The schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, said Monday that, in response to last week’s fatal stabbing at a school in the Bronx, the Education Department would focus its training for teachers on how to defuse behavior crises and make sure that bullying was reported.
Last Wednesday, Abel Cedeno, an 18-year-old student at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation, brought a switchblade to school and stabbed two classmates, killing one, Matthew McCree, 15, and leaving another, Ariane Laboy, 16, seriously wounded. The police have said that Mr. Cedeno told them that he had been bullied since the start of school, though not by Mr. McCree and Mr. Laboy, who were said to be throwing pencil bits and balled up paper at him during class. Parents have said that the school’s administration failed to address complaints about bullying.
On Monday, in a conversation about school safety with invited parent leaders from throughout the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Ms. Fariña emphasized that crime in schools was at its lowest level on record and said they were making investments in mental health programs in schools and in so-called restorative justice, which replaces punitive approaches to behavioral problems with discussion and mediation.
“Even though we’re all feeling a lot of pain right now, we know that these approaches are taking us on the right path,” Mr. de Blasio said.
Ms. Fariña said that all schools would use time on Mondays designated for teacher professional development to discuss bullying and de-escalation techniques for at least three weeks. A spokeswoman for the Education Department, Toya Holness, said the department would share more information with schools this week and that the training would start this month.
In response to a parent who asked if the department would consider hiring more school psychologists, Ms. Fariña said that she would instruct superintendents to examine whether the schools they oversee needed more resources or needed to share resources differently with other schools.
“Certainly we are looking at more guidance counselors,” she said.
Some parents in the room said they believed that schools were not doing enough to confront bullying or more generally to address disorder. One parent asked if staff who were in the classroom at the School for Wildlife Conservation when the stabbing took place would be disciplined. A teacher and an aide were present during the altercation, the police said. But a student who witnessed the attack said they did not take action.
“The incident in question here in the Bronx is fully being investigated, so I don’t think anyone should cast aspersions or make assumptions about what happened yet,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We need the professionals to do their investigation and tell us everything when they ultimately have really found the whole picture.”
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