HARLEM — A Harlem school dubbed "persistently dangerous" has turned around its reputation by boosting morale and with behavior programs, officials said.
P.S. 123, at 301 W. 140th St., was on the city's list of 27 schools designated "persistently dangerous" for 2015-2016 based on incidents of violence reported the year before, according to the state Education Department.
A school makes the list if it records 60 or more violent incidents in a year and also receives a rating of 0.5 or greater on a special index the state uses for evaluating school safety.
That rating — called the School Violence Index (SVI) — “is a ratio of violent incidents to enrollment in a school,” according to the DOE. It takes into account a school's size, the number of incidents and the severity of the incidents.
Schools can also get flagged as "persistently dangerous" if they score above a 1.5 rating on that index for two consecutive years.
According to state Education Department data, P.S. 123 had 86 violent or disruptive incidents between 2014 and 2015 among its 560 student population. It serves students from kindergarten to eighth grade.
But the school turned itself around, officials said. From 2015 to 2016, school principal Tina Hernandez said, that number has been cut in half.
“We’re very proud to have been taken off this list and be improving our school culture,” said Hernandez.
Earlier this month, the state education department released its annual list, designating only four schools in the city as “persistently dangerous,” an 85 percent decrease from last year.
The current “persistently dangerous” schools include two in Brooklyn and one each in Queens and the Bronx.
City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña chalked the improvements up to “improved school cultures” as well as additional training for staff and teachers, according to a press release.
P.S. 123 reformed its status by introducing a behavior intervention program and training kindergarten to second-grade teachers in behavior improvement programs.
The school also opened a full-time mental health clinic at that school, run by Graham Windham, a social services non-profit, with a full-time social worker to provide counseling for students and families.
“We had to really re-define the culture of our school, looking at ourselves and saying, ‘What do we want to be known as to our community?’” she said.
Over the year, the school focused on bringing social services to the school and working with students and families to correct negative behavior, she said.
As a result, school attendance bounced from the 88th percentile into the 90s this year, she said.
“That was a big deal because I have a heavy transient population,” she said.
She also said the school has partnered with a number of organizations to expand arts programming and extracurricular activities, such as a chess team.
Students also participate in something called Restorative Circles, where students resolve conflicts in small groups.
“We felt that was something we needed to…really attack the issue,” said Hernandez.
