Anthony Bongo Reduces Vandalism at Isaac Young Middle School by 800%

Reading through my latest copy of “School News”, a four-color propaganda rag put out periodically by the City School District of New Rochelle (you tax dollars at work!) I was impressed to see that Principal Anthony Bongo had written an article for “Middle Ground” published by the National Middle School Association. I am not sure what impressed me more – that his article was accepted or that he was able to string together enough words to submit one.

In the article Bongo makes the following claim:

At Isaac E. Young Middle School in New Rochelle, New York, we have reduced incidents of graffiti and vandalism by more than 800% in two years.

Wow, quite a feat! Imagine being able to reduce ANYTHING by 800%.

– if you went to a department store and saw a dress for $100 at 800% off that would mean the store will PAY YOU $700 to take the dress off their hands.

– if Stop & Shop sold milk on sale for 800% off you could own the whole cow.

– if Obama reduced taxes by 800% we would all be getting massive checks from the Federal government. Our own personal Federal bailouts.

Anthony Bongo is the principal who loves to smoke cigars on school grounds in violation of state law, encouraged – through inaction – a white staff member to hang nooses in their office, makes false statements to the police, and claims to have raised math test scores for black students by 54% and hispanic students by 47% in just two years. Readers will recall that school officials told the school board that the the increase in test scores was “steady and sustainable” because they amounted to about 8% a year over three years when, in fact, the data they presented showed an increase of about 25% a year over two years. Whoops.

In Bongo-land this “800% reduction” apparently means that if there were 100 acts of vandalism and graffiti in 2005-06 and the number was reduced by 800% in 2007-08 then means there were negative 700 acts of vandalism/graffiti, right? We can only wonder how Bongo was able to get all the spray paint back in those little holes in aerosol cans.

Of course, even Principal Puff-Puff must understand that you can not have negative seven hundred acts of vandalism and graffiti. So, what was our resident math whiz trying to say? Well, if there were, lets’ say, 80 acts of vandalism and graffiti at Isaac and that figured dropped to 10 that might look like an 800% reduction if you do not understand basic math – a recurrent theme among Isaac Young administrators – but in reality-land when you go from 80 to 10 that is an 87.5% reduction.

On the upside, it is refreshing to see school officials acknowledging vandalism and graffiti as a problem at our schools. Now, if they will just take the next step and acknowledge that the “graffiti” in question is not “cartoons” or “street art” but rather “gang tags” then we might be getting somewhere. Such signs of gang activity in our schools have become increasingly common over the past decade. According to recent FBI statistics, Westchester’s gang population has mushroomed from 15,000 in 1995 to 150,000 today. According to the school district, however, there is NO gang activity in New Rochelle.

Does anyone believe Bongo will care to disclose the actual figures behind his absurd claims? We can only wonder who is keeping track of this information, what they count as an incident, how it is being recorded and where the information is being reported to the public? This “800% reduction” claim is typical school district propaganda – this sort of information is denied to the public except when it serves the immediate interest of school officials and only then is served up in obscure ways to mislead the public.

FOIL, anyone?