12.14.2019 | NY Daily News | “It’s clearly not helping students in crisis, or helping school staff respond to and prevent further crises,” said Dawn Yuster, school justice director with the non-profit Advocates for Children. “That’s what we’re hearing from school staff.”

The DOE’s crisis teams are ill-staffed and often fail to promptly respond to students in meltdowns, Yuster said.

That leaves many school administrators no choice but to call 911 for an ambulance to haul the student to a hospital ER, or for cops to forcibly remove the child.

In 2016-17, schools called the NYPD for 2,702 incidents of “students in emotional distress” — half aged 4 to 12, an Advocates for Children analysis found. In 330 cases, cops clamped handcuffs on kids, some as young as 5. Read article