By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — More security is not going to quell the recent violence at Murry Bergtraum High School, the union representing NYPD's School Safety officers said this week.
Instead of tacking on additional security measures after a Bergtraum student hit a School Safety officer over the head with a garbage can on Monday, the city should talk to students and find out what’s wrong, said Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237.
"There needs to be some intervention," Floyd told DNAinfo Tuesday. "Guidance counselors and social workers need to go into the school and hold meetings with the students and find out what they’re thinking."
For months, Murry Bergtraum students have been chafing under the stricter leadership of new Principal Andrea Lewis, who took over the struggling 2,445-student school this fall.
The tensions came to a head last Thursday when hundreds of students ran screaming through the hallways after Lewis banned them from using the bathrooms after a student fight earlier in the day.
The outbursts continued Monday, when a 17-year-old Bergtraum student attacked a 23-year-old NYPD School Safety officer and was charged with assault. As of Tuesday, the officer was still recovering at home, Floyd said.
Floyd said the city’s schools see the most violence at the beginning and end of the school year and around Christmas, and he hopes Bergtraum will settle down after the upcoming break. Still, Floyd said he is concerned about the safety of the officers working in the school.
"There is always a danger in working around young adults," he said.
John Elfrank-Dana, the United Federation of Teachers chapter leader at the school, said he is unsure whether Lewis can regain control of the students, given her "combative style."
"There’s a serious crisis in confidence regarding the school’s leadership," Elfrank-Dana said in an e-mail.
Elfrank-Dana criticized the city for not consulting the school’s parents and teachers on the selection of Lewis as the school’s new principal.
Lewis previously led the ACORN Community High School in Brooklyn, which is less than a third the size of Murry Bergtraum.
In a 2009-10 survey of ACORN students, 21 percent said they sometimes stay home because they feel unsafe in school, and 41 percent said there was gang activity in the school. ACORN received an F for school environment but an A on its overall report card last year.
The Department of Education brought Lewis to Bergtraum in the hopes that she could improve the school’s test scores, as she did at ACORN. In return for promising to stay at Bergtraum for three years, Lewis received a $25,000 bonus, according to news reports.
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
