10 NYC school children have comitted suicide

The city’s public schools are in the grip of a suicide epidemic.
Ten students have taken their own lives in the past seven weeks, according to remarks made Saturday by Chancellor Carmen Fariña.
“As chancellor, I’ve been on the job seven weeks, and there have already been 10 reported suicides. We cannot allow those,” she told 250 new principals at Stuyvesant HS during a private meeting.
“I get those e-mails all the time. And it makes me heartsick.”
The tragic statistic — which amounts to more than one suicide per week — has not been released publicly. The Post obtained a recording of Fariña’s address.
None of the suicides occurred on school property, Department of Education spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said later Saturday. She could not immediately provide the ages or schools of the children.
The only suicide publicly reported was the heartbreaking death on Feb. 13 of 15-year-old Jayah Shaileya Ram-Jackson.
A gifted student at the NEST+m school on the Lower East Side, Jayah leaped from the roof of her grandmother’s 27-story apartment building on the Upper West Side.
“At least eight people have told me they want me to kill myself in the past two days,” the girl wrote on Facebook a month before.
“I just hope that when I actually do it, they don’t feel responsible. Because they won’t be.”
In her remarks, Fariña implored principals to identify lonely and troubled kids. She related how, as a principal, she’d single out such students for Principal for a Day activities, taking them on her Friday rounds and giving them individual encouragement.
“The DOE is taking this very seriously and has provided information recently to principals and networks to help prepare and support school communities for these traumatic times, in addition to training provided each school year,” Feinberg said.
A spokeswoman for the city’s principals union said the outbreak was a shock to her.
“I’m surprised,” said Chiara Coletti, of the Council of Supervisors and Administrators. “If I heard of one or two in the last couple of years, that would be a lot. [Ten] sounds like a lot to me.”
City Health Department stats show youth suicides are rising, with suicide the third leading cause of death for New Yorkers ages 15 to 24. In 2010, 58 people in that age group took their lives. In 2011, the toll was up to 64, and in 2012 it reached 66.
Additional reporting by Michael Gartland