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2 COURIER LIFE, JULY 3-9, 2020
‘IT JUST SEEMED
Charges of racism, discrimination against
BY ROSE ADAMS
Hundreds of Bay Ridge
parents and educators are
calling for the removal of the
local school district’s superintendent,
claiming that she
has turned a blind eye to racism
and special education violations
within the district’s
schools for years.
An open letter — signed by
more than 200 parents, community
members, and faculty
members — claims that District
20 superintendent Karina
Costantino failed to address
complaints regarding
racism and special education
non-compliance within the
district, which includes Bay
Ridge, Dyker Heights, southern
Sunset Park, and Bath
Beach.
The district’s demographics
have shifted dramatically
over the last 20 years, with
Chinese students making up
44 percent and Latino students
accounting for nearly 27
percent of the schools’ population
in a district that formerly
was mostly white and Catholic,
according to state data.
But petitioners say the increased
diversity has not infl
uenced the top administrator’s
attitude towards race.
“She is out of touch with
the needs of our community
because she does not respect
the voices of those she serves.
It’s past time for her to go,”
the letter reads.
“It just seemed like
nobody cared”
Speaking with Brooklyn
Paper, parents described a
culture that neglected students
with special needs.
“The way I describe this
district, especially with students
with disabilities, is
that they throw up a wall of
can’ts and won’ts,” said Bay
Ridge resident Francine Almash,
who said she’s had to
homeschool two of her three
children because of the district’s
inability to accommodate
special needs.
Almash’s second oldest
child is autistic — but for
years, school staffers at PS
102 claimed he had behavioral
problems rather than a developmental
disorder, she said.
“My middle child wasn’t
diagnosed with autism until
he was in third grade, I think,”
she said. Her son is Black,
which she believes played a
role in the late diagnosis. “He
was constantly being coded as
having behavioral problems,
constantly as being emotionally
disturbed.”
Many teachers at PS 102
weren’t properly trained to
manage the needs of her now
13-year-old son, and often
punished him instead of addressing
his needs, Almash
claimed.
“It was a lack of training, a
lack of understanding, a lack
of willingness to understand
that the problem doesn’t lie
with him,” she said, noting
that staffers locked him in
classrooms and wrapped him
in a weighted blanket when
he had outbursts, and sometimes
rewrote his special
needs classifi cation.
Following years of confl ict,
the district couldn’t fi nd her
son an appropriate placement
at any school, so now Almash
is teaching him at home along
with his 12-year-old brother,
who’s dyslexic.
“I did not want to homeschool
my kids. And it was incredibly
diffi cult, as a single
parent especially,” she said.
“It just seemed like nobody
cared.”
Almash isn’t the only parent
who’s voiced concerns
about special education in the
district. A 2019 state comptroller
PS 102 in Bay Ridge, where parents levied charges of racism and ableism.
report found that District
20 was one of 13 districts citywide
with the highest rates of
IEP-noncompliance, meaning
that its schools often do not
assign or follow through on a
disabled student’s Individualized
Education Program.
“I had to fi ght them for my
daughter’s services to the
point where I actually went
to court,” said Bay Ridge resident
Tamara Stern, whose
10-year-old daughter has a
speech disability.
Stern said that the city’s
Department of Education refused
to pay for the speech
therapist who worked best
with her daughter, and pushed
her to choose a cheaper therapist
in their network. She refused,
and the DOE took her
to court. Stern won the case,
but the battle continued while
she was at PS 102, she said.
“At one point they wanted
me to decrease the amount of
time she was going to speech,”
she said, adding that her husband,
a middle school teacher,
doubted that their daughter
was getting enough care.
“My husband felt that they
weren’t really on top of it.”
Following a push from
Stern and her husband, the
school has worked continuously
with the family to craft
their daughter’s IEP. But,
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