POST OPINION PIECE BY MY FORMER COLLEAGUE SAYS SAFETY MAY BE TURNING AROUND IN SCHOOLS

I don't know what it is about Jamaica High School but teachers and other UFT members who worked there are not shy about publicly exposing Department of Education issues. We also are not afraid to use our names. Marc Epstein wrote many pieces for various publications. Look him up. Every reader here knows I never had a problem speaking out. Also, don't forget blogger Chaz worked with us at Jamaica for years too.

Another Jamaica op-ed feature writer is J. Bryan McGeever, who worked as an English teacher for many years at our school and now teaches at an alternate learning center.

Here is some of Bryan's latest opinion piece in the NY Post:

 I teach at a New York City Alternate Learning Center, a k a a “suspension school,” meant to offer intensive help to students who get into serious behavioral trouble. Reading Hizzoner’s speech in the quiet morning hours before class, I realized my colleagues and I had identified the threat to NYC years ago, at least when it comes to education.

In fact, we had narrowed it down to one man: the then-new mayor. The ­moment de Blasio resolved to keep disciplinary suspensions to a bare minimum and described ALCs as nothing more than way stations on the school-to-prison pipeline, we understood that the threat to our schools was coming from within.

The immediate results were ­calamitous. We know about the brutal fights in cafeterias, the spitting in an administrator’s face without consequences, the “wake-and-bake,” marijuana-addled teens who can barely keep their heads up. When I interrupted two students copulating in a stairway during the early years of the de Blasio administration, it was an omen of the coming breakdown in order.

“You know,” the administrator said as we waited to speak to a hearing officer, “they weren’t really hurting anybody.” Higher-ups have suppressed incidents like that one for years, so the mayor could crow about a 50 percent drop in suspensions.

No one wants to discipline children with an iron fist. My child attends a city school. All we seek is sound judgment and common-sense discipline to teach effectively.

But with pressure from de Blasio and his ideological allies, it’s game over for order in schools, right?

Actually, no.

Bryan then describes changes taking place within the schools.

If the mayor refuses to maintain order inside our schools then the system must save itself. That may be happening now.

The suspended students at the ALC are not condemned children like the mayor would have New Yorkers believe. Nor have they been singled out because of race or religion. They’ve merely suffered a setback in their young lives. They arrive to the ALC community to recharge and ­regroup before returning to their home schools with invaluable experience. Then we call their parents to congratulate them.

So, Mr. Mayor, we won’t be projecting any bat signals over City Hall, and we certainly won’t be looking to you for help. We’re going to do it ourselves. It won’t be easy, but extraordinary happenings have always blossomed inside New York City schools. What were the odds of a kid from Hunter College HS creating a masterpiece titled ­“Hamilton,” an English teacher from Stuyvesant winning the Pulitzer Prize or even Simon running into Garfunkel at Forest Hills?

Is school safety starting to turn around?