New York junior high school segregating students by race in order to 'undo legacy of racism': 'It's insidious'



A junior high school in Manhattan is racially segregating students as part of its efforts to discuss identity and social justice issues, the New York Post reported.

According to the paper, an email to parents of students at the Lower Manhattan Community School said that the institution will be splitting kids into categories based on race as part of its efforts to "undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community."

The letter, which was written and signed by principal Shanna Douglas, said the seventh- and eighth-grade students will be permitted to opt into one of five categories.

"On November 23rd and 24th, 7th and 8th graders will explore the question 'How do our racial identities influence our experiences?' in affinity groups," Douglas declared, the Post reported. "An affinity group is a group formed around a shared interest."

Apparently those "shared interests" are just about skin color.

The "affinity groups" will categorize students by race, according to the principal's letter.

White students will have one group, and Asians will have their own.

Black and Hispanic students will be combined into one group. And mixed-race students will have their own category, Douglas said, according to the Post.

If a student is one of those kids who has a problem with the segregation, then he can join a the fifth group, which, the paper said, "appears to be for those uncomfortable with the format."

That group, Douglas' letter said, will start with a discussion titled "Why are we even talking about racial identity?"

According to the city's Department of Education, the program is "optional" and is just a "two day celebration."

"This optional program was developed in close coordination with both the School Leadership Team, PTA and families," DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer told the Post, adding that it was "abundantly clear to both students and parents that anyone can opt-out of this two day celebration if they desire."

While some parents told the paper they're good with the segregation efforts, others are not on board and find the tactics "insidious."

"I think a lot of us feel like this is too much," one mother said. "But most parents are too afraid to say anything at this point. Why are we separating our kids like this?"

"Teach the history [of racism]," one dad told the Post. "Tell that story. I'm all for an honest accounting. But this is something different. It's insidious."

The Post's editorial board added its objection in an editorial posted Sunday night.

It's breathtaking in its perverse perniciousness: a Manhattan junior-high school's plan to racially separate 7th and 8th grade students into so-called “affinity groups" for class discussions on racial identity and social justice. This is a public school teaching children that the color of their skin matters more than the content of their character.

The principal, Shanna Douglas, says the exercise serves the school's mission to “undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community." No, it's feeding, even creating, an entirely new racism.

The Lower Manhattan Community School is 44 percent Asian, 29 percent white, 15 percent Hispanic and 8 percent black. That melting pot surely teaches them plenty about how to get along, fostering friendships that show them they're not really different. Douglas wants them obsessing about differences that shouldn't matter at all.

The paper closed its editorial blasting the initiative by noting that "plenty of work remains to be done" on race-related issues, "[b]ut no one needs the schools actively setting that work back by insisting on maximal race-consciousness, let alone by literally imposing racial segregation on junior-high kids."

Dad yanks daughter from ‘woke’ NYC school, moves to Florida — demands schools stop teaching kids to ‘feel bad about the color of their skin’



A father pulled his daughter from her posh, $43,000-per-year New York City school and moved her to Florida after the curriculum reportedly taught "kids to feel bad about the color of their skin," according to the Daily Mail.

What are the details?

Harvey Goldman told Fox News' Tucker Carlson that he believes most parents aren't even aware of what the Heschel School is teaching its students and that he is speaking out on his decision in order to educate and encourage other parents to follow suit.

He added that he and his entire family left the state altogether and moved to Florida after finding out the elite school was coaching her on how to deal with her "white privilege."

"They are teaching these kids terrible things," he said during a Tuesday interview. "Teaching them to feel bad about themselves and it is really awful."

He said that raising awareness is helping — and that other parents have reportedly begun to pull their children from the school's rosters, too.

"They are not happy about what is being taught to their children," Goldman said. "I'm not sure what else they could do but teach the school a lesson by pulling their kids out. And getting their money out."

He explained that he opted to move the family to Florida because it does not teach critical race theory in its educational curriculums — something nearly inescapable in New York City, he added.

"If you are in New York, it's really difficult to find another place to go because so many schools are teaching this critical race theory," Goldman explained. "And they are together in this. Someplace like Florida, never heard of it."

He pointed out that the schools in Florida simply let children be children.

"These children go to a park and they want to play," the father said. "They don't care what color the other kids are. They care that they are having fun."

Goldman said he notified the school in September via letter of his family's intention to withdraw from the school.

A portion of his letter read, "First and foremost, neither I, nor my child, have 'white privilege,' nor do we need to apologize for it. Suggesting I do is insulting. Suggesting to my nine-year-old child she does is child abuse, not education."

Goldman also spoke to Fox News' "Fox & Friends First" on Monday, where he said that administrators' message was "Marxist and destructive."

What has the school said?

According to the Daily Mail, the school in a statement said that the Goldman family left the school for what it described as "financial reasons."

"His family informed us last summer that they would likely relocate to Florida for financial reasons," a spokesperson for the school said. "We were surprised to read about his new explanation for the move, and question his motives for making such statements at this time."

NYC prioritized vaccines for teachers to get schools reopened. But the city can't say how many have been vaccinated because officials didn't bother to keep track.



New York City students first lost in-person instruction last spring thanks to the pandemic.

Thanks to the United Federation of Teachers' threats — and the city's apparent inability to keep proper vaccination records — kids are still not back in the classroom full-time.

What's going on?

One of the union's demands to get teachers back into classrooms daily was for the city to prioritize educators for COVID-19 vaccinations, which the city agreed to. New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced Jan. 10 that teachers and education workers would be prioritized for vaccinations and urged all education employees to make appointments to get their shots.

With that, calls for teachers to get back to in-classroom work forthwith began to ring out.

But the UFT wasn't done with its threats, saying that a potential shortage of vaccine supplies (as well as unwillingness on the part of teachers) could force a delay in returning to classrooms — and not just this year, but even next September, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew told the Journal that the timing of the union's agreement to go back to school partially depends on the number of teachers who are both able and willing to get vaccinated.

"Whatever happens this school year, happens," Mulgrew said. "But I want to be fully open in September, and I can't guarantee that right now."

The union admitted that it needs not only more supplies but more willingness from teachers to get vaccinated to make the back-to-school plan work.

But now there's a problem.

If returning to full-time in-person instruction is contingent upon teachers getting the vaccination, the school system needs to know how many educators have received their shots. However, the city can't say how many teachers have been vaccinated because officials haven't bothered to keep track, the New York Post reported Monday night.

On Jan. 11, one day after Chancellor Carranza's teacher vaccination announcement, the UFT said that 17,000 teachers requested the shot within 24 hours of its announced availability.

And that's the last figure reported by either the union or Gotham's city hall.

According to the Post, the city has 75,000 classroom teachers and another 25,000 unionized staffers — and no one seems to know how many of them have actually been inoculated.

City Hall told the Post that the figures are still being tabulated because officials have yet to break down vaccination rates by worker group.

Because the shots are not mandatory for teachers and keeping track of the rate of inoculations wasn't a priority for the city government, parents still have no idea when their kids will be back to school.

'Get back on the job': New York Post demands that all schools reopen full-time now that teachers have been given vaccines, pulls no punches on unions



In a scathing editorial posted Monday night, the New York Post editorial board demanded that teachers get back in the classrooms for in-person learning and unions get out of the way now that New York City is vaccinating teachers against COVID.

What's happening?

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced over the weekend that teachers and education workers are being prioritized for vaccinations and urged all education employees to make appointments to get their shots.

We’re relieved that teachers & education workers are starting to be eligible for COVID-19 vaccination like fellow N… https://t.co/ko23WkwyS6
— Chancellor Richard A. Carranza (@Chancellor Richard A. Carranza)1610317062.0

With that news, many advocates, parents, and members of the media began to call for all Big Apple schools to be fully reopened instead of the part-time and/or hybrid schedules the city elected to employ last fall.

The Post made its position clear in a staff editorial titled "Teacher vaccinations mean all schools should reopen full-time ASAP."

The piece began by going after the teachers' unions that have stood in the way of a return to full-time in-person instruction:

Good news: New York City began vaccinating teachers against COVID-19 on Monday. That leaves the teachers' union no excuse for continuing to oppose in-person learning: Classrooms at all grade levels must reopen so our kids can get the education they're entitled to — but have lost out on for nearly a year.

The United Federation of Teachers has long stood in the way of getting back into classrooms daily, despite the fact that experts repeatedly stated that kids are a very low-risk population for catching or transmitting the coronavirus. But, in the words of the Post, the union "doesn't care about the science — or the students."

The UFT, the paper said, threatened lawsuits and strikes to avoid getting back into the classrooms before the school year started. The union agreed to go back to work only after Mayor Bill de Blasio was forced to offer new concessions. But the UFT wasn't done there, the editorial noted; it has repeatedly tried to get schools closed and to avoid any reopenings — even some "more radical factions" demanded that all Gotham schools remain closed "until the whole city is basically virus-free."

The need to get back into the schools is obvious to the Post's editorial board:

Middle- and high-school students haven't seen the inside of a classroom since the city shut schools on Nov. 19. Though even that was only part-time. Pre-kindergarten and elementary students resumed a “hybrid" learning last month, while special-needs kids returned to classrooms full-time. Kudos to de Blasio for getting that much done; children needing special ed are particularly ill-served by remote classes.

But all kids need to go back, full-time. “Without in-person instruction, schools risk children falling behind academically and exacerbating educational inequities," warned a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine report last year. Nathaniel Beers, coauthor of the American Academy of Pediatrics' report, explained that all children suffer under remote learning, even teens: “Adolescence is a period of time in life when you are to be exploring your own sense of self and developing your identity," he said. “It's difficult to do that if you are at home with your parents all the time."

It's far past time, the paper said, for students to get back into the classroom — and with vaccines in the arms of teachers, there's no longer any reason not to.

"New York's children have lost nearly a year of education," the Post said. "It's long past time they get to learn in a classroom again."