapons possession. Those are the only ones that receive any weighting.”

In the last year alone, major and violent crimes in New York City public schools were down eight to nine percent, according to documents released by the New York City Department of Education.

“Our crime is down,” said Elayna Konstan, chief executive of New York City’s Office of School and Youth Development. “It’s the lowest it’s been in I don’t know how many years.”

Her office also deals with increasing gang awareness and working with the New York Police Department, which handles any intervention.

“The gang issue is much broader than city schools, and recent stuff that’s been in the paper have not happened in schools,” Konstan said. “Those tragedies where kids were hurt or killed happened outside of schools.”

Students at MS 256 did seem aware of local gang activity, but not its presence in their school.

“If one small thing happens, like pepper spray, you’ll usually be suspended for seven days, especially since that gang initiation thing, on Halloween,” said Dalies Cruz, a 13-year-old MS 256 student.
When asked for details, she explained that the gangs slash girls’ faces around Halloween, but nothing had happened at her school. “It’s not just here, it’s all around,” she said. “There was more security after that, but really there’s been more this year.”

Eleven-year-old Rafaela Alba said that around Halloween MS 256 did increase security. “Teachers were out on the street making sure kids were walking home. Teachers offered to carpool with us to get us home safe.” She said she didn’t take the teacher up on the offer, though. “I don’t know if people did it.”

Johnson said that the school does not even tolerate the mention of gangs.

“We have three security guards who do their job every day, rather four. We don’t have gang violence at this school. We don’t allow weapons, we don’t allow bandanas in the school,” she said.
MS 256 is not the only local school to be labeled dangerous. M344 on 134th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard was also on the 2009 list, and MS 246 on 109th Street and Broadway was listed last year. IS 172 on 129th Street and Amsterdam was on the list in 2009 but has since been closed.

Konstan said that the dangerous label does not factor into the decision to close a school.

“Just in the same way a school could be on the persistently dangerous list and get an A, they are two very different criteria that have nothing to do with it,” she said.

Schools do receive additional funding and resources after being labeled dangerous, and must create a plan to reduce the number of serious incidents.

Schools classified as dangerous this year have not received funding yet, according to Konstan, because they are still applying for grants. She said that each school will hopefully receive about $100,000 over 18 months.

Anthony Orzo, deputy chief executive in the Office of School and Youth Development, explained that their office conducts training to explain how to correctly code incidents, and in many cases that reduces a school’s violence index.

“Sometimes they’ll use a phrase like an assault, when two kids got in a fight and there were no injuries,” he said. “That’s not an assault, that’s two kids with a minor altercation. But there’s a big difference in the weight. One is an assault, that’s a weighted incident, and a minor altercation has no weight.”

The accuracy and necessity of the persistently dangerous label has faced scrutiny, but as a part of NCLB, can only be altered by the federal government.

“Concerns have been raised by a number of people, because it is a self-reporting system—but we do rely on the professional judgment of individuals who have an ethical responsibility to report incidents,” Bayduss said. He also explained that the state has software to audit 50-70 schools each year.

The United Federation of Teachers, which says it represents 200,000 New York City public school employees, released a statement in August condemning the “problematic” idea of calling out schools this way.

“We cannot help schools solve their safety issues unless we know about them, and NCLB essentially penalizes schools for doing that reporting,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew wrote on the organization’s Web site.

Even Konstan says the terminology is flawed.

“We all wish that the words ‘persistently dangerous’ weren’t in the law, because it does not correctly categorize these schools in any way, shape or form,” Konstan said. “But that’s the law, it comes from NCLB, and until that’s changed, that’s the language.”