It’s time for a ‘broken windows’ policy for schools

What will it take to bring back a semblance of order to our schools?

A few weeks ago, an 11-year-old girl was beaten by a group of students at the Mark Twain Intermediate School for the Gifted and Talented in Brooklyn.

Now her attackers have posted a video of the beating and they continue tormenting her.

She has to be escorted around the school by a bodyguard.

And what punishment has been meted out to the perpetrators?

The school has conducted “wellness check-ins” and offered “restorative mediation” sessions, according to the city Department of Education.

Here’s one thing you can bet: this is not the first time these kids have attacked another child and it won’t be the last.

In the 1990s we learned the benefits of broken-windows policing — prosecuting low-level crimes so that New York’s potential scofflaws would know the authorities were serious about law enforcement and would think twice about escalating to higher level offenses.

Now it’s time to do the same thing in our schools.

There is no doubt that school violence is rising.

New York has seen a surge in violent crime in and near schools.

North Carolina saw instances of crime and violence increase 24% between the 2018-2019 and 2021-2022 school years.

A rise in violence in Denver public schools has led the school board to reconsider its removal of school resource officers from the premises.

Earlier this year Brendan Depa, a 6-foot-6 autistic former foster child in Florida, beat Joan Naydichm, a teacher’s aide, to within an inch of her life after another staffer told him to stop playing on his Nintendo Switch.

Depa had three earlier arrests for battery before the February attack.

His mother has begged for him not to be sent to prison.

It’s clear that Depa never should have been in a classroom with Naydichm in the first place.

More