NYC Public Schools

New York City Department of Education has the largest system of public schools in the United States, attending more than 1 million students in about 1,700 schools. They try to use public money in a very transparent way, and taxpayers can be aware of all investments the department do checking all the datas they display at their website. Parents can also check what kind of activities their kids are involved in while they are inside the school.

But, nowadays, parents are concerned about the fact that maybe their kids are not able for going to schools. In the last six years, since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg assumed the control of public education in New York City, the number of suspensions more than doubled. Michael and his team assumed a posture of zero-tolerance to misbehaviour. At least is what they claim.

According to New York Civil Liberties Union not only the suspensions have increased during these years, but also the period. In 2002, they registered 32,000 suspensions that lasted around 5 days. In 2009, seven years later, the suspensions reached an impressive 74,000 and almost 6 million of than took the student away from the classroom for more than 30 days.

It’s even a bigger problem when you face it this way : the number os suspensions has affected more black students and also the one with some kind of disabilities, according to NYCLU. Black students that are 30% of new yorker students represented more than half of the suspensions. Special-students are 16,2% of new yorker enrollment and represented one-third of all suspensions.

Under the investigation of NYCLU, the New York City Department of Education has already pronounced that they are going to re-evaluate the rules they have created. Because staying away from the classroom – even for regular students – can cause serious consequences to a student’s education.