BROOKLYN, MAY 23 — At Clara Barton High School, the Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI) for the New York City School District has just completed an investigation that began in October. Assistant Principal Mims initially interrogated some students as they entered the school on a Monday after they had attended an October 2 rally in Washington, D.C. against budget cuts and for jobs.The SCI report finds that “Salak and Beckerman … recruited students to attend an unauthorized trip to a rally held in Washington, D. C.”
In fact, this rally was on a Saturday. All the students went with parental permission. Several parents joined them. Everyone was on a bus organized and paid for by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). There were thousands of students at this rally, many from NYC schools. Many unions and community organizations, including the UFT, sponsored this trip.
Yet Principal Forman maintains that “no private trips are allowed.” We disagree. As Senator Eric Adams stated at a PTA meeting, outside of school and especially on weekends, parents are in charge of their children, not the DOE or Principal Forman.
Meanwhile, education at Barton is neglected by the administration:
Haitian students get many of their history classes from teachers outside the Social Studies Dept.
Monday afternoon teacher meetings are mostly a disorganized mess; hundreds of teacher hours are wasted.
Class sizes are huge.
Technology is totally outdated or missing; the TV/DVD/video setups are a mess.
The SCI investigation is a racist attack on our students in many ways. At many so-called ‘elite’ schools or suburban schools, which are mainly white, outside activities are encouraged. Students are allowed to expand their horizons and teachers are encouraged to help them. At Barton, the latest innovation by the administration is detention. Many students and staff feel that Barton is becoming more and more like a jail.
This is also an anti-communist attack. The SCI letter, for some reason, mentions “Challenge: the Revolutionary Communist Newspaper of the Progressive Labor Party.” The Paper was “retrieved” from a student. From Paul Robeson to Langston Hughes to W. E. B. DuBois, communists have always been in the forefront in fighting racism and that is still the case. The SCI and its servants, like Principal Forman, want to silence us. They won’t.
Why does Forman want to get rid of some of the best, most dedicated teachers in the school? Their Regents results are above the Brooklyn average. They sponsor after school clubs and spend countless other hours after school helping students. The DOE and principals like Forman want to frighten and silence anyone who fights back. Principal Forman is not an educator, he is an investigator. He is in line with the increased racist repression and control coming from the DOE. As the DOE prepares more budget cuts, including teacher layoffs, they want students and staff to be more compliant and timid. This is called fascism. They do virtually nothing to promote education at Barton. Now, with more cutbacks coming, they want to stop any kind of student-teacher-parent unity that could resist these cuts. More than ever we need to fight back, students, staff, and parents united!J