[lbo-talk] The Principal vs. the Police State

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Jan 18 11:50:17 PST 2006


[The police state that is high school. This story kind of stunned me. At first I thought principal's actions against the young Marxist were overly harsh. But in context, it turns out that was her canny attempt to head off much worse through what by comparison was mild prophylaxis -- and it didn't work. What an environment! It's like kids are living through the McCarthy era and the height of the crime scare era at the same time. And this is Staten Island fer crissakes! Although maybe that could explain some of it in terms of race.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/education/18education.html

The New York Times

January 18, 2006

On Education

Outcry, but Few Answers, After Principal Is Removed

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

ONE day last May, the president of the College Board stood in the

packed auditorium at Curtis High School on Staten Island and handed

over a check for $25,000. Curtis had earned the money as one of

just three high schools nationally to receive the organization's

Inspiration Award for motivating students to attend college.

Operating at 160 percent of capacity, with a student body rapidly

shifting from white to minority and from middle class to working

poor, Curtis sent 85 percent of its graduates on to higher

education. Everybody in the crowd that day understood exactly why

the school's jazz band culminated the ceremony by playing

"Respect."

Aurelia L. Curtis was dancing with all the rest on the stage, and

nothing seemed more appropriate than the coincidence that her

surname and the school's were identical. She had been at Curtis for

more than 20 years, the last two as principal. An immigrant from

Liberia, she formed part of the same racial transformation on

Staten Island that was being felt in her school. More than a few of

Curtis's alumni owed their college scholarships to her personal

involvement.

Last week the Curtis auditorium was filled again, ostensibly for

the monthly meeting of the PTA, but this time the mood was

indignation rather than celebration. Ms. Curtis had been removed

from the school in mid-December by the Department of Education,

reassigned to the purgatory of regional headquarters. The

department is investigating the principal's conduct in two episodes

last fall, one involving a supposed threat by a student to bomb the

building and the other an attempt by the local police to arrest

three Curtis students inside the school.

In Ms. Curtis's absence that night, a chorus of students, teachers

and graduates demanded her return. The chairman of the local branch

of the N.A.A.C.P., the neighborhood's City Council member - and

perhaps most surprising - the president of the citywide teachers'

union joined in the outcry on the principal's behalf. Most of the

members of the audience wore lapel badges with a picture of the

suspended principal and the slogan "Curtis Needs Curtis." Others

carried signs showing a broken heart.

All they got in return were the legalistic responses of the

Department of Education's designated flak-catchers - Margaret

Schultz, a local instructional superintendent; Nancy Ramos, a

community superintendent; and Robin Merrill, a lawyer. They would

not explain the content of the investigation against Ms. Curtis or

the timetable for concluding it. "We are bound by chancellor's

regulations and New York State law," Ms. Ramos offered in a typical

comment.

That was pretty much when patience ran out for Maurice Royster,

whose daughter received a scholarship to the University of Delaware

with Ms. Curtis's help. "She was in this building for a reason,"

Mr. Royster said, referring to the principal. "You knuckleheads up

there don't know nothing. I made myself get off the bus after work

tonight and come here, and I don't even like PTA meetings." A

moment later he concluded, "Let the woman come back."

The controversy began on Oct. 31 with a 16-year-old junior,

according to both school and law enforcement officials. The boy, an

honors student active in several school clubs, as well as a

professed Marxist, was arguing about capitalism after school with

fellow members of the Curtis debate team. In the course of the

discussion, another student raised the question of what kind of

action was permissible to create political change. The junior's

lawyers, school administrators and the police differ on the exact

wording, but all concur that he said something along the lines of

how he could plant a bomb in Curtis the next morning as a protest

against capitalism.

Word of the remark went from the debate team's faculty adviser to a

dean to Ms. Curtis. On the morning of Nov. 1, she met with the

student and his mother and searched the boy's belongings, finding

no bomb-making materials of any kind. She then shared the

information with the teachers and administrators on a

crisis-intervention team. They decided to suspend the young man for

four days and require him to receive a psychiatric evaluation

before being readmitted.

On Nov. 4, however, the police in the 120th Precinct station house,

two blocks from Curtis High, learned of the boy's statement.

(Accounts differ as to whether the police were informed by Ms.

Curtis or by a regional security officer in the Education

Department, whom the principal had told.) That afternoon, the

police arrested the student on the charge of making a terroristic

threat, a felony written into law by the State Legislature six days

after the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, the Department of Education

ordered him suspended from school until Feb. 1.

If there was any criticism at the high school of Ms. Curtis's

handling of the situation, it was at an extremely low volume. "I

haven't heard anyone say they felt their children were in

jeopardy," Tom Hepworth, the high school's parent coordinator, said

in a recent interview. "When they found out what happened, the

sequence of events, they were satisfied that a person they respect

and trust made the best decision she could make."

For that matter, two of Ms. Curtis's own children are enrolled in

the high school. Would a mother possibly have put them at risk of a

terrorist bombing? Or would an experienced educator have known the

difference between an incipient mass murderer and a precocious

teenager trying to sound outrageous?

In late November and early December, Ms. Curtis went on a

fellowship to Japan to study comparative educational systems.

During that period, an investigator from the Department of

Education came to Curtis High and told administrators there he was

looking into whether the principal had failed to report a crime, a

violation of chancellor's regulations.

ON Dec. 14, the afternoon after returning from Japan, Ms. Curtis

was watching a girls' basketball game when the police entered the

school gym to try to arrest three male students, claiming they had

just robbed a student from a nearby high school. By the accounts of

several witnesses, Ms. Curtis told the police the boys had been

with her in the gym all afternoon and so could not have committed

the crime. At the least, she told the police, she did not want them

questioned until their parents could be called to the school.

The next morning, the Department of Education reassigned Aurelia

Curtis to regional headquarters. The last her colleagues at school

saw of her, she was cleaning out her office.

In the weeks since, the Staten Island district attorney decided not

to prosecute the three Curtis students the principal had defended.

A grand jury has yet to hear the case against the young man in the

bomb threat episode. Yet Ms. Curtis appears no closer to having her

case resolved.

Stephen Morello, the communications director for the Education

Department, said, "Until we have an opportunity to examine all of

the issues raised about the principal's handling of particular

situations, we have reassigned her."

Jacqueline Lopardo, a Curtis graduate who went on to Vanderbilt

University and a career in law, had a retort of sorts when she

addressed the Education Department representatives at the PTA

meeting last week. "You talk about how you need to protect Curtis

High School," she said. "We stand unprotected now."

E-mail: sgfreedman at nytimes.com

* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list