A student from Bronx Collaborative High School was hospitalized following a slashing incident which took place at the school on Wednesday. Sept. 15, after a dispute broke out between two students. Police later confirmed on Tuesday, Sept. 21, that a 15-year-old male was arrested on Sept. 20 in relation to the incident and has been charged with assault.

 

In response to an inquiry sent to the NYPD on Sunday, Sept. 19, police confirmed that at approximately 1 p.m. on Sept. 15, police responded to a 911 call regarding an assault inside 100 West Mosholu Parkway South in Jerome Park, which is the address for DeWitt School campus, located in the 52nd precinct. The campus is home to four schools, one of which is Bronx Collaborative High School. The others are Worldview High School, DeWitt Clinton High School, and District 75 High School.

 

Police reported that upon arrival, officers were informed by a 15-year-old male youth that he had gotten involved in a verbal dispute with another male individual, and that the dispute escalated into a physical altercation. The victim had been slashed in the face with an unknown sharp object and the suspect had fled the location to parts unknown. EMS transported the victim to Montefiore Hospital in stable condition.

 

Following the incident, representatives from the school sent a letter to parents, informing them that the altercation occurred between two students and that a soft lockdown, followed by a hard lockdown, had been put into effect on the day in question to ensure students’ safety. They confirmed that the lockdown was lifted at 2.41 p.m., that the matter was being investigated by police, and that counseling was available to any students who needed it. A copy of the letter can be read in full, above.

 

Norwood News reached out to the NYC Department of Education (DOE) in the early hours of Sept. 19, for a comment on the incident. Nathaniel Styer, DOE deputy press secretary, responded the same day, saying, “The safety of students and staff is our top priority, and NYPD and EMS immediately responded.” He added, “We’re taking additional safety measures at the school and working closely with NYPD as they conduct an investigation.”

 

One parent who spoke with Norwood News on condition of anonymity said he and his wife have not been properly informed by Bronx Collaborative High School about what actually occurred on Sept. 15 at the school. He cited the letter from the founding principal, Brett Schneider, but said it was vague on the details of what had actually occurred, and that they were still waiting on an explanation.

 

Citizen App users who appeared to be students referred to the incident on the platform on Sept. 15 as it was unfolding. An initial, related video appears to have since been removed from the platform. In some of the posts, apparent students appeared to react in disbelief to the lockdown measures they were experiencing as the event unfolded. One post by one apparent student read, “We really in a lockdown,” while another wrote, “collab (Bronx Collaborative High School) in a lockdown. idk (I don’t know) abt (about) the other schools.”

 

 

Another wrote, “Another ghetto day at Clinton,” and another, “Hope ya ok.” Yet, another user wrote, “He got a gun,” while some others questioned how someone had managed to get a knife into the school, even though police didn’t confirm, in the official police report, what type of weapon caused the injury. Neither was there any mention of a gun in the official incident report received from police.

 

On Aug. 30, City & State reported that the City intends to transfer 5,000 school safety agents out of the NYPD’s purview over the next ten months, in efforts to calm fears about policing in schools. According to the story, the transition is expected to be completed by June 2022, and if it goes ahead, would result in such school safety agents falling under the oversight of the DOE rather than the NYPD, in the future. Norwood News asked the DOE about the reported transfer, and officials did not dispute it.

 

Youth and other groups like Sistas & Brothas United, the youth arm of the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition, have long called for less school safety agents on school campuses, as previously reported. The group has said that the presence of police on campuses increases tensions and exacerbates the school-to-prison pipeline.

 

Instead, the group has called for more funding to be channeled into various educational, emotional and psychological support services for students, to prevent such conflicts from arising in the first place. They also advocate for restorative justice solutions over punitive measures to resolve conflicts.

 

Speaking at a December 2020 protest organized by Sistas & Brothas United, the culmination of a series of other rallies held throughout 2020, Wesley Guzman of Sistas & Brothas United said the event had been organized, once again, to bring attention to how youth of color are criminalized in schools instead of being given what they need to feel supported in holistic learning spaces.

 

“2020 has been a difficult year for all of us, and we hoped that the Department of Education would have stepped up and provided a safe and supportive learning environment for our students, our families, our teachers and our community,” he said at the time. “Yet, our youth were left with the same old racist and criminalizing practices and budget priorities.”

 

The Student Safety Act requires that the New York City Police Department publicly issue quarterly reports on arrests, summonses and other police-involved incidents in New York City public schools.

 

 

As reported by City & State, according to a 2019 ACLU Student Safety Act Report on racial disparities, in the 2018-2019 school year, Black and LatinX students represented 66 percent of the student body, but were involved in 88.9 percent of police interventions in schools. Since the implementation of a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in the summer of 2019, the proportion of incidents involving Black and Latinx students slightly increased to 89.4 percent.

 

ACLU found that “this was generally consistent with other changes over the years as the City does more to reduce the overall impact of police in schools, but does little to explicitly eliminate racial disparities.” The disparities actually worsen. NYC students started the 2019-2020 school year with the new MOU in place that strictly limits the activities of police in non-emergency situations.

In addition, a new state law prohibits police from stepping in to manage everyday school discipline. Advocates expect (and hope) the new policies will begin to have a major impact on the number of in-school arrests and police actions.

 

 

Norwood News reached out to Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition, on behalf of Sistas & Brothas United, for a comment on the slashing incident at Bronx Collaborative High School. They responded to say that it was unlikely they would be commenting further on the topic.

 

Norwood News previously reported on previous measures taken at the DeWitt school campus to keep students safe, following a previous stabbing incident which occurred outside the campus in November 2019.

 

Earlier this year, Norwood News also reported on apparent disfunction within the DOE when it came to obtaining educational records for certain students who wished to pursue a high school equivalency diploma.

 

 

Separately, we also reported recently on an ongoing debacle over the future of Meg’s Garden, a community garden located on DeWitt school campus which is currently closed, despite widespread calls from the local community for it to remain open, including support by local elected officials.

 

Bronx Collaborative High School is described on its Facebook page as an innovative, public, college-prep school in the Bronx that focuses on technology, real-world problems and social justice.

 

On Aug. 24, the NYC School Safety Coalition, a coalition of parents, families, religious leaders, and community leaders who support the continuation of School Safety Agents’ presence in schools, held a virtual school safety agent career opportunity workshop, together with two school safety agents. The event was hosted by Little Africa Bronx News moderator, Mona Davids, who is also a parent, with the aim of encouraging others to apply for upcoming, open school safety agent positions.

 

According to the Facebook page of NYC School Safety Coalition, the group said, “We believe it is crucial that SSAs continue to be under the purview of the NYPD.” The workshop can be watched in full here.

Davids spoke to Norwood News on Sunday, Sept. 19. In the context of the confirmation by DOE that 5,000 school safety agents would be transferred out of the purview of the NYPD, and under DOE control by June 2022, Davids highlighted that in 2002, DOE shifted from being overseen by 32 school boards to being overseen centrally by the mayor, a system known as “mayoral control.” This means the mayor has the power to control educational policy. It is a control that is not guaranteed indefinitely and must be renewed by the State Legislature every few years.

 

Davids said that Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, a former police detective, has committed to retaining school safety agents under the control of the NYPD, and therefore, she doesn’t see how the DOE will transfer the referenced 5,000 school safety agents to DOE control.

 

She added that school safety agents do not carry guns, and are not police officers but civil servants who take a civil servant’s exam. She was critical of groups such as the ACLU who she said sought to erroneously, in her opinion, portray school safety officers as police, adding that, decades ago, when school safety agents were actually under the purview of the DOE, the department did not, in her view, adequately handle school safety, and that this was why they were later subsequently trained by the NYPD and transferred under the control of the police agency. However, she reiterated that they are not police officers. “School safety shouldn’t be used to play political football,” said Davids. “We’re talking about our children, life and death, and I’m a mother.”

 

Davids said that it was her view that the proposal by DOE to move 5,000 safety officers out of the control of the NYPD and under the control of DOE was a way for current City administration officials to succumb to the political pressure they have been under since May 2020 to defund the police, following the murder of George Floyd. She said those who are calling to defund the police are not bearing the brunt of the high crime that is being experienced by many families across the City, and in the Bronx in particular, including gang-related crime, which she said has infiltrated the City’s public school system.

 

“So it’s just all of these people…… who drive around with an NYPD security detail screaming ‘defund [the] NYPD’ or these others who are hypocrites who live in safe neighborhoods,” she said. “It’s not their children, you know, that are dying on the streets. It’s not their family members that can get shot going to the supermarket, or sitting in a park celebrating whatever Mexican day or Puerto Rican day, or just community events.”

 

Davids, who is from South Africa and who grew up under the apartheid regime, also flatly rejects the notion that maintaining school safety agents in schools is racist. She said the majority of school safety agents are female, Black and brown employees, some of whom are mothers themselves.

 

Davids is holding a rally on the issue of school safety at City Hall on Oct. 10.

 

Norwood News has reached out to both the City and to Eric Adams’ campaign for comment on Davids’ remarks. On Monday, the DOE responded to our inquiry. As it was quite lengthy, we have included the response in a new story.

 

On Tuesday, Sept. 21, several media outlets reported on a separate stabbing which occurred the same day at around 2.30 p.m. when at least eight people were reportedly hurt in a bizarre series of events that reportedly involved a car crash and a knife fight outside Harry S. Truman High School on Baychester Avenue in Co-Op City.

 

Editor’s Note: If you are a student or a parent of a student at any of the schools on DeWitt school campus or at any other school and would like to provide a comment, please reach out to us at smoloney@norwoodnews.org, via the Norwood News Twitter Direct Message function, or via Norwood News Messenger app, and we can give you a call. Thank you.