By Kathianne Boniello
For high school educators in Queens this week, the message was clear: there is no prize for reporting crime in schools, just punishment.
The punishment came Monday when the New York Police Department released its list of the 10 most crime-ridden high schools in the city, including four in Queens: Hillcrest High School in Jamaica Estates (No. 1), John Adams High School in Ozone Park (No. 5) , William C. Bryant High School in Long Island City (No. 6) and Bayside High School (No. 10).
With 18 incidents since January, Hillcrest High School topped the list, sending shockwaves through the school even though the announcement was meant to highlight a dramatic drop in high school crime. There were five Brooklyn schools on the list, but no Manhattan or Staten Island schools. Only one Bronx school was named.
The list sparked anger from students, parents and community leaders in the borough who slammed it as misleading and voiced surprise at the Queens schools left off the dis-honor roll.
At issue was how thoroughly principals report crime in their schools, which appears to vary from institution to institution, they said.
State Assemblyman William Scarborough (D-St. Albans) crystallized the response of many borough parents.
“Some of the schools that you would have thought would have been on the list weren’t,” he said, raising questions about the lack of detail in the report. “That list shouldn’t be taken as gospel.”
Citing a city Education Department gag order, Hillcrest Principal Stephen Duch and Bayside Principal Judith Tarlo would not comment on the NYPD list.
According to the NYPD report, overall crime in city high schools dropped by 14.7 percent between 2001 and 2002 and among the top 10, Bayside High School showed the biggest decline with a 64.3 percent decrease.
Hillcrest High School had a 37.7 reduction, while John Adams HS had a 55.1 percent drop in crime and Bryant HS had a 31.6 percent decline. Although the percentages were large, the actual number of incidents was small: Hillcrest had 18, Adams and Bryant had 13 each, while Bayside had 10 so far this year.
The list was based on the NYPD crime index, which keeps track of incidents in six categories: rape, robbery, homicide, assault, burglary and grand larceny. There have been no rapes or homicides at city high schools since January. The NYPD did not respond to a written request for further comment on the list as of press time Tuesday.
“Hillcrest is a wonderful school,” Parent Association member Edriss Johnson said Tuesday. “It is a safe school. Hillcrest reports every little thing, any little incident.”
In other schools, she said “a lot of things are happening that are not being reported.”
Hillcrest students agreed.
“The worst school in Queens? I doubt it,” senior Andre Wethington said. “If you compare all the schools in the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, you’ve got a whole lot of schools that are way worse.”
One southeast Queens school’s absence from the NYPD list surprised many parents.
In May politicians and community leaders banded together to rid Springfield Gardens High School of gang activity and violence. A state report showed in the 2000-2001 school year there were 17.8 incidents requiring police involvement per 1,000 students. The report said the rate of such incidents at Springfield Gardens HS was three times that of other city high schools.
Rosalind O’Neal, chairwoman of the school leadership team at Springfield Gardens High School, said violence at the school has lessened.
“There have been some comments from people about it, but we’ve been working to turn things around at our school,” O’Neal said of Springfield Gardens HS’s absence from the NYPD list. “We’ve been trying to implement programs to strengthen the students’ character not tear it down.”
In northeast Queens Bayside civic leader Frank Skala, a retired teacher and United Federation of Teachers rep who stays involved in Bayside High School, said he had heard no complaints about violence at Bayside High.
“It goes back to the whole case about whether they report them or not,” Skala said of incidents of crime in schools.
Sheila Pecoraro, a southeast Queens activist who was once involved at Springfield Gardens HS, concurred.
“Some principals hide better than others,” she said. Pecoraro said she was surprised Springfield Gardens HS did not make the list only because “there’s never been anything done in the last 25 years to give it a shot in the arm.”
In a letter sent home to parents Monday, Hillcrest High School Principal Duch emphasized his school was safe.
“It has always been my policy as a principal to report every incident,” said Duch in the letter. The principal said 11 of the 18 incidents at Hillcrest were robberies and several occurred off-campus.
Bryant HS Principal Bernadette Kriftcher said the school’s high-crime ranking came as a shock because it boasts an impressive academic performance, ranking eighth in English Regents and 10th in math out of the 37 high schools in Queens.
Of the 13 incidents reported for Bryant, Kriftcher said seven occurred off school grounds and four involved the theft of school equipment.
“That doesn’t really make the school unsafe or insecure,” she said.
Scarborough said the list needed more analysis and details. The assemblyman said of the 10 incidents at Bayside High School, six were caused by the same person, creating a false impression about crime at the school.
“I take that with a grain of salt,” he said of the list.
The TimesLedger staff contributed to this story.
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
