NYC Students' Suicides Shock The City and Must Bring Change In Dealing With Troubled Youth

Kids are in pain. In New York City's public schools, the way the Department of Education deals with kids in pain is to punish them. And, punish their parents as well for allowing their kids to remain in a troubled state. It's all the parents' fault.

I know all about this, as a parent advocate for suspended students and for special needs children who are not getting the services and support that they need to succeed and reach their personal bests. The purpose of Superintendent Suspensions as they are currently run by TWEED (NYC Department of Education headquarters) is to throw out any child of any age who is African-American and/or has an IEP or Individualized Education Plan and take their money (for service providers, OT, PT, counseling, etc.) . Kids who need help are thrown into alternative education centers where they are neglected and deliberately ignored, for any length of time convenient for a school principal. The person I know best who does this is African-American herself: Manhattan Suspension Hearing Office Head Shirley Rowe. I have been writing about her since 2006 on my website Parentadvocates.org. Here is one of my articles:
NYC Booker T. Washington Principal Dr. Elana Elster and her AP Bertha Mcgee (or McGhee) Racially Discriminate Among Their Students and Practice Disability Harassment
The problem is that race and disability harassment at the DOE is rampant, random and discriminatory. And if anyone wants me to testify about my 16-year documentation of this, just ask.

When you are a young person and cannot find anyone who will hear your troubles and you are in pain, you hurt yourself or others. C'mon, folks, we gotta change this. Fast.

Betsy Combier

10 NYC schoolchildren have committed suicide in 2014

By Kevin Fasick and Laura Italiano

, March 23, 2014

LINK

The city’s public schools are in the grip of a suicide epidemic.

Ten students have taken their own lives in the past seven weeks, according to remarks made Saturday by Chancellor Carmen Fariña (pictured above)

“As chancellor, I’ve been on the job seven weeks, and there have already been 10 reported suicides. We cannot allow those,” she told 250 new principals at Stuyvesant HS during a private meeting.

“I get those e-mails all the time. And it makes me heartsick.”

The tragic statistic — which amounts to more than one suicide per week — has not been released publicly. The Post obtained a recording of Fariña’s address.

None of the suicides occurred on school property, Department of Education spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said later Saturday. She could not immediately provide the ages or schools of the children.

The only suicide publicly reported was the heartbreaking death on Feb. 13 of 15-year-old Jayah Shaileya Ram-Jackson.

A gifted student at the NEST+m school on the Lower East Side, Jayah leaped from the roof of her grandmother’s 27-story apartment building on the Upper West Side.

“At least eight people have told me they want me to kill myself in the past two days,” the girl wrote on Facebook a month before.