And last month, the Department of Education revamped its procedures for tracking students discharged from the school system.
In December, the department said it had made progress in reducing both the number of dropouts and the number of students discharged.
The complaint asked the court to send letters to all students discharged in the last three years, informing them of their right to re-enroll and to receive remedial tutoring.
Mr. Young said the number of students discharged from the city school system fell to 73,845 this year, from 91,585 last year, adding, "We're serious about this.
But weaker students, discharged to community-based equivalency programs, are excluded from the school's numbers, and not counted against them.
Last Thursday, Judge Weinstein told the Department of Education to send notices to all students discharged from either Bushwick or Martin Luther King since July, informing them of their right to re-enroll and receive remedial help.
Under the settlement, which did not include any admission of liability, the department agreed to send the discharged students a letter informing them of their rights, and to take back students discharged from the school since Jan .1, 2000, whether they chose to attend Lane or another school.
I understand that virtual charter schools may have a highly mobile population of students, but in most graduation accounting schemes, students discharged to other schools will be removed from the denominator of the graduation rate, and not count against the school.
Records of students discharged from the program before February 2006 were not available for review.
In the last semester alone, she said, she took reports on a student who threw two punches at a security guard, a student who discharged a fire extinguisher, a student who took a box cutter to gym class and a student who knocked down a teacher and stepped on her back as he ran away.
