Race, Class and P.S. 20's Controversial Principal
This weekend the Local’s Andy Newman followed up the extensive blog reporting on P.S. 20 he’s been doing with an article about Sean Keaton, the elementary school’s love-him-or-loathe-him principal. The story describes Keaton, who missed the Fort Greene school’s graduation last week—he was barred from attending by Dept. of Ed officials owing to assault charges…
This weekend the Local’s Andy Newman followed up the extensive blog reporting on P.S. 20 he’s been doing with an article about Sean Keaton, the elementary school’s love-him-or-loathe-him principal. The story describes Keaton, who missed the Fort Greene school’s graduation last week—he was barred from attending by Dept. of Ed officials owing to assault charges he’s facing for allegedly beating up a teacher’s union rep—as being at the center of a race-class divide: “In the resurgent brownstone bastions of Fort Greene, Boerum Hill and the fringes of Park Slope, affluent parents with one set of expectations for their children’s education — progressive, hands-on, emphasizing freedom — are clashing with longtime, working-class residents who prefer stricter, more structured educational models like the one Mr. Keaton favored, leaving principals caught in the crossfire…At P.S. 20, some of the conflict has been tinged with race: Mr. Keaton is black, as are three-quarters of the students, while many of the families who said they found him hard to work with are white. Much of it has to do with class. Some comes down to personal style: Even many of Mr. Keaton’s supporters say he can be abrasive and inclined to escalate rather than defuse tensions.” In a poll of Brownstoner readers a couple months ago that ran before the assault charges, 47 percent of you said Keaton should be removed from the school; 17 percent said he should stay; and 36 percent said you didn’t know enough about the issue to have an opinion one way or the other.
As Cultures Clash, Brooklyn Principal Faces Assault Charges [NY Times]
PS 20: It’s a Long Story [The Local]
Time for PS 20 Principal to Get The Boot? [Brownstoner]
Photo from the Bridge & Tunnel Club.
I find myself a little disgusted by
The tone of much of what I’m reading
Glad that one lives in Minneapolis
And the other in Cambridge now
But I still care about all the kids
And their parents in our village
That we might find some peace
That someone in a position of power
Might not be pushed and stressed
A fractured, damaged society
Dynamic, anxiety, old wounds
I find myself a little disgusted by
The tone of much of what I’m reading
Glad that one lives in Minneapolis
And the other in Cambridge no
But I still care about all the kids
And their parents in our village
That we might find some peace
That someone in a position of power
Might not be pushed and stressed
A fractured, damaged society
Dynamic, anxiety, old wounds
it doesn’t make sense to say keaton’s a casualty of these “wars” but that his wound was self-inflicted. he did this to himself.
is what the teacher did supposed relevant to the issues with keaton? or is it relevant because it suggests that the school has more problems than other public schools? or is it relevant because teacher’s unions are terrible so we all have good reasons not to send our kids to any public school?
in any event, i doubt anyone thought that the principal was the ONLY problem at the school or that the school would be perfect if he were gone. certainly, the vibe between/among the parent groups seems toxic – that alone might be a reason not to consider it. there are a number of public schools in “brownstone brooklyn” with the same kind of ethnic/racial makeup of students (and probably similar class divides) and not all of them are this rancorous. ps 11 is the obvious parallel. it’s nice to send your kid to your zoned school, for a lot of reasons, but why would you expect a parent to deal with that kind of stuff if they have other options?
And he’s never been man enough to acknowledge the apology.
northsloperenter, he didn’t win because I wasn’t banned. I finally apologized to him only because it offended him. He still doesn’t understand the context within which I used the word. Nor does he understand why I should have commented in the first place (I was invited in with the use of the “f word” as much as he felt he was invited in with the use of the “n word”) He’s too dense to understand that it was a discussion about the words, not about people and defintely not directed to anyone as a slur. He’s just too dense to reason with. He’s probably the product of a bad public school with a bad kindergarten teacher who beat him and a principal who was out of control.
CSA- you are right. I just want to know the full circumstances of the accusations against Segarra and if he has assaulted children he needs to be in jail- next to Keaton. I don’t think you were mudslinging, it’s important to know that there are questions in Segarra’s record too, but everything depends on what the real facts are (and will we ever know them?)
“Why Dave is not banned”
Because what he said was not offensive. No matter how much you cry about it, it wasn’t. The fact that you played the race card and won, doesn’t mean you were right.
And just about everything you post these days is utterly offensive garbage.
ditto, he’s only here for our amusement. We couldn’t laugh at all the rest of us because no one else is really as pathetic in that way except maybe PropJoe and cornerbodega.
DIBs – but he’s funny right?