LIU DECRIES NEW PROBLEMS AT 911
City Comptroller John C. Liu stated the following in response to published reports of 911 response errors and delays today.
“The truth is the 911 headquarters is understaffed and the operators are
overworked. The situation has only gotten worse since the City wasted
$1 billion on the dangerously flawed E911 system,” Comptroller John C.
Liu said. “The City cannot address problems
that are the results of mismanagement, waste, and fraud at 911 by
blaming the dispatchers.”
According to a report published in today’s Daily News, the lives of four
NYC firefighters were put at risk when they entered a home expecting to
find a woman with serious burns only to discover she was suffering from
bacterial meningitis.
In
another shocking development, it reportedly took a half hour for an
ambulance to arrive when an intern for City Councilwoman Diana Reyna
collapsed in Brooklyn.
These are the latest in a series of life-threatening incidents rooted in the City’s problem-plagued 911 call center.
Background:
Liu Statement on Mayor’s 911 Probe:
Liu: City Should Boycott HP:
Liu Audit: Management of 911 Call Center Project Was Ineffective:
Liu: Mismanagement of 911 Upgrade Picked Taxpayers’ Pockets:
http://www.comptroller.nyc.
LIU TO DOE: STOP CRIMINALIZ
City Comptroller John C. Liu today warned that the Department of Education’s (DOE’s) short-sighted and damaging policy of suspending hundreds of middle-school students each week is promoting alienation and a higher dropout rate, not better behavior.
The
Comptroller released a report today, “The Suspension Spike: Changing
the Discipline Culture in NYC’s Middle Schools,” which offers a
blueprint
for replacing the DOE’s failed zero-tolerance policy with restorative
justice practices that help middle-school students stay in school and
remain on the path to college and career readiness.
“This
report demonstrates the sad reality that the stop-and-frisk atmosphere,
which presumes that men of color are guilty until proven innocent,
begins as early as age 11. Children ages 11 to 14 are still learning
how to manage their own feelings and behavior. The DOE’s policy of
removing them from their classrooms for even small infractions teaches
them nothing and may in fact worsen their conduct,”
Comptroller Liu said. “Researchers have found that such suspensions
often lead to higher dropout rates and other bad outcomes. We need to
stand by our kids and give them the guidance they need, not make them
feel like criminals.”
The
report found that New York City middle schools suspended an average of
100 students a school day in the 2011-2012 school year. Almost all
of those suspended were either black or Hispanic. It also found that
middle-school students received 68 percent more suspensions than
high-school students.
The
report warns that misuse of School Safety Agents, who currently report
to the New York City Police Department, has resulted in student
arrests for minor infractions such as writing on a desk. This
over-criminalization of school-based offenses risks putting students on
the path to future incarceration, also known as the school-to-prison
pipeline.
The
report urges that middle schools adopt a restorative justice approach
to discipline that combines added support with high expectations
and accountability. These approaches not only give students ways to
understand and make amends for negative behavior but also seek to reduce
the severity and frequency of future incidents, create a more positive
school climate, improve educational outcomes,
and help keep students on the path to high school graduation and
beyond.
The report recommends:
·
Training
educators in restorative justice – DOE should pilot an approach known
as “whole-school climate change” at the 30 schools with the greatest
number of suspensions.
·
Hiring
more middle-school counselors and social workers to reduce the
student-to-counselor ratio to 250:1 and the student-to-social worker
ratio to 400:1, as well as
provide targeted interventions for students with behavior issues.
·
Eliminating suspensions for minor infractions and those that last for more than 10 days.
·
Empowering
principals to oversee school discipline – including the School Safety
Agents now under the authority of the NYPD – in order to emphasize
education over incarceration.
“The
Suspension Spike: Changing the Discipline culture in NYC’s Middle
Schools” is the sixth comprehensive study in Comptroller Liu’s “Beyond
High School NYC” initiative, which seeks to increase the proportion of
New Yorkers with higher education to 60 percent by the year 2025 through
strategic investments in public education.
The full report can be downloaded at:
http://comptroller.nyc.gov/
The executive summary can be downloaded at:
http://comptroller.nyc.gov/
