N.Y. Schools Chief Faults Teachers in Racial Attack

The New York City schools chancellor charged Wednesday that teachers were “in part responsible” for a fatal racial attack because, he said, they have been ignoring festering racial tensions in the schools.

Nathan Quinones, who heads the nation’s largest school system, warned that, if educators do not start teaching students to respect different races and cultures, “certainly the beatings may well expand and continue.”

Teachers have a “great amount of reluctance” to address the controversial subject, he said.

“That’s something we have to change and change dramatically,” Quinones said, noting that the Board of Education planned a workshop for educators Friday.

“The school system is in part responsible for the beating of those blacks,” Quinones said of the Dec. 20 racial attack on three black men in the Howard Beach section of Queens.

Literate But Inhuman

The educational system is a failure if it produces students “who may indeed be literate but be inhuman in dealing with others,” he added.

Three white teen-agers who attend John Adams High School in Queens have been charged with reckless endangerment in the attack, which led to the death of one of the victims. Michael Griffith, 23, was killed when he was struck by a car after he was chased onto a highway.

The three suspects, Jon Lester, 17, Scott Kern, 17, and Jason Ladone, 16, initially also were charged with murder, manslaughter and assault but those charges were dropped after one of the surviving victims refused to testify about the attack.