By The TimesLedger
The events of last week served as a painful reminder that Queens schools, especially its high schools, are just one incident away from chaos. At the end of that day, six people were hospitalized, including a school security officer.
The violence erupted at Springfield Gardens High School, August Martin High School and William Bryant High School in Long Island City on Oct. 22. At Springfield Gardens, an 18-year-old senior was stabbed in the chest allegedly by a 19-year-old junior. At August Martin High School, a school safety officer was hospitalized after being assaulted by a male student. And three boys attending William C. Bryant High school were slashed across the back and shoulders by a group of young men at the corner of 48th Street and Broadway in Long Island City.
The rash of attacks came just days after a 15-year-old student at Campus Magnet High School student in southeast Queens had her face slashed five times with a razor blade by a female classmate.
One week earlier violence erupted at Tottenville High School in an upscale neighborhood of Staten Island. At that school, long considered one of the safest in the city, a riot broke out between rival gangs resulting in 11 arrests, a great many more suspensions and injuries to a number of school security guards. Whether it serves the poorest inner-city neighborhood or the wealthiest suburban neighborhood, no public high school in New York City is safe.
The security officers charged with keeping the peace at these schools are poorly equipped, poorly trained and not capable of dealing with the kind of violence seen in the last two weeks. This is in no way a reflection on the officers themselves. They are, for the most part, dedicated men and women who sincerely care about the students they serve. But they are trained to confiscate personal CD players and to get boys to remove their caps. They are not trained to take a razor away from an angry teenage girl. And they are not trained to defuse a potential riot in the school cafeteria.
The danger is exacerbated by overcrowding and a shortage of support staff. It is not unusual to see vice principals doing double duty as a cafeteria monitor.
There are no easy answers, but the violence of the last two weeks makes it clear that whatever is being done now is not enough.
Editorial: The sign police
Time is running out for the stores in downtown with signs written in Korean or Chinese that are not translated into English. The city Buildings Department is prepared to issue summonses to businesses not complying with the English language regulations.
Not only must a translation appear on the sign, the English lettering must be as large as the Chinese or Korean lettering.
We agree that the businesses should include an English translation on their signs. Not doing so makes them poor neighbors. People who cannot read the signs often feel excluded from shops and other businesses. Although they may have lived in Flushing all their lives, these people begin to feel like outsiders.
However, we believe this is an area in which government should not be involved. The signs were created to communicate to people must likely to patronize a particular establishments, not to discriminate against others. The foreign language signs may be rude, but they are also an expression of free speech.
There are better ways than fines and summonses to encourage ethnic businesses to embrace the larger community.
