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Surprise, surprise: School “meditation rooms” and “harm-reduction circles,” a new study shows, don’t cure juvenile delinquents but instead undermine teachers’ authority and lead to more chaotic classrooms.
Gee, who would’ve thunk it?
Actually, the study — by the Manhattan Institute — confirms what we’ve long known about then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s push for “restorative justice” in the name of racial equity: It was always doomed to fail.
Restorative justice calls for schools to provide students and staff the opportunity to talk through conflicts instead of punishing kids with meaningful measures like suspensions.
Yet the data shows that, despite an outlay of $100 million since it became the prevailing practice, incidents requiring the NYPD’s school safety division more than doubled — from 1,200 in the first quarter of 2016 to 4,120 in the first quarter of 2025.
The report also found that putting troubled students in “meditation rooms” instead of suspending or kicking them out of class doesn’t solve any problems, as violent incidents continued to rise and absenteeism jumped 35%.
The study cites several instances of students not being punished or held accountable for deplorable behavior and violent acts.
- Though students at Origins High School who had subjected a Jewish teacher to Nazi salutes and threats were sent to a “meditation room,” the harassment did not stop.
- This spring, an 8-year-old stabbed a staff member with a pencil and threatened classmates at Staten Island’s PS 8. Parents derided the school’s response — a meditation room and calls home — as entirely inadequate.
- A Center for Court Innovation in Brooklyn found no statistically significant benefits in schools that implemented restorative-justice practices compared to those that used a traditional disciplinary approach.
The Department of Education claims suspensions have plummeted 48% over the past 10 years, resulting in “keeping more children in class and engaged.”
Duh: If your policy is to suspend fewer kids, as restorative-justice calls for, it’s no shock that fewer kids get suspended.
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Even Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos admits the approach isn’t cutting it: “The work is far from done,” she conceded Wednesday. Yet she vowed, “It’s not leaving New York City public schools.”
That’s unforgivable: The study’s bottom line clearly found restorative justice fuels disorder, a lack of accountability and possibly an increase in chronic absenteeism.
The disruptions that prevent well-behaved kids from learning alone should be enough to ditch this policy, not to mention the violence and absenteeism that comes from it.
Mayor Eric Adams, as a former cop, should know that kids who don’t pay meaningful consequences for misbehavior will simply continue misbehaving.
Some good news: An April 2025 executive order from Donald Trump puts the kibosh on using race as a factor in discipline, which may help push schools to return to traditional responses to misconduct and a restoration of order in classrooms.
But until New York City’s policy changes, the chaos will continue — and learning will suffer.