By SCOTT WALDMAN, Staff writer Click byline for more stories by writer. Last updated: 12:50 p.m., Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Schenectady High School has been named a "Persistently Dangerous School" by the state Education Department. The school is one of eight placed on the state's list this year, with virtually all of the rest in New York City. Since 2001, the state has required schools to record and report violent incidents ranging from threats to assaults and sexual attacks. The state law conforms to the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which requires that states produce annual lists of their "persistently dangerous" schools.
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August 20, 2008, 4:21pm
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But wait .. what happened to the Renaissance that's happening in Schenectady???
These are the current "local" top stories on dailygazette.com
Lead story - with pictures - Saratoga
# Pyro, Macho Again lead Travers field 4:13 p.m. - Saratoga # Paterson not ready to celebrate spending cuts 4:07 p.m. - Albany # Judge affirms sanctions against attorney in suit against diocese 3:16 p.m. - Albany # Case against students accused in frat house break-in adjourned 2:49 p.m. - oh, Schenectady # Albany County DA to have November challenger 2:27 p.m. - Albany
They are not telling us anything we already didn't know. The city, no matter how they spin it, is in a mess. For the gazillioneth time, crime is completely out of control. (and spilling over to the surrounding towns) There is little if any respect for law enforcement. The taxes are out of sight. The metroplex is a scam of our tax dollars. Welfare recipients are plentiful. There are more social programs, at the taxpayers expense, that are NOT working. There are no jobs. And it is all being lead by a dictatorship. And yet they keep get voted in! SHOCKING! Our present leaders have yet to realizethat this is a cultural problem and they DO NOT know how to handle it. They just keep throwing our money at it!
However...there is still Proctors. And Bombers will be opening someday. And The Big House will be opening someday too! And there still is a Christmas Parade of course. AND last but not least....Mayor Stratton has become a 'texter'! Hurray!!!! Now all of these should help the youth...don't ya think?
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Why didn't our home town paper tell us that information and yet the Times Union has the story. Maybe in a couple of days the Gazette will read about the story and then run it.
Now 10hrs after the press release. Current headlines on their site are still:
# Pyro, Macho Again lead Travers field 4:13 p.m. # Paterson not ready to celebrate spending cuts 4:07 p.m. # Judge affirms sanctions against attorney in suit against diocese 3:16 p.m. # Case against students accused in frat house break-in adjourned 2:49 p.m. # Albany County DA to have November challenger 2:27 p.m.
SCHENECTADY State says school unsafe Incredulous at status, officials note upgrades BY MICHAEL GOOT Gazette Reporter
Schenectady High School joined the list of the state’s 19 most “persistently dangerous” schools — a designation by the state that the city’s Board of Education called “an outrage, irresponsible and reckless.” The state Education Department on Wednesday released data from the 2006-07 school year of violent incidents. Incidents are rated based on severity and include homicide, forcible and other sexual offenses, robbery, assault or use of a weapon. Schenectady is the only school from the Capital Region on the list. Sixteen are from New York City. The other two are Little Flower School in Wading River and Berkshire Junior-Senior High School in Canaan. State officials formulate the list by assigning a weight to the type of incident. The incidents are added together and then the result is divided by the enrollment to come up with a School Violence Index (SVI). A school is classified as “persistently dangerous” if for two consecutive years it has an SVI of 1.5, which is roughly 6 violent incidents per 100 students, or if it has at least 60 serious incidents and an SVI of at least 0.50. The data show that Schenectady had two riots without use of a weapon, 30 total incidents of weapons possession, 21 incidents of possession or sale of drugs, four incidents of possession or sale of alcohol and 2,031 other “disruptive incidents.” In addition, there were two sex offenses with weapons, one physical injury with a weapon, six physical injuries without weapons, four less severe injuries with weapons and 12 less severe injuries without weapons, two reckless endangerment incidents with a weapon, two reckless endangerment incidents without weapons, six minor altercations with weapons and 138 minor altercations without weapons. There were seven incidents of bullying with weapons, 266 incidents of bullying without weapons, one incident of criminal mischief with a weapon, 10 incidents of criminal mischief without a weapon, one bomb threat and five false alarms. Superintendent Eric Ely said state officials notified the district that it was potentially going to be on the list. District officials vigorously protested this decision. “We do not believe it reflects the truth of Schenectady High School,” Ely said, adding that the data are a year old. Ely said the district is being punished because it accurately reported incidents that occurred at the school. “Because we’re very, very vigilant and because we’re proactive when things happen, and because we take a strict view of discipline in our district and we do report everything as accurately as we can, basically it gets us on this list,” he said. For example, in 2006-07, the district had 74 incidents it deemed were “serious offenses” and 29 involved knives that administrators found. Administrators followed up on tips from students that people had brought in weapons. This ends up in the report. “It’s not reflective of a disruptive environment. It’s reflective of our principals doing their job,” he said. Ely said that in context, 29 knives found from among 2,700 students over 180 days is not bad. There were 12 fights during that same period, Ely said. “If you put 2,700 kids in a building for 180 days a year, I think fi ghts are going to happen. We certainly discourage them and we deal with them as they happen,” he said. He also noted that every school on the list is a high poverty school and they are predominantly urban schools. “You’ve got to question whether this list is truthfully accurate and reflective of what’s going on across the state of New York,” he said. Ely said there were numerous changes since the data were compiled. Associate Superintendent Gary Comley assumed responsibility for the high school in 2007. They also changed two house principals. The district also brought in a retired police officer to be the district’s security chief. It also added another police officer to work with teachers and paraprofessionals on safety issues. They have also addressed teaching staff responsibilities during times when students are most likely to engage in poor behavior, including lunch, between periods and before and after school. Security cameras have also been added to the high school. The district is also expanding to the high school its Positive Behavior Intervention Supports (PBIS) program, which teaches students alternatives to violent behavior and rewards good behavior. Ely said school officials regularly talk to students about the behavior they expect. “Our students are becoming more and more aware that violent behavior will not be tolerated, disruptive behavior will not be tolerated,” he said. Ely said he believes the 2007-08 violence statistics will be lower, although he did not have the statistics. Discipline incidents went down between 17 percent and 18 percent from 2005-06 to 2006-07 and have been declining for the last four years. He said the district will continue to report accurately incidents of violence and not falsify reports. “We’ll continue to be vigilant. We’ll continue to investigate incidents as they come up,” he said. Schenectady Board of Education President Jeff Janiszewski defended the city’s schools. “Not only am I kept closely informed of what is going on at Schenectady High in my position as a board member, but I also have two children that attend Schenectady High and two that have graduated from it to college,” he said in a statement. “I am intimately familiar with that school. If it was even slightly dangerous, my children, my flesh and blood, would not be there.” He also criticized Education Commissioner Richard Mills for slapping this label on Schenectady, which Janiszewski said furthers racist stereotypes and fuels irrational fears that people already have about urban schools. “His unenlightened approach to educational leadership is shameful. What he did today will not make one child safer but may easily make them more anxious in their school and will certainly damage Sche- Eleven schools are remaining from nectady as a community,” Janisze- last year’s list. wski said. Last year, Philip Livingston Mag-Janiszewski accused the state Education Department of changing its discipline records to make sure the city made the list. For example, an empty plastic water bottle was considered a weapon, as was a shoved chair by an angry student even though there wasn’t anyone else close to the chair. In addition, someone reporting something that sounded like a gunshot outside by the football field was considered to be a pellet gun even though nothing was ever seen or found during the investigation, and a child raising a book toward another child without any actual threat of action was considered a weapon-related incident. “This gives our residents an idea of what state Ed[ucation Department] considers violence,” he said. Janiszewski acknowledged that the city has students with issues and they act out in fights. “But, we deal with it and deal with it very well. We have one of the best written discipline codes in the state, and enforce it more aggressively than any school district in the state,” he said. “We have the most progressive positive behavior programs in the state. Do you think the kids that give life to a nationally recognized fine arts program or the premier International Baccalaureate program in the region are dangerous? I think not.” The number of persistently dangerous schools, 19, is down from the 27 schools identified last year. net Academy in Albany was taken off the list. The school had implemented a formal program to deal with bullying. The district also reduced enrollment at the school to improve safety. Schools are responsible for reporting violent incidents to the state as part of a requirement of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The schools on the list must provide information on school choices so parents can transfer their children to another school if they choose. Schools on the list must come up with a plan to show the steps they will take to reduce violent incidents and improve safety. State Education Department spokesman Tom Dunn said that Schenectady was one of two schools that were identified as potentially being on the list because its 2005-06 data were revised. State Education Department spokesman Jonathan Burman said more state aid is made available to the schools that are on this list. State officials work with schools to help them implement their safety plan. “We don’t just designate them and leave them on their own. We’re there as a partner to get the schools safe for the teachers and the students in those schools,” he said.
Board chief faults study State penalizes Schenectady High School for its tough policies, panel's president says
By LAUREN STANFORTH, Staff writer First published: Thursday, August 21, 2008
SCHENECTADY -- School board president Jeff Janiszewski has blasted a state decision to place Schenectady High School on its list of "persistently dangerous" schools, calling the designation an insult and slanderous. In a Wednesday letter to parent leaders, Janiszewski said the basis for the state action is "very weak." The longtime Board of Education member alleged the Schenectady school district is being "penalized because we have such a tough discipline policy and enforce it so aggressively and keep careful records."
The designation, made public Wednesday by the state Education Department, marked the first time Schenectady High School has been on the list, which is based on the self-reporting of incidents that range from student acts of intimidation to physical and sexual assault.
The "designation... is an outrage, irresponsible and reckless. The designation is entirely untrue, and unfounded by any common meaning of those words," Janiszewski said in a statement.
"Those of us who send our sons and daughters to Schenectady High School know that such a characterization of the school, by any common meaning of those words, is totally false. It also damaging to our city and irresponsibly will frighten our citizens and even some of our parents," he wrote.
Schenectady is one of eight schools statewide to make the list this year, which is directed through the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Eleven other schools are carried over from last year's roster.
No other schools in the Capital Region made the list. But Berkshire Junior-Senior High School in Columbia County, a center for troubled youth, made the list for the third year in a row. Other than another center for troubled youth, Little Flower on Long Island, and an elementary school in Rochester, all other schools on the list are located in New York City. The state cited 27 schools last year.
Schenectady City School District Superintendent Eric Ely questioned the reliability of the list, saying the data is only as good as what districts choose to report.
"It's designed around identifying urban and high-poverty schools," Ely said. "To say there are only 19 similar schools (in the state) is silly."
The list is determined by a school having two successive years of serious incidents, which are weighted based on a state Education Department system and then compared against each school's enrollment. Serious incidents include: homicide, forcible and other sexual offenses, robbery, assault resulting in serious physical injury, arson, kidnapping, reckless endangerment, and possession, use or threatened use of a weapon.
The state said it took violent incident data from the 2006-2007 school year, and then requested 2007-2008 data from 35 schools that looked like they might qualify for the list. Two of the schools did not have 2007-2008 data, but the state did not indicate which ones. Schenectady schools spokeswoman Karen Corona said the district didn't send in the most recent data because it was not requested by the state. The 2007-2008 data isn't normally due for all school districts until the end of September, according to the state Education Department's Web site. A review of Schenectady High School's data on the state Education Department Web site shows that some serious incidents slightly increased between 2005-2006 and 2006-2007. For example, reports of assault with serious physical injury not involving a weapon went from three reports to six, and a single arson case was reported last year compared with none in 2005-2006. But in the majority of categories, fewer violent incidents were reported in 2006-2007 compared with the year before. School districts on the list must submit a plan to the state that shows what steps they will take to reduce violence and improve safety. Ely said he sent a detailed letter to the state about such improvements in July, but he suspects more documentation will be required.
Lauren Stanforth can be reached at 454-5697 or by e-mail at lstanforth@timesunion.com.
In a Wednesday letter to parent leaders, Janiszewski said the basis for the state action is "very weak." The longtime Board of Education member alleged the Schenectady school district is being "penalized because we have such a tough discipline policy and enforce it so aggressively and keep careful records."
If those things are truly happening (that you're reporting to the state) - why is there a problem? If other districts choose to report false, incomplete information, that's not your concern - you should be publishing the CORRECT information to the state - and let the chips fall where they may.
It's because the 'State' makes them take back those kids who could really care less and are integrity challenged......folks have told me they have a 'special school' for those 'at risk' kids......most of the time they are street walkers/painters/dealers/killers etc......when the leadership way way way at the top of a society are shown having disreguard for the most basic---we'll call them tenets of a society it truly trickles down......especially when those supposed folks are in charge and leading.......and it trickles down to the local level and even into judicial, law enforcement and ambulance chasers...... > > > >
so there is a 'welfare system' for those at the top too....they get paid and treated very well to be in their positions.......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Is Schenectady High School’s appearance on the state’s list of “persistently dangerous” schools damaging? Extremely. Is it fair? No way. First, a caveat. We agree that strict disciplinary policies are very important, both for children’s safety and for the sake of achievement. It is almost impossible to teach, and learn, in a chaotic, dangerous, disruptive environment. And, guess what? Schenectady school officials agree. That’s why they have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to dangerous and disruptive behavior. That’s why the high school has security cameras and security guards. That’s why it has a separate “dean of discipline” for each of its four houses. In fact, the district takes discipline so seriously that it conscientiously reports these incidents to the state Education Department — one of the few urban schools in the state (and entire country) to do so. Which is the only reason it finds itself on the state’s list of “persistently dangerous” schools — one of just 19 such schools in the state and three outside New York City. Go to the state Education Department’s Web site (http://www.nysed.gov/), check out the spread sheets for these incidents and you will see the problem — the one that Education Commissioner Richard Mills and his mindless, reckless crew surely also see but choose to ignore. Look at those schools in New York City (there are 1,400 of them) and Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, etc., and you will see a whole bunch of zeros for categories like assaults resulting in serious physical injury or physical injury, or reckless endangerment, or robbery, or weapon possession. Shouldn’t this be a warning flag that they’re lying, simply not reporting incidents that Schenectady does? Given the demographics and reputation of those schools, common sense says that they have at least as many, and likely more, such incidents as Schenectady. But rather than look more closely at them, the educrats instead came and audited Schenectady (which, based on the department’s arbitrary and subjective formula, was close to qualifying as a “persistently dangerous” school); found a handful of incidents in student files that the district, for some reason, didn’t report; and bumped it up into the dangerous category. So Schenectady joins 16 schools in New York City, one on Long Island and one in Canaan that made the mistake of taking its reporting duty seriously, as a “persistently dangerous” school. And another 21 nationwide — out of all those hellhole schools in places like Los Angeles, St. Louis and Houston. It’s a farce. If the state can’t find a way to make these numbers meaningful and put them in context, it should scrap them. They can do even more damage than those questionable school report cards, which at least are based on some objective and hard-to-hide criteria like standardized test scores. The truth is that Schenectady is a typical urban district with problems, but no worse than others, and probably better than many. It’s irresponsible of the Education Department to pretend otherwise when it knows better.
It’s a shame that the leadership of the Schenectady City School District failed to respond professionally to the recent designation of Schenectady High School as a “persistently dangerous” school [Aug. 21 Gazette]. School Board czar [Jeff] Janiszewski had nothing to offer but inflammatory rhetoric in response to the designation, while Superintendent Eric Ely could only add the lame comment that other schools that were just as problematic weren’t on the list. The reality is that when you put too many adolescents into too small a space — irrespective of ethnicity or income level — there will be issues. My son graduated in from Schenectady High in 2005, and learned to exercise a modest degree of cautious common sense in the building. Not really a big deal — then. However, the enrollment level for the upcoming year is over 20 percent higher than it was when he was there. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that overcrowding will result in problems. Real leaders would use this designation as a way to initiate a dialogue within the community and with the State Education Department on how to deal with the serious overcrowding situation. Indulging in empty, butt-covering rhetoric solves no problems, and it isn’t leadership. No passing grade for Janiszewski and Ely in this class. DONALD CSAPOSS Albany
The state of the Schenectady city schools is a much-debated topic, one that can only be clarified by hearing from many different perspectives. As someone who has attended Schenectady schools since kindergarten, and is currently entering her senior year at Schenectady High, I can say from an insider’s perspective that Schenectady schools are great. In regard to recent claims that the schools, Schenectady High in particular, are dangerous, I can assert that I have never, in 12 years, been affected by violence while attending school. While I cannot deny that violence does exist in the schools, its existence is very often misreported and in general blown out of proportion, as are most problems faced by the district. I’m not advocating a debate over who gets the shortest end of the stick when it comes to media coverage; Schenectady schools would win that hands down. I’m simply worried that the continued media scrutiny of the Schenectady school district is unwarranted and detracts from the many good things Schenectady schools have to offer, including specialty magnet schools, developed arts programs and the International Baccalaureate program. As someone who has greatly benefited from all of these programs, I wish only that those who are quick to label Schenectady as dangerous, inner-city and problem-plagued would give it another look. They would undoubtedly see a diverse and accomplished student body, a dedicated staff, and a safe learning environment. NORA MISHANEC-NOVAK Schenectady
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com. Sch’dy High dangerous? Look again
If you saw the headlines the other day that Schenectady High School has been newly ranked as one of 19 “persistently dangerous” schools in New York state, you didn’t need to be a sociologist or an education researcher to know something was wrong. Schenectady? Dangerous? In comparison not just to Albany and Troy, which is enough of a stretch, but also in comparison to the Bronx and Brooklyn? Who’s kidding whom? Well, the state Department of Education is kidding all of us. Not only are the reporting standards rather subjective, so Schenectady and Albany may not report the same way, but the 1,452 schools of New York City report virtually no violence at all, and neither do the 60 schools of Buffalo. You can look for yourself on the Web site of the state Education Department, http://www.nysed.gov. Click on the heading of the 19 schools named as “persistently dangerous,” and you will see two lists, one for New York City schools and one for schools in the rest of the state. The schools in most of the rest of the state, including Schenectady, report such numbers as, 30 instances of weapon possession, 266 instances of bullying, 138 minor altercations, and so forth, filling in the blanks on government forms under the appropriate headings. It’s apparent that these schools make some effort to at least appear honest, even if the temptation must be great to under-report and I have no doubt many of them do underreport. But the 1,452 schools of New York City report virtually nothing: column after column of zeroes or modest little single digits. All those gang-controlled hell-holes, all those blackboard-jungle prototypes, and they supposedly have no assaults, no injuries, no rapes, no robberies, no bullying, no minor altercations, no instances of harassment, no larcenies, or maybe at the most one or two or three. Far less than the most peaceable suburban schools upstate. And the same goes for Buffalo — column after column of zeroes. And the same goes for Yonkers High School, too, which was as far as I got in my checking. So obviously the self-reporting system is a farce, and to claim on the basis of such reporting that Schenectady, of all humdrum places, has one of the most dangerous high schools in the state is not only an insult to our intelligence, it is a bald-faced lie. And State Ed knows it. State Ed knows that the big city schools simply blow off the reporting of violence that is mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind law, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Some gang-ridden dungeon in the South Bronx or Brooklyn reports zero assaults for the year, zero altercations, zero bullying, zero injuries, zero rapes, and who’s going to do make them do otherwise? Nobody. And the same with Buffalo, the same with Yonkers. Tom Dunn, spokesman for State Ed, said to me very guardedly, “We audit New York City proportionately with their share of the population,” but would not go beyond that when I pointed out to him the obvious fraudulence of the reports. Basically, the big cities just do not participate in the self-monitoring system mandated by federal law and administered by the state. In so many words, or numbers, they tell the feds and the state to go to hell. Which is one thing, but for State Ed, fully aware of that situation, to convey that Schenectady High School is one of the most dangerous schools in the state and for the state education commissioner, Richard Mills, to declare that he is releasing the list of these most dangerous schools “so that parents can exercise their right of school choice,” thus encouraging families to pull their kids out of Schenectady High strikes me as — shall we say irresponsible? I don’t even believe that Schenectady has more violent incidents than Albany, though that is merely a matter of degree. I believe that Schenectady is more punctilious about reporting, that’s all, as indicated by their vastly higher reported numbers of “other disruptive incidents” — 2,031 in Schenectady as opposed to 408 in Albany. Obviously, that’s just a different way of looking at things, a different way of keeping records. By information and belief, there is no way that Schenectady High School experiences more disruptive incidents than Albany High School. Now, as a thoughtful reader you may well ask, if New York City schools ignore reporting requirements and defiantly put down a lot of zeroes for their violent incidents, how come they account for 16 of the 19 supposedly most dangerous schools on the state’s official list? After hunching myself over the statistics for many dreary minutes and squinting hard, I come up with a possible answer: Every once in a while an administrator at one of these schools, in a fit of pretendhonesty, records some number other than 1 or zero and puts down, let’s say, eight assaults for the year, or three sex offenses, or one case of arson, and since the enrollments for these schools can be quite small, in the low hundreds, and since the final calculations are done on a per capita basis, that is enough to get the school on the list of the mythical most dangerous. That’s what I conclude after reviewing the records of those schools. Most of their numbers are still a joke — most of them are zeroes — but every once in a while a barely plausible number is dropped in, for something really grave like murder, rape or arson, just for variety, I guess, and that’s enough for the straight-faces at State Ed, who give it the appropriate weight in their formula. Anyway, the dramatic categorizing of “persistently dangerous” schools by the state Education Department is a sham and a farce. And for Commissioner Mills to self-importantly declare that each such school must submit to him, for his approval, an “Incident Reduction Plan,” showing the “specific steps” they will take to improve safety is another sham and farce. If he is concerned about school safety, let him take some specific steps down to the Bronx or Brooklyn and stop goofing with our heads.
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