The Troublemakers

Hounded by lurid headlines; the New York City public schools last month suspended some 900 classroom toughs after a series of blackboard-jungle incidents ranging from rowdyism to rape (TIME, Feb. 10, 17). But the suspensions only postponed the basic problem: Where can the tough kids go to school?

Last week, grasping at a temporary solution, the city cleaned out two abandoned school buildings, brought in new furniture and began to hunt for ways of handling boys with some of the sorriest records in town (assaults on principals, sexual advances, purse-snatching).

The all-male schools, called "7005" (to tag them as a separate series), met different receptions. One opened in a rundown part of Brooklyn without a stir. But the other, in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, brought violent protests from the district school board and the local P.T.A. One group grumbled that the old building should be torn down to make a playground for an adjoining new school. Other Villagers made plain their dislike of "a special school for a bunch of juvenile delinquents." Muttered a beat-pounding cop: "They ought to bring up a couple of drill instructors from Parris Island to teach them a few things."

In the "7005," which-so far cover grades seven through ten, classes are small (a 1-to-12 teacher-pupil ratio), and the three Rs are fitted to the individual. Most important, the teachers (all volunteers) come mainly from the overcrowded "600" schools that have handled milder malcontents for a decade. There they learned when to shrug off misbehavior, when to stand firm.

To avoid street incidents, "700" boys arrive and leave slightly before children in nearby schools, are escorted to subways by a teacher, who pays for their rides out of public funds. Both schools require neat dress; the Brooklyn unit even insists on ties. In the classroom, the boys usually keep up a cocky, running banter with their teacher. But they can talk with the weariness of old age about their problems. "I'm a troublemaker," said one eighth grader. "I started everything that ever happened."

By week's end the "700" schools had enrolled 59 boys, eventually will build up to 150 each. As yet, no one knows for sure what will happen to the "700" schools. Both buildings are clearly inadequate. The city is talking of building four new "700" schools for boys, and perhaps another for girls. But, in time, most school officials believe that new "700" schools would fill up just as the "600s" did, and the job of educating New York's problem pupils would be as knotty as ever. "Either we get enough money to run the schools the way the public and the law say," shrugs Assistant Superintendent Joseph C. Noethen; "or we end up running hospitals and institutions--not schools."

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