911 Ban at Public School Causes More Problems than it Solves
Do you know all of the current policies at your child’s school? Some parents and students were stunned recently learn of a new policy that had been implemented at a high school in Queens, New York. They only learned of the new policy when a tragic event recently happened at the school.
A 14-year-old student at Jamaica High School in Queens suffered a stroke on April 27 th while at school. Mariya Fatima began to vomit at school and later collapsed in a hallway, but no one immediately called 911.
Fatima’s parents say that her stroke could have been less devastating if the school had immediately called 911, but instead medical help for their daughter did not arrive for over 90 minutes. Since the stroke Fatima has had trouble walking and she has lost the use of her right hand. Her family says that the 10 th grader was once a good student but now reads at a 5 th grade level.
The reason that no one called 911 when Fatima collapsed was reportedly that school officials had been notified about two weeks earlier that no calls to 911 were to be made from the school for any reason.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has said that he will investigate the school’s policy about banning calls to 911. Former Jamaica High School Vice Principal Guy Venezia had apparently sent a memo out to all of the schools deans on April 12 th saying that emergency 911 calls from the school for any reason were absolutely banned. Klein says that this policy put forth by Venezia was a violation of the Department of Education’s policies and the instructions that he had sent to all principals earlier this year.
Fatima is now represented by lawyer Gary Carlton. Carlton says that Jamaica High School was on a list of the city’s most dangerous schools and calls to 911 are obviously a documentation of events at the school. So, in order to make the school seem safer, he says, the Vice Principal decided to ban all 911 calls. He says that the principals of the schools in the district were put under pressure to improve school safety. The logic of the ban was that without documentation of emergency calls coming from the school, on the face of it, the school would seem safer.
Carlton claims that safety statistics are more important to the school administrators than the lives of students. Randi Weingarten, President of the teachers union, shares Carlton’s belief saying, “This is a tragic result of what happens when everything comes down to data. If there's only a hammer when people report crime, then people are going to continue to hide their incidents.”
Fatima and her family may sue the school over the 911 ban. She says that when she collapsed, “they did nothing” to help her and as a result she suffered more damage from the stroke than she would have if emergency medical care would have been available immediately.
She and her family would not be the first to sue a New York school over a 911 ban. In 2003, 11-year-old student Shawn Martinez died when he had an asthma attack at Brooklyn Public School 20. In January his family announced plans to file a personal injury lawsuit against the school because they claim that the school would not allow the nurses to call 911 to get emergency medical help for him.
Klein says that the “no 911” policy at Jamaica High School was an isolated incident.
