#Fresh signs that Carranza doesn’t give a damn about NYC’s schoolchildren

City Department of Education officials are crediting their “restorative justice” initiatives with bringing school suspensions to a record low during the 2019-2020 school year, Chalkbeat reports.

Huh? Kids weren’t in school, so couldn’t do much to earn suspension for the final three months of that session. Not much of an excuse for Chancellor Richard Carranza to take a victory lap there.

Yes, suspensions — or at least formally recorded ones — have trended down since the DOE (yet again) softened the school-discipline code. But that’s hardly an achievement: Make it harder for school leaders to hit kids with a real penalty, and you’ll get fewer such penalties imposed (at least officially).

Such absurdities are rife under Carranza. The DOE also claims good attendance numbers — ignoring the fact that it’s not pushing any school to take real attendance these days, especially not for kids in remote classes.

Worse, Team Carranza notes it still has “work to do” as racial disparities persist among suspensions — meaning it’s going to see that even fewer kids face meaningful discipline. Meanwhile the chancellor’s minions continue to ignore a genuine issue of educational equity: special education in the time of COVID-19.

As Chalkbeat also reports, thousands of public-school students with disabilities missed out on mandated services last year. And the ensuing school closures during the pandemic only increased the problem: A new DOE report admits that thousands more students missed on referrals for special-ed evaluation and ancillary services. And that report barely scratches the surface of how the system failed one of its most-at-risk groups during the pandemic.

Even in normal times, the DOE has trouble getting these kids their mandated services: Its own data show that it falls down for 17 per­cent of these students. Going all-virtual after March only made it easier for the DOE to shrug.

Maybe someday New York City will have a chancellor who actually cares about kids.