Turn Them Out

In the wake of a fresh wave of teenage violence, culminating in the suicide of a distraught Brooklyn junior high school principal (TIME, Feb. 10), the New York City Board of Education at last decided to crack down on the hoods in its classrooms. "To protect the innocent," it ruled last week, any pupil "charged with a violation of law involving violence or insubordination" would be suspended. The very next day the city's elementary, junior highs and vocational high schools suspended 544 troublemakers, and the academic high schools about 100 more.

The suspended were not just hooky-players and teacher-sassers. Many of them were knife-toting youngsters awaiting trial on such charges as robbery, assault and rape; many others had been convicted and turned back into the schools on parole or suspended sentences. Some could not be notified immediately of their suspension; they were chronic truants. Others, ironically, took the news with chagrin. Said one principal: "They felt they couldn't be touched. They didn't want to be in school in the first place, but when we told them we didn't want them, that was different."

If the board's new policy holds up, it may affect as many as 9,500 students--the i% of the school population estimated to be the hard-core punks. It raised a howl among some teacher and civic groups as "an act of desperation" and "an abject surrender to pressure," and there was talk that the policy might be challenged in the courts. Since the city is desperately short of means to keep rein on delinquents awaiting trial, some officials joined the critics in wondering whether the board was not merely turning them "right out into the streets" to do even more damage. But the board had laid down a dramatic challenge. Somehow, it said in effect, the city and state must provide what is needed to cope with New York's shocking delinquency scandal--and let the schools get back to the job of education.

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