By Tom Momberg
PS 111 in Long Island City, where a group of teenagers tried turning a tutoring session into a fight club for first-graders in March, was the only Queens school placed on the state Education Department’s 2015-16 list of persistently dangerous schools.
The list, based on violent and disruptive incident reports from the prior school year, included three Queens schools last year, one of which was PS 111. No specific crime data on the city DOE District 30 school was available, but it is located within a few blocks of the city Housing Authority’s Queensbridge and Ravenswood housing developments.
About 92 percent of students at the school at 37-15 13th St/ agreed that students get into physical fights at least some of the time, according to the 2014-15 school survey results. About 37 percent anonymously reported gang activity at the school at least some of the time, according to the report.
Chancellor Carmen Fariña said swift action was taken at the PS 111 this spring, when four teachers and an aide were removed from the school for allowing the fight club to take place, replaced by substitutes along with new “school safety staff.” Some small children were beaten by eighth-grade girls for refusing to fight.
PS 111, also known as the Jacob Blackwell School, which serves kindergarteners through fifth-graders, is operating at about 72 percent of its enrollment capacity, whereas Voice Charter School of New York, co-located within the same building, is at over 200 percent of its capacity, according to city data.
PS 111 is the only Queens school remaining on the dangerous school list, while the number of schools placed on the list by the state Education Department dropped from 39 last year to 27 this year.
As required by the state, every school on the list must submit an Incident Reduction Plan to the SED by mid-September. The city DOE’s borough safety directors will work with new managers from the agency’s Borough Field Support Centers to conduct assessments of each school with monthly visits and implement strategies and programs accordingly, according to the DOE.
“We are building on the strong work of the last administration to ensure this positive trend of decreased suspensions—in partnership with decreased crime and incidents—continues,” Fariña said in a statement. “I and my deputy chancellors visited many of the schools on the list last year, and I pledge to do the same this year to ensure the climate at each of these schools improves and that every student is in a safe and challenging learning environment.”
There was a 25 percent reduction in major crime and 29 percent reduction in all crime in city schools between the 2011-12 and 2014-15 school years, according to the Mayor’s Leadership Team on School Climate and Discipline.
For families concerned about students attending one of the SED’s persistently dangerous schools like Jacob Blackwell, the federal No Child Left Behind Act allows families the option of transferring their children to another school with available seats.
Reach reporter Tom Momberg by e-mail at tmomb
