Naming Names
The City’s Office of Special Investigations probe into ‘Communist Organizing’ at Brooklyn High School draws ire
By Mike Elsen-Rooney and Ariel Mingtong Jiang
On March 2, Principal Jill Bloomberg of Park Slope Collegiate in Brooklyn discovered that the morning’s phony bomb threat was not going to be the biggest excitement of the day. That afternoon, an investigator from the Department of Education arrived in her office unannounced to let Bloomberg know she was under investigation for undisclosed reasons. It later became clear the city was investigating Bloomberg and four other teachers, parents and former students for “communist organizing.”
The investigator then asked to speak privately with Assistant Principal Carla Laban, and presented her with the list of names, asking her to confirm an anonymous complaint that each one had used school time or resources to organize communist activities. Laban said the investigator seemed to know little about the people on the list, several of whom had left the school long ago.
As the conversation continued, Laban said she started to feel like the real question underneath the investigation was, “are you running a cult here?”
“The actual accusation is ridiculous,” said Laban. “It’s absolute craziness.”
A spokesperson from the Office of Special Investigations, a branch of the city DoE that looks into allegations of misconduct in schools, said the office could not comment on open investigations. The office has the power to investigate and discipline teachers and administrators based on the Chancellor’s Regulations, the code of conduct governing New York schools.
It is rare for the Office of Special Investigations to launch an investigation based solely on political activity in schools, according to David Bloomfield, a professor of Educational Leadership and Law at Brooklyn College. When asked if he’d heard of an investigation specifically on allegations of communist organizing in schools, Bloomfield replied, “not since the McCarthy era.”
A section in the chancellor’s regulations prohibits school employees from “electioneering,” or using school time or resources to organize on behalf of any specific political campaign or candidate. That regulation, said Bloomfield, may be the one Bloomberg is accused of violating.
Laban acknowledged that teachers and students have been active in protesting the school’s metal detectors and rough treatment from school safety officers, among other causes. But, she said the protests aren’t organized during school time, and don’t promote specific candidates or political campaigns. “Our rallies are not about communism, our rallies are about police brutality, are about getting rid of the metal detectors, putting the money to students. We go rally against any injustice we could think of.”
A letter written by middle school parent Miriam Numberg on behalf of the school’s PTA suggested there’s a “real possibility” that the investigation “was initiated in retaliation for Principal Bloomberg’s frequent advocacy on part of her students.” The letter is directed to Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina, and has gathered over 400 signatures.
Multiple calls to the Department of Education for comment were not returned.
In particular, the letter alleges that the investigation’s timing suggests that it could be in response to Bloomberg’s most recent campaign — an effort to merge the sports teams on the John Jay Campus, the school building that houses Park Slope Collegiate along with three other schools.
Bloomberg has for years protested the fact that one school in the John Jay building — Millennium Brooklyn High School — runs its own sports teams in partnership with Millennium High School in Manhattan, rather than joining with the other schools in the building. In January, she realized that the Millennium program had almost twice the number of teams as the other three schools combined, despite serving fewer students. Millennium’s students are also a combined 38 percent Black and Latino, while the proportion at the other schools is 89 percent. Bloomberg and parents from the PTA began a campaign to pressure the city into merging the sports teams. Middle school parents Louis Rosenfeld and Adam Stevens spearheaded a distribution of flyers alleging that the DoE had allowed “a racist inequity to take root.”
On Friday, March 3rd, the head of the city’s school sports league, Donald Douglas, met with the four principals to announce that he would not force the merger. He left the decision to the principals. Millennium’s principal, Kevin Conway, was unwilling to budge. Douglas did, however, offer five additional sports teams to the John Jay sports program.
“It’s basically like the carrot and the stick,” said Park Slope Collegiate parent and PTA member Melissa Moskowitz. The offer of additional sports teams was the carrot, the threat of investigation, the stick.
Laban said the investigator provided no clear timeline for how and when the school would learn the results of the investigation. Laban is hopeful that it will sputter out with time. “We will get through this, I don’t think they can prove what they are trying to prove,” she said. “I hope this will be dead in the water. We aren't going down without a fight. Not in this school.”
