The city announced Friday that suspensions at city schools declined again last year, a goal of Mayor Bill de Blasio's. But critics say schools have simply eased up on punishing disruptive and even dangerous behavior. NY1 Education Reporter Lindsey Christ has the story.

At M.S. 424, teachers and students say there is lax discipline and a lax attitude towards suspensions.

Student: Fights. You just won't get in trouble.

NY1: Why is that?

Student: Because the principal says he doesn't believe in suspending.

Teachers say the principal sends many disruptive students to a room called the Climate Center instead of suspending them.

"It's like a detention room, but for the bad kids," a student said. "It's where they go to clear their mind."

"It has tables, beanbags, laptops," another student said.

The city's education department said Friday that suspensions citywide fell nearly six percent in the last half of 2016.

The mayor has made reducing suspensions and student arrests a priority.

But some advocates say it's not that the schools are safer, but that many principals feel pressure to improve the numbers.

"It's really truly about window dressing and making things look better than they actually seem," said Joe Herrera of the advocacy group Families for Excellent Schools.

M.S. 424 is part of de Blasio's renewal program to improve failing schools, so it is under even more pressure to show that it is turning things around.

Last week, a student released pepper spray, sending a teacher to the hospital.

"I saw the teacher," a student recalled. "She was in the main office, and her eyes were red."

The pepper spray had been confiscated but then returned to the girl before the incident.

An education department spokeswoman says M.S. 424 has a new focus on de-escalation techniques, which includes a space for "hosting restorative circles."

She says the pepper spray incident, and reports of a teacher being slammed into a door, are under investigation.

Hoping to reduce what he calls overpolicing in schools, de Blasio recently expanded a program that issues students warning cards for infractions like marijuana possession, instead of arresting or summonsing them.

But a deputy schools chancellor sent a letter this week, telling principals not to keep records of when the cards are issued. The NYPD declined to say whether they keep the records.

The safety officers union said the lax record keeping is part of a plan to "mislead the public" on crime in schools.