This is part two of a three-part series. Here’s the first story. And be sure to sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free email newsletter to be the first to know when our next stories publish.
Crystal Roach felt her hands shake as she ordered an Uber. Her thoughts were racing, imagining her 6-year-old son, Zai, confused and afraid. She pictured his little wrists in handcuffs, and it felt hard to breathe.
Roach had just gotten off the phone with a guidance counselor from Zai’s school — P.S. 11, in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Zai had recently been diagnosed with autism. At home, he was funny and affectionate, saying “I love you” and doing silly dances to make Roach laugh, even though he didn’t like being hugged or touched. But for months, he’d been having meltdowns in class and the lunchroom, throwing pencils and books, tearing up papers, hitting other kids or teachers.
School staff called Roach nearly every day, she said, telling her she had to pick up Zai (a family nickname) immediately. Roach told them she couldn’t keep leaving work. She was a single parent and a nanny, and her boss was losing patience.
But this call — in April 2026, near the end of Zai’s first grade — was different: The school had called a mobile crisis team, which in turn called 911. Police and an ambulance were on their way. If Roach didn’t get there first, they’d take Zai to an emergency room. No one could tell her which hospital.
The idea of not knowing where Zai was felt intolerable. Roach frantically dialed her mom and an aunt, trying to find someone who could get to Zai faster.
When she pulled up to the school, there was a police car parked in front. That’s when her fear shifted to disbelief, she said. “I just kept thinking: ‘Cops? For a 6-year-old?’”
New York City schools are only supposed to call 911 on students in the most extreme circumstances. Under city regulations, school staff must do everything they can to de-escalate a student’s behavioral or mental health crisis themselves — only resorting to 911 if someone is at imminent risk of serious physical harm.
When schools do call 911 — incidents known as “child in crisis” calls — police typically show up first, containing students until EMTs arrive. Hundreds of times each year, kids end up in handcuffs — some of them as young as 6 and 7 years old.
In the wake of a 2013 lawsuit, the city adopted rules aimed at reducing child in crisis calls, including quarterly reporting requirements and crisis intervention training for schools. In 2023, after an investigation by ProPublica and The City Reporter, the New York City Council passed a law requiring police to document whether schools had attempted to de-escalate a crisis before involving EMTs or cops.
But while the number of calls dropped after the lawsuit was settled, progress has largely stalled. New York City schools continue to call 911 on students in emotional distress well over 2,000 times a year.
Child in crisis calls are far more likely to happen to students with disabilities and Black students, and they frequently involve very young kids. Since 2016, when the city first started tracking the numbers, schools have called 911 more than 5,000 times on children who were less than 10 years old, according to city data.
Families and mental health providers say that hauling kids to hospitals is traumatic, humiliating, and often counterproductive. In most cases, students wait for hours in crowded ERs, only to be evaluated and sent home without treatment, advocates say.
“Calling 911 doesn’t make anything better at school the next day,” said Nelson Mar, a senior attorney at Legal Services NYC who is working with Roach to secure special education services for Zai.
Mar also led the 2013 lawsuit that prompted the city to adopt its first formal limits on schools’ use of 911. But while the settlement led to gains, he said, it failed to address the root causes of child in crisis incidents. Despite federal laws requiring school districts to serve students with disabilities, most city schools lack the training and resources to support kids who’ve experienced serious trauma, or whose disabilities manifest in disruptive behavior.
By the time a situation escalates to the point where school staff consider calling 911, they’ve likely missed countless opportunities to help a kid succeed, advocates and educators say.
In a March 2026 letter to the Mamdani administration, Mar and other advocates urged the city to expand behavioral interventions in city schools. Among their recommendations: Staff each district with specialists who can help schools create detailed behavior plans for struggling kids; train teachers to understand common behavior patterns in neurodivergent students; and expand initiatives like the Path program, which uses evidence-based strategies to support students with emotional disabilities in general education classrooms.
When schools have more tools, they can become more “healing-centered and less punitive,” Mar said. “There needs to be a culture shift.”
How bureaucracy and punishment left a first grader without help
Zai’s troubles started near the beginning of first grade. When school staff first raised concerns about his behavior, Roach trusted they wanted what was best for him, she said. Zai’s big sister had attended P.S. 11 and left with a wall full of achievement awards.
Roach enrolled Zai in therapy and took time off work to sit in his classroom. On the school’s advice, she requested an evaluation for an individualized education program — a document that could entitle Zai to special education services to help him regulate his meltdowns.
But the evaluation was delayed for months, long beyond the legal deadline, despite Roach’s repeated emails pleading with the school to speed up the process. As the delays stretched on, she said, Zai’s meltdowns became more frequent and the school’s response more punitive.
He came home calling himself “a bad kid,” something he heard from a teacher, Roach said. He often had to miss recess or eat lunch alone, as a punishment for something he’d done on a previous day.
Desperate for help, Roach took Zai to a neurologist, who diagnosed him with autism.
Based on that diagnosis, Zai’s school could have provided him services through a “504 plan,” using its discretionary budget to assign him a one-on-one paraprofessional who’d help him calm down when he got agitated. They also could have sought help from the district to create a detailed behavior plan identifying Zai’s triggers and strategies to prevent his meltdowns.
“They didn’t do any of that,” Roach said.
In an occurrence report from April, P.S. 11 Principal Abidemi Hope wrote that the school had tried several interventions for Zai, “including my direct involvement as principal, At-Risk counseling services, and structured morning and afternoon check-ins with support staff.”
Despite these efforts, Hope wrote, Zai’s “behaviors have continued to escalate in both frequency and severity, surpassing the school’s capacity to safely manage them within the general education setting.”
To Roach, it seemed like P.S. 11 just wanted to get rid of Zai, even before completing his assessment or providing him with a full set of services.
“He was just seen as a problem child,” she said.
It’s not unusual for kids with difficult behaviors to be pushed out of general education schools. According to a data analysis released last week by the New York City Independent Budget Office, almost 30% of students classified as having emotional disabilities are placed in separate, special-education schools run by District 75.
Overwhelmingly, they end up concentrated in a handful of schools where attendance and graduation rates are among the poorest in the city — and where they are even likelier to be subject to a 911 call.
A team meant to prevent 911 calls made one instead
In the last decade, the city has launched several initiatives designed to make schools less punitive and more supportive, including healing-centered schools, the “mental health continuum,” and restorative justice programs.
Proponents say those programs benefit all kids, not just those with serious mental health or behavioral struggles. But they remain small and marginal, frequently losing momentum and funding when political priorities shift.
More recently, city officials have encouraged schools to make use of mobile crisis teams — mental health professionals who can respond in anywhere from a few hours to a few days to triage struggling students and help them connect to longer-term services if necessary. One of the teams’ explicit goals is to keep people in crisis away from unnecessary encounters with police and trips to the ER.
When P.S. 11 staff told Roach about the crisis team program, she thought it sounded like a good idea.
On the day the school called the team, Zai had a meltdown after a change in his schedule, flipping tables, throwing classroom materials, and punching a teacher in the stomach, according to a school occurrence report. The teacher took Zai on a walk around the school to help “settle his nervous system,” the report said. They encountered another staff member, who began to question Zai about misbehavior on the previous day. Zai ran away and sat on a bench.
Zai was calm and back in class when the crisis team arrived later in the day. When he was pulled out to meet with the two crisis responders, along with Hope and other school staff, however, he got upset again. Zai kicked Hope, then drew a picture of her, scribbled over her face, and wrote, “Weak, you should die.”
In the crisis de-escalation plan that P.S. 11 filed with the city last year, staff are instructed to remove distressed students from the environment that is setting them off and attempt to have a conversation “exploring the student’s point of view.”
Those steps were not taken in the incident with Zai. According to the report, staff reprimanded him, instructing him to speak politely as his behaviors began to escalate. Hope — who was the focus of Zai’s behavior — remained in the room as he started to throw erasers and books at her and push away staff members who tried to intervene. That’s when the mobile crisis team called 911.
VNS Health, the nonprofit agency that deployed the crisis team, declined to comment, citing client privacy. Neither the principal nor Education Department officials responded to specific questions about Zai’s experience.
In an emailed statement, spokesperson Onika Richards wrote, “Under no circumstance is 911 ever called simply for a student’s behavior — or to cause student arrest or pressure to transfer out of our schools. 911 is only called as an alternative, when an emotional or behavioral crisis has exceeded the ability of the school staff to address it safely.”
She added, “Our students are children who need support, not children who should be criminalized or handcuffed.”
When Roach arrived at Zai’s school, she found him standing silently, surrounded by two police officers, the two members of the crisis team, and Hope. Two more officers were coming through the door.
Her worst fears were relieved: Zai was still in the building, he was unhurt, and he wasn’t wearing handcuffs. But he looked scared and small, rocking back and forth and flicking his fingers in the way he does to soothe himself when he’s upset.
“What crime did he commit?” she asked later. “I have a 6-year-old child that was treated more like a criminal.”
After the 911 call, Mar helped Zai transfer to P.S. 20, another school in Clinton Hill, where he was assigned a paraprofessional within weeks. When he got overwhelmed or appeared to be escalating, staff gave him choices about where to go, including rooms stocked with calming tools such as Legos and sensory toys.
In the three months before school broke for summer, Roach said she picked Zai up early only once — after he saw a police car outside the school and panicked.
Abigail Kramer is a New York City-based journalist. You can reach her at: abigailkramer@gmail.com.