New York City schools are experiencing a spike in discipline problems among children, evidence that the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic are having lingering effects, educators and experts say.

Most of the misbehavior involves lower-level disturbances, which teachers and advocates say show many students are still affected emotionally difficult time after the stress of the pandemic.

Despite a handful of high-profile episodes — at least two students were shot at Staten Island’s Port Richmond High School this week, for example — student arrests account for a small percentage of discipline incidents, police said.

Luis A. Rodriguez, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at New York University, said the increase was not necessarily surprising given the isolation and stress students and their families experienced during the pandemic.

“Schools have had to take into account the impact Covid has had on socialising,” he said.

At the High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan, Rosa Isabel Chavez, a fashion design teacher, said that when schools reopened, students returned without “a high school-level mentality.”

“They were still very childish,” she said. “We had freshmen still holding hands like little kids do in elementary school, which was cute, but still scary.”

There were also fights, she added, because students thought “the response was to hit instead of talking things out.”

According to police data, there were 14,048 school safety incidents last school year. In the 2018-2019 school year there were 11,504. The increase comes amid discussion about how schools should respond to discipline problems.

In recent years, both the police department and the Department of Education have tried to reduce the frequency with which officers respond to low-level violations such as disorderly conduct. Police data shows that when uniformed officers and school safety officers respond, they are now more likely to send students back to their schools for discipline rather than arresting them or issuing a citation.

Still, the number of times students were suspended or expelled from class rose to 36,992 last year from 31,738 the year before, although this is still below pre-pandemic levels.

“Most discipline incidents are not serious,” said Madeline Borrelli, a special education teacher and member of Teachers Unite, an organization focused on ending “the school-to-prison pipeline.”

She said less-resourced schools, where teachers may be overwhelmed, may have to rely on punishments, including expulsion, suspension or calling in school safety officers, “to respond to normal child behavior.”

Rohini Singh, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children of New York, which has called for school safety reforms, said law enforcement still plays an “outsized role” in school discipline.

And racial disparities persist. Black students make up a quarter of the city’s public school population but account for 40 percent of suspensions or expulsions from classrooms. More than 50 percent of incidents in which police intervened involved black students.

According to the mayor’s office, serious incidents at schools, such as assault and burglary, have generally remained relatively low compared to the end of 2010, but some recent incidents have been violent.

In February, two students were stabbed at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens; a 14-year-old boy was cut in the chest with a pocket knife outside MS 246 in Brooklyn; and a 12-year-old girl was stabbed at Pathways College Preparatory School in Queens, according to police.

And this month, an 8-year-old boy was found with a gun at his Brooklyn elementary school, though it was not loaded and no one was injured, police said.

David C. Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, said that gang activity appears to be on the rise in the city, and that “some of that has to do with the adolescent alienation that we see more generally .”

The increase in disciplinary problems in schools is disturbing for students and parents.

In December, a student was stabbed at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, prompting a lockdown. Fumbi Joseph Vilme, a freshman, said he stayed in the piano room for several hours. He said he wished there were metal detectors, “because you’re supposed to feel safe at school.”

His father, Marvin Vilme, who also attended the school, said he was shocked by the incident and has since considered homeschooling his son.

But Sumarha Tariq, who attended the High School of Fashion Industries, is among students who may have benefited from efforts to reduce police involvement in disciplinary issues.

After she was found in 2022 with pepper spray in her backpack, which is illegal for minors, a security officer escorted her to a school office.

The security officer referred her case back to the school. A school counselor issued a warning, but not a suspension, after Ms. Tariq wrote a statement explaining that she carried the spray because she had experienced harassment during her commute. She went through the rest of high school without any problems, graduated and is now a freshman at Yale University.

According to Ms. Tariq, this was “the best-case scenario.”

Hurubie Meko reporting contributed. Benjamin Steiger contributed research.

South Sudan has long been affected by disasters exacerbated by climate change, such as recurring droughts and floods. Now extreme heat is forcing the world’s youngest country to close its schools.

Authorities have ordered schools across the country closed since Monday due to a wave of excessive heat that is expected to last at least two weeks. Temperatures are forecast to reach 113 degrees Fahrenheit, well above the 90 degree highs typically experienced in the dry season from December to March.

Officials did not say how long schools would remain closed. But the ministries of health and education said in a joint statement that “any school opened during this period will have its registration revoked.”

Parents have also been urged not to let their children play outside and to monitor them for signs of heat exhaustion and heatstroke.

Sweltering temperatures in South Sudan, where the tropical climate has both dry and wet seasons, interrupt the start of the academic year. Most schools in the East African country, especially those outside the capital Juba, are overcrowded and underfunded and lack infrastructure such as air conditioning to help withstand such heat.

South Sudan is highly exposed to severe climatic events, including droughts, floods and rising temperatures. These changes have exacerbated displacement, food insecurity and communal conflict in the country of 11 million people, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

The heat wave is also expected to put pressure on the country’s nascent healthcare system, which has long struggled with limited funding and labor shortages.

South Sudan is not the only African country where extreme weather conditions have led to school closures. In 2022, the Malawi government shortened the school day in the southern Shire Valley due to rising temperatures. And in Uganda, severe flooding has repeatedly forced the government to do so schools close over the years.

But in South Sudan, conflict, a worsening humanitarian crisis and a tense political environment have made it even more difficult to alleviate the unrest caused by climate change.

South Sudan’s civil war has killed around 400,000 people and displaced millions more since 2013. And while there has been a tenuous political settlement among the country’s feuding leaders in recent years, there is a growing humanitarian crisis and deadly divisions between forces within the ruling power. alliance have increased uncertainty over whether repeatedly postponed elections will take place this year.

At the same time, war in neighboring Sudan has forced the return of nearly half a million South Sudanese who fled the conflict at home. Many have returned to towns and villages where their homes and farms have been looted and are finding it difficult to rebuild their lives.

Emmanuel Lokosang, head teacher at Jada Jedid Nursery and Primary School in the capital, said he hoped the weather would cool soon so students could resume classes.

“Juba is really hot,” Mr. Lokosang, whose school has more than 600 students, said in a telephone interview Wednesday morning.

He added: “We hope they do not delay for long because the more we delay, the more it will affect the academic calendar and how we can restore the curriculum.”

Good morning. It is Wednesday. Today we’ll look at a clash between two schools sharing one building in Manhattan, and how it reflects two of the crises facing urban school districts.

Two high schools have long shared a building on West 105th Street in Manhattan, and as sometimes happens with residents of shared spaces, tensions have arisen. Enrollment at one of the schools, Public School 145, has increased in recent years, while the other, West Prep Academy, has lost students.

I asked Troy Closson, whose reporting focuses on K-12 education in New York City, to explain this two-school story as it highlights the demographic shifts caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the migrant crisis .

The first deputy schools chancellor said there are too many schools “that have fallen below critical mass.” One of these is the West Prep Academy. How many students, why the decrease and what does the student population look like?

West Prep serves largely low-income Black and Latino students. Before the pandemic, it had about 200 students. It is located in District 3, which includes the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem. That area has lost families and students since the pandemic. West Prep’s current enrollment is approximately 170.

The Ministry of Education wants to move West Prep to another building, and West Prep is also told it needs to grow. That has led to a tense conflict between West Prep and PS 145 over resources, space and what these student populations need.

That reflects the larger problem of declining enrollment across the city, doesn’t it?

We’re now at a point post-pandemic where there aren’t as many families in town, and many schools have questions about their current size and enrollment. School officials have said they are interested in doubling down on what works and what is popular so they can win families back into the system.

But unlike other cities where we’ve seen families leave public schools because of the quality of the schools, here in New York there isn’t much evidence that this has caused enrollment losses. It’s just families leaving New York, especially black families.

One of the questions some teachers at West Prep have is: If they have to move to another building for the purpose of increasing enrollment, and the same number of students are simply no longer in the district, what happens? They worry about the future.

Meanwhile, PS 145 is bursting at the seams.

PS 145 is one of the schools that has had an exceptionally high number of children in the last two years, from Latin America and Eastern Europe – Ukraine and Russia. The school has bilingual programs that make it a good fit for these families, and they have helped increase enrollment.

But parents at PS 145 have said that as student numbers increased, the school made painful decisions about repurposing the library and scaling back programs like music and media.

A complicated debate has emerged about what children deserve. Parents have argued about whether programs at PS 145, such as additional 3-K and pre-K classrooms, are necessary or luxuries when space is so limited.

That added an extra layer to this debate: what is a necessity?

How did the PS 145 change as space became tighter?

Parents say it has been difficult for them. At a hearing a few weeks ago, many parents who may have had an older child there a few years ago and now have a younger child there talked about the differences in those experiences and access to programs that aren’t about math. or reading, but developing other skills that their children do not get.

Where does the money come from – because it will come in anyway?

Funding from the Ministry of Education is allocated to schools based on the number of children they attend. School officials have said their concern is that if a school becomes too small, it won’t be able to offer all the programs it would like to offer. Can we invest in our sports team, or should we offer an after-school program?

What about the building West Prep needs to move to?

The Department of Education is trying to move West Prep to a building a few blocks away, but families and teachers consider it unsuitable and unsafe. West Prep has a special program for students with autism. They wander off more often.

A major sticking point is that the new building has rooms that open onto fire escapes. The concern is that West Prep’s specific student population would likely run down the fire escapes and be injured.

The new building also does not have its own outdoor space. The current building has a unique playground for children with disabilities, so the children at West Prep would actually have to take field trips to the building where they are now.

Later this spring, an education panel will vote on whether West Prep should be moved in time for the school’s opening in the fall.

If enrollment continues to shrink, how far away is New York from closing schools?

School administrators try to avoid having to confront this. We know from research that closures can be tough on children.

Any discussion of closures is unpopular to begin with. It’s something no one wants to talk about in any city, but especially here — because it’s not a school board that runs the system, but the mayor — it’s a particular landmine for City Hall.

Weather

For the first full day of spring – the equinox that ushered in the new season occurred at 11:06 a.m. last night – prepare for a mostly sunny morning with a chance of afternoon showers and temperatures in the low 50s. At night it is mainly clear with a minimum temperature of 32 degrees.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until Sunday (Purim).

The latest New York news

METROPOLITAN diary

Lorimerstraat

Dear Diary:

I lived in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in the early 2000s and had never ridden the L train past my Lorimer Street stop.

But one night I was out late with colleagues in Manhattan and had a little too much to drink. To get home, I took the L at Eighth Avenue, where I sat as the train idled awaiting its departure.

About an hour later I was woken by the train conductor at the last stop, Canarsie-Rockaway Parkway. He asked what my intended stop was. When I said Lorimer, he asked me to get up and follow him.

I walked him to the front of the train, where he told me to sit across from his booth. He left the door open and we spent the next hour talking about life, work and sports as the train headed back to Manhattan.

When we arrived in Lorimer, I got out, rummaged home to my apartment and went straight to sleep.

In recent weeks, a bitter clash over space has erupted in a beloved New York City school building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where two programs have shared over the past ten years.

It’s a struggle that mirrors the events that created two of the biggest demographic shifts in New York City’s recent history: the Covid-19 pandemic and the surge of migrants from the southern border.

One of the building’s residents, Public School 145, has added more than 120 new students due to an influx of newcomers. The Department of Education has proposed moving the other, West Prep Academy, which has lower enrollment, to a separate but outdated building to make room for its growing neighbor.

The conflict exposes broader fault lines in New York and other major American cities. The nation’s public schools have lost more than 1.2 million students since the pandemic began and are facing major budget cuts as a result. Urban areas with large numbers of poor families have been hit The hardest. By 2031, enrollment could fall by another 2.5 million nationally, much of it due to declining birth rates.

On the other hand, the increase in the number of new immigrant families in New York and elsewhere is helping offset some of the losses at schools well positioned to benefit from the influx. But it has raised questions in some areas about how resources and space are used and could set communities on divergent paths.

The plan to split PS 145 and West Prep Academy has highlighted how painful change can be. A school building is more than a collection of lockers and classrooms. It is often the heart of a neighborhood and the anchor for a village of children and educators.

“It’s always full of emotions,” the school’s chancellor, David C. Banks, said during a news conference Thursday. “One of the schools has to move, and there is a lot of hullabaloo about which one.”

Two schools. Two population problems.

New York City once had 1.1 million schoolchildren. Today, that figure has dropped to about 915,000.

For the system’s leaders, the decline has raised major concerns about the future. About 12 percent of the city’s 1,600 schools had fewer than 200 students last school year.

“Students equal dollars,” Daniel Weisberg, the first deputy schools chancellor, said at a town-hall-style meeting in Brooklyn last fall. “We don’t like to think about it that way, but that’s just the economic reality.” He added: We have too many schools that have fallen below critical mass.”

Migrant children entering the system have helped offset the losses, but only partially, and not in all schools. According to officials, the city has lost more than 120,000 students and added more than 30,000 immigrant students in recent years.

West Prep Academy is a close-knit high school that includes a unique program for students with autism. About nine in ten students are black or Latino. More than 40 percent have a disability.

It is a refuge for vulnerable children who are not welcome elsewhere, parents say. The data shows that by the time students leave eighth grade, they have typically made more academic progress than their counterparts at other schools with similar populations.

But enrollment at the school has fallen in recent years, from more than 200 in 2018 to roughly 170 students this year. The decline has been largely driven by the departure of black families from the area, and school officials say West Prep needs to grow to a more “sustainable size.”

At its neighbor, PS 145, one in three students is homeless; two-thirds are black or Latino.

In a neighborhood with several coveted elementary school options, PS 145 once struggled with a chronically low enrollment rate. But as New York City became an epicenter for an influx of migrants from Latin America and Eastern Europe, the school’s bilingual programs in Spanish and Russian made it ideal for new families from those places.

Enrollment has increased by 25 percent over the past five years and now stands at over 480 students.

The growth has forced the school to make tough decisions about space, teachers said. The library is gone. Therapy sessions for students with disabilities are held in cramped spaces. Media and arts programs have been scaled back.

“These are all things that every student should have,” said Lauren Balaban, co-president of the PS 145 parent-teacher association.

“But we have a problem,” she added. “We do not have the space in our building to provide the services our children need and deserve.”

The Department of Education plans to move West Prep to a nearby building next fall. Built in the 1890s, the building is not accessible to students with disabilities and has no outdoor space. Parents and teachers have wondered whether their school would be treated differently if it served a more affluent and white student body.

“There is a perceived disparity here,” Jennifer Holland, a West Prep parent leader, said at a recent hearing on the possible move. She added that she was frustrated by the choice of an inaccessible building. “You are driving out a population for reasons that are not justified.”

‘It’s going to happen more often’

As New York moves and merges schools after an enrollment drop, other cities are grappling with an even more serious problem: closures.

This month, San Francisco became the newest city district announce plans to close public schools. San Antonio has said it does 15 percent from his schools. Boston could close so many half.

Other cities could feel similar pressure as districts anticipate the expiration of billions in federal pandemic aid, and schools with higher percentages of disadvantaged students are likely to becoming a victim.

“It’s very difficult, and it’s going to happen again,” said Douglas Harris, a professor at Tulane University who has studied the issue.

Such closure plans have led to mass protests and hunger strikes.

Marguerite Roza, a scholar at Georgetown University, said districts sometimes delay changes to “avoid the backlash that comes with announcing school closures.” But putting off difficult decisions often makes them all the more painful, she added.

Officials in New York have tried to proceed cautiously. Closing schools could be politically dangerous for Mayor Eric Adams as he tries to convince the state Legislature to let him retain control of the system — and as he seeks reelection for a second term.

As the system’s finances tighten, city officials have blamed costs related to the influx of migrants for recent education budget cuts. But registration rose this year for the first time in almost a decade, largely thanks to the newcomers.

Even with the new students, schools are still competing for a much smaller number of children.

Some West Prep teachers worry they are being set up to fail. They like being a small community and say it can be difficult to attract new families if the 127-year-old building they could be forced to move into is lacking compared to other local options.

“It’s an injustice,” said Tyi Ellis, president of the West Prep parent association. “Nobody asked for this.”

The World Bank’s internal watchdog on Thursday criticized the organization’s handling and oversight of its investments in a chain of Kenyan schools that were subject to an internal investigation following allegations that students had been abused.

The investigation, which began in 2020, has consumed World Bank officials and shareholders in recent months and led to investigations into its investment arm, the International Finance Corporation, which invested in the education project a decade ago.

Countries on the IFC’s board have debated how to compensate victims of the abuse. Although the scandal predates the tenure of Ajay Banga, the new World Bank president, it has emerged as one of the first tests of his management.

Mr Banga will be responsible for driving any changes to how the bank invests in private sector projects. He has already faced criticism for appearing dismissive of suggestions that the IFC was interfering in the investigation US lawmakers told him so that the bank’s future financing could depend on its handling of the matter.

The watchdog reportpublished by the The World Bank Compliance Advisor Ombudsmanconcluded that the IFC “did not take into account the potential risks of child sexual abuse posed by the project, nor did it take into account the client’s ability to meet environmental and social requirements relating to the risks and consequences of sexual abuse of children.”

The World Bank had a $13 million stake in Bridge International Academies from 2013 to 2022. She quit the program after complaints of sexual abuse at the schools, which led to an internal investigation into the events and a review of how her investment department oversees such programs. .

The report, citing Bridge International Academies, added that the “IFC failed to regularly monitor or substantively address with its client the project-related risks and consequences of child sexual abuse and gender-based violence.”

It was then recommended that the victims of the abuse receive financial compensation.

However, a management action plan agreed by the IFC Board of Directors did not fully take these recommendations into account. Instead, the plan said it would “directly fund a recovery program for survivors of child sexual abuse” for up to 10 years. The plan would pay an unspecified amount for psychological support and sexual and reproductive health care for adolescents.

The decision on whether to directly compensate victims was the subject of intense internal debate among board members, with some arguing that the bank should not take such direct financial responsibility for what happened during the program.

In an email to World Bank staff sent on Wednesday evening, Mr Banga, who was not at the helm during the period of abuse, acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the handling of the program and the investigation and was remorseful. .

“I am sorry for the trauma these children have experienced, I am committed to supporting the survivors and determined to ensure we do better in the future,” Mr Banga wrote.

Mr Banga acknowledged allegations that IFC officials tried to cover up allegations of misconduct, adding that he would appoint an external investigator to ensure the previous investigation was free of interference.

“We should have responded earlier and more aggressively,” he said. “This is a difficult moment for our institution, but it must be a moment of introspection.”

Human rights groups and civil society organizations have been critical of the proposed action plans, arguing that they do not go far enough to compensate victims.

On Thursday they continued to lament the lack of direct financial support in the action plan, which proposes to pay for it counseling services and healthcare for the victims.

“IFC’s action plan fails to do what it is required to do: provide a solution for Bridge survivors,” the spokesperson said. David Predthe executive director of the human rights group Inclusive Development International.

In recent days, US lawmakers have also urged the Treasury Department, which helped nominate Mr Banga to lead the bank, to push for more to be done and reject the action plan.

“I am concerned that failure to provide immediate and meaningful compensation will harm not only the survivors and their families, but also the reputation of the IFC, which has a vital mission around the world, and that of the United States as its largest shareholder,” Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen on Wednesday.

The Treasury Department, which had pushed for compensation for the victims, said in a statement Thursday that it accepted the report’s findings. However, it suggested that survivors should be consulted as the IFC determines how best to compensate them.

“We believe that the IFC should keep all resolution options on the table as consultations continue,” The Ministry of Finance reported this in a statement.

The statement added that the department was also concerned about allegations of interference in the investigation and welcomed an independent review of how this was handled.

“We are deeply concerned by the broader liability issues this case raises,” the report said.