XPost: school.general, misc.immigration.usa, sac.politics   
   XPost: soc.culture.african.american   
   From: david.fritz@vzw.com   
      
   A 15-year-old was fatally stabbed and a 16-year-old was critically wounded   
   in their Bronx high school on Wednesday morning in what the police say was   
   apparently the culmination of weeks of conflict.   
      
   The killing, the first inside a city school building in more than two   
   decades, according to the mayor, set off a lockdown that left hundreds of   
   children cowering in their classrooms, the older ones frantically texting   
   parents for help. As word of the killing spread, parents desperate to see   
   their children descended on the building, which houses two schools — the   
   elementary school P.S. 67 and the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife   
   Conservation, serving students in grades 6 to 12.   
      
   The two who were stabbed were students in the Wildlife Conservation   
   school. The police said that Abel Cedeno, another student at the school,   
   was taken into custody and was charged late Wednesday with murder and   
   attempted murder.   
      
   The chief of detectives, Robert K. Boyce, said Mr. Cedeno, 18, had handed   
   a switchblade to a school counselor after the stabbing before heading to   
   an administrator’s office, where he waited for the police to arrive.   
      
   The boy who died, Matthew McCree, was stabbed in the chest, according to   
   the police. He was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he was pronounced   
   dead. The other victim was stabbed in the arm and the torso, and was in   
   critical but stable condition. The other victim’s name had not been   
   released.   
      
   In an interview, Kevin Sampson, a dean at school, said the fatal   
   confrontation stemmed from “bullying,” and at a news conference on   
   Wednesday afternoon Chief Boyce said it appeared the three students had   
   been locked in a running dispute over the first weeks of the school year,   
   and that it blew up inside a fifth-floor history classroom around 10:45   
   a.m. in front of about 20 other students.   
      
   The stabbings — and the presence of a switchblade in the school — stirred   
   complaints from some parents that the school did not have metal detectors   
   and prompted questions from reporters to the mayor and police officials   
   about whether the school should have had them. Eighty-eight of the city’s   
   roughly 1,300 school buildings have metal detectors that are used either   
   full time or part time.   
      
   Among students and faculty, though, the talk was of the lives changed.   
      
   Shortly after they were released from the lockdown on Wednesday afternoon,   
   Asia Johnson and Yanique Heatley, both 18, stood outside the high school   
   at 2040 Mohegan Avenue in the West Farms neighborhood.   
      
   The two were friends with all three of the students involved, they said.   
   Ms. Heatley described Mr. Cedeno as “different from the other guys.”   
      
   “He likes Nicki Minaj, stuff from H&M. He likes Kylie Jenner,” she said.   
      
   “This hurts,” Ms. Johnson said. “No one should experience bullying but   
   there’s a way to handle it.”   
      
   “It’s really sad,” Ms. Heatley added. “Two boys might lose their lives and   
   our friend will never see the outside again.”   
      
   Mr. Sampson, the school’s dean, stood, visibly shaken, outside on Mohegan   
   Avenue. He had performed CPR on Matthew, he said. “Two of my students got   
   stabbed and one of them died,” Mr. Sampson said. “It was about what it’s   
   always about — bullying.”   
      
   At a news conference with police and school officials, Mayor Bill de   
   Blasio said the death had shaken him and many others in the community and   
   the city government.   
      
   “It’s unacceptable to ever lose a child to violence inside a school   
   building,” the mayor said. “All of us are feeling this tragedy very   
   personally.”   
      
   Later, he visited the school, emerging a short time after along with a   
   group of school staff members, many of them in tears.   
      
   In the first half of this year, the Police Department recorded 11 public   
   safety episodes at the school, which has 545 students in grades 6 through   
   12, according to department data. There were two arrests, both for   
   assault.   
      
   Police officials said on Wednesday that metal detectors could have   
   prevented the violence at the Wildlife Conservation school. But some   
   advocates argue that metal detectors create a negative environment and   
   make students feel as though they are under suspicion. Once installed,   
   scanners are rarely removed.   
      
   “This is a school, it was determined, that did not need metal detectors,”   
   said Chief Joanne Jaffe, who oversees the Police Department’s School   
   Safety Division.   
      
   The Wildlife Conservation school was started in 2007 by the Urban   
   Assembly, a nonprofit organization that runs 21 small schools across the   
   city, serving primarily low-income and academically struggling students.   
      
   Student test scores are low: This year 13 percent of the middle school   
   students passed the state reading tests, and 5 percent passed the state   
   math tests. In 2016, the school’s four-year high school graduation rate   
   was 73 percent. More than half of the high school students were   
   chronically absent that year, meaning they missed more than 10 percent of   
   school days.   
      
   Three years ago, the school changed principals, and it appears to have   
   faced some challenges since: In a school survey conducted last year, just   
   55 percent of students said that they felt safe in the hallways,   
   bathrooms, locker rooms and cafeteria, down from 74 percent the year   
   before.   
      
   On Wednesday, as the school was plunged into a lockdown, the safety felt   
   all the more elusive.   
      
   Lennette Berry’s 13-year-old daughter texted her from where she was   
   stranded, in theater class. A boy had attacked two of his classmates, the   
   girl, an eighth grader, wrote in a text message.   
      
   “Was he being bullied?” Ms. Berry texted back. “Yes,” her daughter   
   replied.   
      
   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/nyregion/high-school-stabbing-   
   bronx.html   
      
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