Bosses Put Antiracist Educator on Trial

NEW YORK CITY, April 20—Dozens of former students, parents, colleagues and friends have been filling the hearing office every day at the “trial” of a New York City educator under attack on false charges, ones of which he’s already acquitted in criminal court! Despite that, the city bosses are trying to take away his licenses and keep him from ever serving our kids again. Even parents from the school he was removed from almost two years ago have come to support him and report back to others.
The whole building has been buzzing about the support, and we’ve been keeping the chairs filled as a team of Department of Education lawyers tries to suppress evidence, exclude spectators and lie their way to victory. But they’re having a hard time of it because they’ve used only the same discredited witnesses from the court trial.
The ruling class’s attack on the working class, and especially Black and Latin children, takes many forms, including poverty, poor housing, poor healthcare and the capitalist education system. That includes crowded classrooms, pathetic reforms, attacks on teachers, and the just plain lies and ruling-class ideas our kids are taught.
This case involves an elementary school principal, with a long distinguished record as an early-childhood teacher and teacher coach He found that he’d became principal of a so-called “failing” school in a building that also housed a charter school which wanted the space. The pushing of charter schools into already existing schools’ spaces is a divisive ruling-class tactic. Appealing to parents’ desires to provide the best for their children, they pit parent against parent and teacher against teacher to convince us to blame each other for the failings of the bosses’ schools. The charter school movement also pacifies parents who might be won to fight for better schools by pulling them away and convincing them there’s a better alternative. But there is no such thing as a good school for the working class under capitalism!
This makes it especially important to organize within the schools to fight the attacks by the Dept. of Education (DOE). When parents, teachers and students unite, the nature of the system is laid bare. This unity scares the bosses. When the principal began to rally the school staff and parents to rebuild the school and fight for the resources his students need, he was arrested on fake charges of physically attacking a student.
Even though he was acquitted of the charges in court, colleagues and friends now face a new fight against the DOE, which is still trying to take away his license and his ability to fight for our children.
When our friend became principal, the school was down to under 100 students, student results were poor and staff and parents were demoralized. The charter school, which belongs to the high-profile “Success Academy” profit-making chain, wanted it to fail and leave so they could take over the space. Although the school had a lot of technology, the DOE had left it drastically short of support services for students, a third of whom needed special services.
Within his first weeks as principal, things began to turn around. He helped teachers begin to work together more, worked with staff to recruit more students (increasing by 25 percent) and started to develop new ties with parents. These moves were important, because getting everyone together is necessary to fight for what our children need, against the system’s racism and neglect of working-class kids. He also fought to keep the charter schools from taking away two classrooms needed for special education students.
So it was no surprise that when the principal took action to protect a disturbed third-grader, and—according to Department rules—prevent him from rushing out of the building and into the streets, the charter school bosses twisted it into being the principal’s attack on the student and pushed to have him arrested on false charges. In court, the principal proved that the charges, the testimony and the whole case were a fraud. The judge acquitted him the minute the trial ended.
His acquittal was positive. But what’s even better is that it led to more fightback, with support from dozens of parents, colleagues, former students he taught years ago and more. He has reached out to people throughout the area, and spoken at many churches, community groups and other gatherings, receiving strong response. Many people said they couldn’t believe this kind of attack against a committed pro-student educator. Many have contributed to legal costs and said they will come to support him at his hearing.
That kind of unity is needed to win more than the new fight for his licenses and future as an educator; we know that the ruling-class attacks on our children and those who support them won’t end here. No matter which kind of schools our working-class children attend, charter or public, they are being taught ruling-class ideas, not the knowledge, skills and class-consciousness they need to make a revolution and a new society. No matter what school reforms the rulers institute, they cannot provide jobs for all the students who leave the schools, with or without diplomas. Racism gives the majority of Black, Latin and immigrant youth the “choice” between racist unemployment or fighting in the bosses’ imperialist wars.
It’s important to broaden this struggle into more than a fight for our friend: it must lead to one that ends the whole system that miseducates and abuses our children and our class. The only system that will provide a quality education for the world’s working class—that will produce the thinkers and doers that can run this world for the working class—is communism! That is why we must win parents, teachers and friends that have shown up to support this comrade to join us at May Day on April 30, and to continue the struggle onward!