3. Discipline, Abysmal Attendance and their Corollary : Academic Failure

When standardized tests results are poor (which is the case more often than not in SURR schools), teachers incompetence, not discipline and attendance, is usually blamed. This section illustrates the the latter devastating effect, compounded by the school leadership ineptitude at Erasmus Hall HS.

In 1994-95 school year a war broke out on Erasmus Hall HS campus between Haitian and Jamaican students – that was before the school was split into three smaller ones -- , prompting an early dismissal. The next day I talked to students from both sides, privately, to understand what happened. They both agreed on one thing : “They spoke in their patois nobody understand except them” ,the Jamaican students said. “ They want to prevent us from speaking our own language”, the Haitian said. The issue had never been addressed, as it should have been through a town meeting assembling parents, teachers and administrators. Add marijuana-dealing-smoking on campus -- notorious but never addressed either -- and you understand the toxic climate within which teachers, convenient scapegoats, were asked to perform.

On paper, there was a policy dealing with passes and lateness, but never applied : a late student could barge into your classroom anytime during instruction. If you refused to let him in Mrs. Edwards, A.P., would be all over you : "You have no right to deny the student education”. She always framed issues in terms of student victimization [3] -- a political blackmail that resonates well with parents, many of which already blamed the "system" for their children's failure. If they only knew that Mrs. Edwards was part of the system failure culture.

There was no consistent procedure dealing with disruptive students. The DOE discipline code was only decorative, and still is : if ever enforced strictly in many schools, including this one, at least 20% of students would be suspended at any time -- something politically unsustainable for the educrats. And yet, we lost our school to the hoodlums.The infamous "dirty dozen" rub shoulder with hundreds not so clean. With a modicum of leadership, administrators, teachers and other staff members could coordinate effort and resources to make the school viable, and maintain a climate conducive to learning -- I don't see that happening before Comet Halley's next visit.
In Fall 1997, overwhelmed by students disrupting classes where they did not belong, a score of teachers addressed a petition to the principal to seek remedy. That was heroic -- an invitation for a witch hunt.
Unwanted "visitors" from adjacent subschools (Humanities and Art and Math and Science) compounded the problem. Of course, our students contributed to their predicaments too. The school was violent.The negative correlation between students misbehavior and academic success is once again confirmed in 2002-03 school year :

During the 1995-96 school year, 60% of students were absent from their math classes for at least 10 times during the semester -- fairly representative of the whole student body [4]

DOE has no foreseeable alternative to this bankrupt leadership, the same way it has no alternative to recruiting uncertified teachers when facing shortage.
One of the most daunting experience for a teacher is to see, with no recourse, a student defying, and even taunting, him and breaking rules in all impunity : it happens all the time at Erasmus. It is not alone in that category. Under such circumstances it is a detestable copt-out to blame the teacher for poor "class management". Of course the first step for the teacher is to contact parents. Even if he does not run into ceaseless busy signals, disconnected phones, wrong numbers, or answering outgoing messages at any time, parental cooperation is not guaranteed. In addition, a non-negligible number of students are not listed on the Alpha (phones / addresses listing), which leads to a pathetic power game : Mrs. Edwards instructed the deans (Fall 1997) who had access to the missing information, not to call parents on behalf of teachers without clearing with her! Even the most autocratic principal knows that he cannot prevent teachers from contacting parents. But the superintendent's protege can. An incident shed light on her attitude : a student was seen stealing a walkman from my bag; I reported the incident to her. She did not act upon it. I was able to call the student's home and learned that he was a foster child; that the guardian intended to return him to the city because he was "contaminating" her own children with his thefts, sexual behavior, etc...Instead of stonewalling in a futile effort to "protect" this student's privacy, Mrs Edwards could talk to me about it candidly : her attitude was totally misplaced; it reeked of prejudice -- she is compassionate, I am not, from her narrow-minded viewpoint. The most objectionable habit of Mrs Edwards' consisted of intervening in favor of students publicly, and thus undermining the teacher's authority. I had to put her in her place a couple of times, which inevitably strained our relationship. Examples :
a) D.D. stole a test on my desk (her seat was right in front me), I assigned her another seat ; she refused, and came the next day with Mrs. Edwards, arguing that she could not see from the back. I pointed out that her new seat was only one row away from my desk. I resented Mrs. Edwards' intervention in my own class: "what's wrong with her sitting there ?", pointing to the student's new choice (demanded arrogantly the day before.) Upset, I told Mrs. Edwards: "that is the way it goes: this is my classroom." She was not in supervisory position yet, otherwise she would have conducted a lesson observation in my classroom and rated it unsatisfactory to teach me a lesson [5].
Her handling of the theft was appalling: "I talked to her [the student], she said that another student did it." And what is the name of that student? "She did not tell me." I called the student's mother about the incident. I went off the roof when she said : "Why don't you follow Mrs Edwards' instructions? Didn't she tell you that D.D. did not steal your test ?" We were talking about an 18-year-old senior, graduating at the end of the Fall semester.

b) In Spring 1997, D.A. was transferred into our school, from Sheephead High School, apparently after a serious incident – a detestable DOE practice : displacing problems, not solving them. Right off the bat, the new guest challenged my seating chart, and added: " Mrs. Edwards told me to see her, if you bother me." Mrs. Edwards came to my classroom, and asked me, in front of my students, to allow D.A. to take the seat he wanted. Upset, I responded No. I asked Mrs. Edwards to comment on D.A.'s statement: "I only told him to see me if he has any problem."
D.A. turned out to be a nightmare in the course of semester. He was transferred to another class, after he threatened me physically. The list is endless.

The number of the principal's suspensions on the Annual School Report in 1995-96 was suspiciously low: 15 students or 3.2 %, compared to All School's 4.3%. No kidding. The number was smaller than the adjacent schools' figures as well --schools with same characteristics : size, academics, demographics, etc. (similar schools ). One could argue that the number shot up back to normal because a teacher raised the issue in a meeting. This statistics manipulation has a simple explanation : the criteria for principals evaluation include pass rates, number of suspensions, absence,etc..

For a long a time I tried to deal with the discipline mess with a radical, idiosyncratic approach: visiting homes of impossible students. It worked marvelously: the first three Saturdays or Sundays at the beginning of the semester sufficed. The word spreads quickly like a prairie fire in drought seasons : Mr. Fofana went to Tamara's home on Sunday.What ?! The intended recipients received the message fast, and unambiguously. Immediate payoff : I could function or even help fellow teachers out. Too good to be true: Mrs. Walters called me for conference one day and informed me that I could not visit students' homes anymore because there were complaints by some parents. "I do not have the liberty to give you names", she said. Pure fabrication because parents were delighted for many reasons : the most appealing was no need to take a day off to attend disciplinary conference at school . Mrs. Walters was too insecure; such interactions with parents could undermined her authority, as she probably saw it.