Videos Of Fights At Bayside's Cardozo High Raise Safety Concerns

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — As two girls face off in the hallway of Bayside's Benjamin N. Cardozo High School a boy is heard shouting in the background: "Fight! Fight!" he yells, as the students begin swinging at each other.

The now-viral video is one of more than a dozen filmed fistfights at Cardozo High School, which were chronicled on a since-deleted Instagram page dedicated to brawls at the school. The New York Post first reported this story.

Some say that fighting at Cardozo is part of an uptick in violence at the city's schools this year, while others contend that fights have decreased since the start of the pandemic.

One insider source for the The Post said that fighting is worse this year as students return to classrooms full time for the first time since the pandemic.

"The kids haven’t been back in school for a year, so they’re going crazy," they said. "There’s no discipline. There’s zero enforcement in the schools."

By contrast, students told The Post that fights at Cardozo are less frequent than pre-pandemic.

"If you mind your business and stay to yourself, if you don’t look for drama, nothing happens," junior Rayra Nichols told the outlet.

But, the reported violence isn't just happening at Bayside. This weekend NBC news reported that guns and weapons have been recently found at schools in Queens, Staten Island, and Manhattan.

"The only borough that has not reported this level of violence has been Manhattan. But the school year is still young," Gregory Floyd, president of Local 237, which represent school safety agents, told the outlet.

He said that before the school year started the union pushed the city to add more agents to school buildings, but that retirement, attrition, and the vaccine mandate actually meant that the city lost upwards of 1,400 agents.

At Cardozo, officials told The Post that the high school is "fully staffed with school safety agents," but a Local 237 spokesperson said that school security has actually been slashed from about a dozen agents to four.

In response to the videos at Cardozo, a Department of Education spokesperson lauded the work of school safety agents and said that the department is handling the violence.

“We do not tolerate acts of violence at our schools, and our incredible school safety agents intervene to de-escalate and address any conflicts when they occur," said DOE spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon.

"No students were seriously injured as a result of these incidents, and they will be addressed with appropriate consequences.”

Read the full NY Post article here.