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| Henry Schandel |
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DOE removes principal from embattled Queens MS 158
The principal of a Queens middle school that became a flashpoint in a citywide debate over classroom safety and discipline last year has been removed, according to the Department of Education.
Former MS 158 Marie Curie principal Henry Schandel will now serve as an assistant principal at another school and be replaced by interim principal Peter McHugh, officials said.
A string of ugly incidents at the Bayside campus during the last academic year — including a vicious lunchroom beating and a classroom sexual assault — culminated in a packed parent meeting where Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza was heckled off the dais.
Both incidents eventually resulted in arrests — but parents of the two victims said the perpetrators were never suspended out of school and that Schandel failed to adequately address their concerns.
Carranza walked off the stage during a raucous January meeting where both teachers and parents complained of deteriorating classroom safety and lax discipline from administrators.
Arguing that suspensions are meted out in a racially disproportionate manner and that they lead to worsened academic outcomes, the DOE has pushed principals to embrace less punitive measures.
But parents at Marie Curie said administrators failed to properly handle severe misconduct last year and that other students were paying the price.
Katty Sterling, whose daughter was assaulted in the school’s cafeteria in a video that went viral, said the attacker remained in class while her child was too scared to return.
The father of another Marie Curie said Schandel never told him that his daughter was being sexually hounded by a student who was eventually arrested for forcibly groping her.
While Schandel became the focus of parental and teacher anger, some sources at the school said systemwide DOE policies were also to blame for the breakdown in safety last year.
Marie Curie, considered one of the better schools in District 26, will name a permanent principal at a later date.
McHugh, a 20-year veteran of the DOE and most recently the Guidance Manager/Climate & Culture Manager at the Queens North Borough Office began his career as a teacher at Richmond Hill High School.
“Mr. McHugh is an invaluable resource in providing care and support for students recovering from trauma — something our young people need now more than ever,” said District 26 Superintendent Danielle Giunta.
“He will provide steady, professional, and engaged leadership to the students, staff, and families of Marie Curie during this transitional period.”
Queens principal to hand out Valentine’s Day lollipops at violence-plagued middle school
Susan Edelman, NY POST, February 8, 2020
Critics — including the mom of the 8th-grader who was punched, kicked, jumped on and pulled by the hair during the beat down — didn’t sugarcoat their dismay, saying the plan sucks.
“What is wrong with this guy? Is he out of his mind?” a stunned Katty Sterling asked The Post.
“Apparently this guy is so desperate to look good in front of the district and parents, he’s doing this crazy show. He’s a clown.”
Sterling recalled that Schandel had downplayed the assault on her daughter before he knew video existed — and allegedly lied to her that the attacker was suspended outside the school.
“I wish he showed some love and compassion the day my daughter was attacked — not a month later,” the furious mom said.
Her daughter, bruised physically and emotionally, has not returned to school since the Jan. 9 assault, and will be getting home instruction starting Tuesday, Sterling said.
The educator’s idea hits a sour note, said the dad of the grope victim.
“It’s ridiculous. This is what they are spending their time on? Lollipops?” asked the dad, who on Jan. 16 tried to address the matter with Carranza at the District 26 meeting at MS 74. The DOE boss refused to hear the dad’s concerns, and walked out amid the din of protesters, there to demand his firing for various reasons
“Is that what is going to help teach these kids discipline? No. It’s not going to do anything other than distract them for five minutes. Come on,” the dad said.
“Is that what is going to help teach these kids discipline? No. It’s not going to do anything other than distract them for five minutes. Come on,” the dad said.
A Marie Curie teacher also blasted the school leader, ripping him as “clueless.”
“Kids being sexually assaulted in the bathroom, fights caught on video in the lunchroom, and he’s handing out lollipops to all students,” the teacher said. “ I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
The lollipop directive comes as the city Department of Education admits it has failed to fully implement a parental bullying complaint system, as it promised to do under a class-action settlement two years ago.
DOE spokeswoman Miranda Barbot praised Schandel.
“When school leaders take the time to celebrate their students and invite staff to join in the effort to create a positive school environment, it should be encouraged not dismissed, and we support gestures like this across our schools,” she said.
Additional reporting by Selim Algar
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TRAUMATIZED BY BEATING FOLLOWED BY CHEERS: Katty Sterling (left), the mother of the 13-year-old girl who was assaulted in the cafeteria by a 14-year-old former friend, said that beyond the beating she suffered she felt ‘betrayed by the students’ who cheered when her attacker raised her hands above her head in triumph. Leonard Davidman (right), the president of the District Council 37 local that represents Psychologists and the senior Psychologist at Metropolitan Hospital Center, said those students were swept up in ‘mob behavior [in which] people lose their individuality. They join in, so they don’t feel as guilty.’
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Chief-Leader,
Updated
The most shocking moment in a 39-second video of the Jan. 9 beat-down by a 14-year-old girl at MS 158 Marie Curie in Bayside, Queens of a 13-year-old did not involve the punches and kicks delivered by the older girl as her target tried to cover up—an assault briefly interrupted by a Teacher who took hold of the aggressor, only to have her emerge seconds later jumping off a table to continue the attack.
Rather, the incident entered a new dimension when the 14-year-old, having apparently inflicted enough damage to exhaust her rage, stood up on a table, raised her hands above her head like she’d just won the heavyweight title, and cheers erupted from the students who had been watching.
There was a past history between the two girls. According to Katty Sterling, the girl’s mother, they had once been friends, and she had driven them to the mall and the movies.
Things changed, she said in a Feb. 4 phone interview, when her daughter was placed in the same class as the other girl’s boyfriend.
‘Wasn’t Flirting,’ But That Didn’t Matter
“My daughter likes to talk to everybody—she has a lot of friends,” Ms. Sterling said. “But that doesn’t mean she was flirting with him.”
But, she said, the other girl became jealous, and last spring attacked her in the school locker room. “She threw her on the floor, kicked her in the head, scratched her in the face,” she said. But when Ms. Sterling came to MS 158 the following day, she said Principal Henry Schandel and Assistant Principal Robert LoCastro downplayed the incident.
A day later, she said, the female student during a dispute with two boys brandished a knife, although she didn’t use it, but still no disciplinary action was taken against her.
“Apparently the school is being run by the students and Mr. Schandel is just covering things up,” Ms. Sterling asserted.
The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, which represents both Principal Schandel and AP LoCastro, did not respond to an email detailing those and other accusations made against them by Ms. Sterling.
It wasn’t clear why the students who witnessed the cafeteria rampage last month cheered the perpetrator, who initiated it by charging the younger girl and whaling away. Until then, there were two discrete sounds on the 39-second video: students shrieking and an adult woman moaning repeatedly, “Oh my God” at the disturbing sight, which seemed the only appropriate reaction to what was occurring.
Dr. Leonard Davidman, the president of Psychologists Local 1189 of District Council 37 who is also the senior Psychologist at Metropolitan Hospital Center, said in a Feb. 4 phone interview that the fight was not unlike some he had witnessed among young patients at the hospital, but added, “I deal with kids who murder people.”
As to the reaction by the student bystanders as if the victor in the one-sided confrontation had done something thrilling, he said, “In mob behavior, people lose their individuality. They join in, so they don’t feel as guilty. That’s a social-psychology phenomenon.”
Dr. Davidman added about the video, which he viewed several times, “What struck me was that no kids intervened and went in to stop the fight. In the old days, some kids would have tried to break it up. And they’re not restrained by rules from breaking in” the way Teachers might be.
‘Afraid to Intervene’
“Teachers are afraid to intervene,” he continued. It’s not because they worry that a student in a frenzy might injure them, although that’s a possibility. “They’re afraid of getting fired,” he said, because of the climate that has seeped into the school system since Mayor de Blasio took office and a priority was placed on reducing suspensions that would at least temporarily remove misbehaving students from their schools.
“Principals say that they have no discretion: ‘We’re told to step back to lower the suspension rate,’“ Dr. Davidman said.
Parents at MS 158, as well as some Teachers, have faulted Principal Schandel for failing to impose discipline, first in a harassment case that degenerated into a sexual assault—and even then he didn’t suspend the accused boy until after he’d been arrested—and then following the cafeteria beat-down.
“You can’t just blame the Principal,” Dr. Davidman said. “You can’t just blame [Schools Chancellor Richard} Carranza,” who further stoked outrage among parents by walking out of a Jan. 16 Community Education Council forum when questioned about the two incidents, and subsequently acted as if he were the aggrieved party, rather than the parents of the two students who had confronted him.
Teamsters Local 237 President Greg Floyd, who represents School Safety Agents, has been harshly critical of the scaling back of suspensions and other forms of discipline that began while Carmen Fariña was still Chancellor, and he contended that the greatest fault lay with Mayor de Blasio.
“The lax disciplinary procedures will continue because the children have figured out that there are no consequences because of the ‘restorative justice’ and the Mayor’s no-suspension policy,” he said in a phone interview, referring to the technique in which, rather than punishing the aggressor, ways are sought to have that person make amends to the victim. In situations that previously would have resulted in suspensions, Mr. Floyd continued, “Children should be made to bring their parents to school [to learn of their alleged conduct] before they’re let back in.”
An Emotional Meltdown
Mr. Carranza has taken most of the heat for the insensitive reaction that began with his bolting the Jan. 16 forum and later complaining that he had been “set up” by a group that has called for his firing. He concluded a diatribe against his critics at an unrelated Jan. 28 press conference in which he spoke of “outside agitators” with a racist agenda with a ramble about how “every city I’ve worked in and lived in, there is a Mexican restaurant, I have a mariachi, traje and a guitar, I will not starve. So bring it on.”
He acted as if he were the one who had been pummeled and traumatized to the cheers of a mob. It scored high on a scale for self-pity, but didn’t register a scintilla for empathy. The following day, he belatedly issued an apology, saying, “as a parent myself, I can only imagine the pain that parents are feeling when their children have been hurt.”
It took him long enough, and apparently came with some prodding by officials within the administration who had become aware of how close he veered to talking himself out of a job. A change.org petition circulated calling on the Mayor to fire Mr. Carranza, gathering more than 900 signatures in the first four days it was up.
Ms. Sterling said that she had confronted the Chancellor at the Jan. 16 forum because previous attempts to speak to him privately had been unsuccessful. Besides wanting Mr. Schandel to be fired, she said, “And this Carranza who is claiming to be a professional isn’t acting like one.”
The day after the cafeteria attack, she said that when she came to the school, the Principal denied having a copy of the video. She said that when she told him, “You don’t know how to take care of your students,” he replied, “What do you want me to tell you? These things are out of my hands.”
“I told him,” she said, “ ‘I want this girl to be removed from school.’ He told me, ‘That’s not going to happen,’” and suggested she transfer her daughter to another school.
One source at MS 158, speaking conditioned on anonymity, described the attacker as a chronic bully who was “unrepentant and unremorseful” about the beating she administered.
Perverting Justice
Ms. Sterling’s daughter, an eighth-grader who is due to graduate in June, has not returned to the school since the incident. The attitude her mother said was communicated to her in their Jan. 10 conversation in large measure was consistent with that emphasis on reducing suspensions, no matter how egregious the behavior involved and how often those accused have stepped way beyond the boundaries of acceptable behavior. When a school’s default answer to the victim is to transfer out, the justice it represents is perverted rather than restorative, a product of a twisted ideology that is immune to both the facts and basic decency.
After several weeks in which Ms. Sterling went to MS 158, which is not far from her home in Bayside, to get her daughter’s homework assignments, the school—perhaps embarrassed by the negative coverage and a wave of outrage that has begun lapping at the feet of the Mayor as well as Mr. Carranza, is finally sending an instructor to provide home lessons to the 13-year-old.
Ms. Sterling said she has retained a lawyer, despite what she claimed were pleas by some school officials not to take that route, and plans to sue. “They’ve been offering me other schools,” she said. “They’re trying to play with my brain.”
She was emphatic that her daughter would not return to the school until Principal Schandel arrived there was well-regarded. Asked how the 13-year-old was dealing with the trauma of the attack and the failure to intervene by anyone in the cafeteria besides the Teacher who briefly diverted her assailant, Ms. Sterling said, “My daughter is very distressed. She feels betrayed by the schoolteachers and the students. She’s afraid she’s going to be attacked again.
“And,” the mother continued, “she doesn’t want to be around the students who were celebrating.”
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