About 100 parents, teachers, students and advocates turned out for a hearing at Stuyvesant High School on Tuesday evening on proposed changes to the city’s discipline code, which would, among other things, lessen the number of offenses for which students could be suspended.
Many of those who spoke at the hearing, including Daniel Dromm, a City Council member and a former New York City teacher, applauded the revisions but said that they did not go far enough to make sure students were not suspended for small incidents of misbehavior.
The criticisms came a day after Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker and a frontrunner in next year’s mayoral election, and Robert Jackson, another City Council member, sent Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg a letter urging him to limit suspensions even more. Mr. Jackson echoed those comments at a rally outside Stuyvesant before the hearing protesting suspension policies.
Adilka Pimentel [a member of Make The Road New York], 22, a student at Morrisville State College in upstate New York who spoke at the rally, said her brother and sister had both been suspended for infractions as minor as wearing a hoodie and being in the hallway when they were not supposed to be.
“That is not fair for my mom who is a single parent and works extremely hard to support her family,” she said.
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