Hammered by parents on 'Prison Petrides' Watch video
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott confronts a hostile crowd at Sunnyside school.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott got an earful -- a loud, angry earful -- from parents furious over plans to house suspended students at the Michael J. Petrides Educational Complex, as well as the continued denial of some yellow-bus service, at tonight's meeting of the Panel on Educational Policy.
"Welcome to Prison Petrides, Cell Block A," parent Stephen Wysokowski greeted Walcott and the panel.
An issue that wasn't even on the agenda, the proposal for an Alternate Learning Center at Petrides for middle school students serving lengthy superintendent's suspensions, dominated the meeting -- which, in a twist of fate, had been scheduled weeks ago for the Sunnyside school in question.
About 200 parents and residents turned out at the meeting, and 50 signed up to address the chancellor and the panel. They shouted over Walcott repeatedly, as the chancellor continually asked them to let him speak or respond to their questions.
Parents bemoaned the decision as a "done deal." But Walcott closed the meeting by saying the center wouldn't open this month, and he promised to meet with the school's PTA next week.
"I'll be doing some more due diligence and we'll decide from there," he told the Advance.
PARENTS OUTRAGED
Wysokowski told Walcott he knew what kind of kids would be coming to the center at Petrides -- he said his son was seriously injured by one of them, a 14-year-old student at the extant Alternate Learning Center at Mount Lorretto. Young Wysokowski, then 16, was attacked on a city bus. He needed emergency surgery for a broken nose and lost had his cell phone to his assailant. The father hoisted high a picture of his injured son.
"This middle schooler had two prior arrests," he said. "And this is the type of criminal you will let occupy our school complex, with our children?"
He noted that due to denial of bus service, his younger son, 12, must take three city buses and walk half a mile through construction sites to get to Petrides. The suspension center will only compound his anxiety about school, his father said.
But Walcott said the students who would serve out their suspensions on the Petrides campus -- in a building that houses no other classrooms -- aren't criminals.
"They're students who have been suspended. They're not criminals," he said. "To criminalize our students who are not criminals, I think, is wrong."
While levels 4 and 5 of the disciplinary code do include some crimes -- gun possession, for example -- Walcott said that kind of offense would yield a yearlong suspension. The Petrides complex won't serve students with suspensions that long, he said. Officials would not, however, specify the longest suspension time to be served. The shortest would be a week.
LITTLE NOTICE
Middle school students currently serve their superintendent's suspensions at Mount Lorretto, but high schoolers have to travel off the Island to do so. When elected officials asked Walcott's office for a local spot for the high school students, they asked to expand at Mount Lorretto but were turned down by the landlord, Walcott said. So they worked up a plan to move the middle schoolers to Petrides, and put high school students at Mount Lorretto.
Parents -- and elected officials -- said they heard of the plan only this week. Many said they learned of it through a story in yesterday's Advance. Walcott apologized for that.
"The bottom line is, we've made a decision, we did not do the process properly and I apologize publicly for that," he said.
The mood at the meeting was tense from the start, with folks holding signs decrying the plan, and angrily shouting at Walcott when he tried to explain the city's rationale.
"These children are in need of quality educational services," Walcott told the crowd.
That triggered a tremendous outpouring of shouts from the crowd. Later, parents yelled out "Next!" as the panel tried to make their way through unrelated business. When it was time for public comment, there was plenty to go around.
PLENTY TO SAY
Parent John Vitucci said he works as a lawyer in Criminal Court, and recently took his 5-year-old daughter there. He explained to her that the criminals there had done "bad things."
"How do I explain to my daughter that the people who committed those same acts, the robberies, the assaults, the guns, the rapes, are now at school with her?" he asked. "She's 5 years old."
Another parent, Elizabeth Ehresman of Westerleigh, who is also a public middle school teacher, said when a problem student is suspended for a month, teachers breathe a sigh of relief.
"I'm telling you, you do not want these children in this school," she said.
Several brought up concerns for the suspended students, too. Education officials have said they will eat lunch at their desks, will be escorted to the bathroom by security guards, and there's no provision yet for their mandated physical education.
Community Education Council Sam Pirozzolo said even inmates at the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility get to go to lunch and the bathroom. He called for a more comprehensive, permanent place to educate middle school students who are failing at their own schools.
"You are treating our children not as well as we treat the inmates in our prisons," he said.
Lori Fiorito, co-president of the PTA, agreed.
"It's unfair to these children, too," she said. "Yes, they are our children of Staten Island. They do not belong here."
She said the result of placing the students at the school could be a small child getting hurt. "We will not stand for that," she said.
Others in the crowd recalled incidents where teachers placed in "Rubber Rooms" at Petrides caused problems with parents and students, sometimes resulting in violence. They wondered if the school had enough security guards -- and if they were trained well enough -- to deal with the suspended students.
Joann Nellis said her son at Petrides, an eighth-grader, was the one child whom she never feared for at school.
"And you're bringing this here?" she asked.
PLENTY OF COMPLAINTS
Nearby residents, meanwhile, also came out against the proposal. Tom Foley said his mother, Bridget, was mugged by a summer school student attending class at Petrides.
"She's a senior citizen and a grandmother, and she has to be afraid out in her front yard, watering her plants?" he asked.
Before the meeting, Charles Stoffers, president of the Todt Hill Civic Association, said he, too, opposes the plan. He lives within sight of the school.
"We're not talking about a kid who sassed a teacher, played hooky, or was suspended by the principal for disruptive behavior," he said.
Other parents -- and students -- blasted the panel for what they characterized as inattentive behavior, like checking cell phones.
"I find it very disrespectful that the parents are here and you're completely ignoring them," Robert LaRosa, 17, a senior at the school, said to one panel member.
"Can you continue to speak?" the panel member interrupted, to plenty of booing from the crowd.
Speakers also took issue with the department's assertion that since the center was not being located inside a school -- but the administrative Building A instead -- the process doesn't legally require a public hearing.
"I could spit on Building A from where I stand," John Lastella said. "You're telling me we're not co-located?"