LIKE NOBODY CARED’
special ed students rock southern BK school district
COURIER LIFE, JULY 3-9, 2020 3
Stern worries about families
without the time or resources
to push for their child’s
needs.
“I wish the DOE gave you
something, like a how-to. Because
if you don’t know anybody,
if you don’t know what
to do, you’re going in blind,”
she said.
Accusations of racism
and Islamophobia
Other parents told stories
of allegedly racist and Islamophobic
incidents within some
of the district’s schools that
administrators inadequately
addressed or perpetuated.
At PS 264, which serves a
largely Muslim population,
staffers often lead Muslim
children who fast during the
month of Ramadan into another
room during lunch time
so they don’t have to watch
other students eat.
But, one mother said that
a cafeteria staffer punished
her son for laughing during a
lunch break by removing the
nine-year-old fourth grader
from the room where he and
other Muslim students were
fasting and forcing him to
watch students eat in the cafeteria.
When she went to pick
him up from school, her son
was distraught.
“He bursted out in tears,”
said Zaman Mashrah.
Mashrah demanded that
the DOE investigate the incident,
but the investigation ran
months late and ultimately
cleared the staffer of wrongdoing
— despite students’ testimonies
confi rming that the
incident occurred, she said.
“My son plus several other
students they questioned said
that this happened, this occurred,”
said Mashrah, who
eventually fi led a civil rights
lawsuit with the Council of
American Islamic Relations
against the DOE. “But the
DOE still decided to stand
with their employee.”
The event wasn’t
Mashrah’s only brush with
anti-Muslim bias, she said.
Last spring, during Ramadan,
she wanted to fi ll the
lobby of PS 264 with Ramadan
themed decorations, but
the school’s administration
allegedly tried to roadblock
the project.
“I fought for almost a
month to do something as
simple as hanging moons and
crescents,” she said.
Superintendent Costantino
and school’s principal
claimed that the project went
against DOE guidelines regarding
religious instruction
in schools — even though the
school celebrated other holidays,
like Christmas and Hanukkah,
Mashrah said.
“Every time there was
some sort of holiday, they
put up some sort of decor,”
Mashrah said. “They even
brought Santa Claus to the
school to take pictures … he’s
a religious fi gure.”
The school fi nally acquiesced
and allowed Mashrah to
post the decorations for the
last week of Ramadan, although
they took down a banner
she made because it said
“fasting” on it, she said.
Other parents also said
their children had suffered
acts of racism in the district’s
schools that the administration
inadequately addressed,
such as racist name-calling
and bullying.
“My son was 9 when he
was fi rst called the n-word,”
said Almash, whose eldest son
experienced anti-Black racism
at PS 102 and then McKinley
Junior High School. “He
also experienced being told
by other students that he
shouldn’t bother studying because
he’d probably grow up
to be a drug dealer, and that
his opinion on a group project
didn’t matter because he’s
Black.”
Almash said she would
complain to teachers and administrators
at both schools
following the incidents, but
the schools never made a concerted
effort to curb the perpetrators’
behavior.
“At both places the response
was always just an offer
to speak with my son —
including being called into
the AP’s offi ce and asked if
he felt safe at school, which
of course terrifi ed him,” she
said. “There was never an attempt
to handle it as a widespread
or systemic issue.”
An unresponsive
administration
While many of the parents’
complaints don’t directly
stem from the superintendent
and the district’s community
education council, many parents
feel that Superintendent
Costantino has repeatedly allowed
issues like racism and
special education noncompliance
to fester.
“Her offi ce is supposed
to be where the buck stops if
you’re a parent and you need
help,” Almash said. “She’s incredibly
unresponsive.”
Several parents alleged
that after complaining repeatedly
to the schools and
Costantino about racism and
IEP-noncompliance, administrators
would send the Administration
for Children’s
Services to their homes and
neglect their children’s needs
as a form of retaliation.
“Theres a lot of retaliation
against parents. What I found
is that if you follow the path
you’re supposed to … everything
was this circular path
back to the principal of the
school,” said Almash, who
added that the school called
ACS on her twice following
incidents with her autistic
child. “Basically, both times
the ACS workers told me
that they know that schools
did this, but still it was on
me to prove that I did nothing
wrong.”
Mashrah said that many
other Muslim parents have
told her about Islamaphobic
incidents, but are afraid to
voice their concerns.
“I have so many Muslim
parents in this district who
have come to me saying that
this happened to my son but
I’m afraid to speak about it
because of retribution,” she
said.
To make matters worse,
parents lambasted the letter
Superintendent Costantino
sent families two weeks after
George Floyd’s death, which
lamented the “divisiveness of
racism” and did not condemn
Floyd’s killing.
“I was deeply offended
by that,” said Stern, who is
Black. “It was watered down;
it didn’t really address the
issue … That made me completely
have to sit down and
reevaluate the time I wanted
to dedicate to this district.”
The parents’ letter and petition
also calls for the DOE to
remove a member of District
20’s community education
council — an elected body
held by parents — in part because
of a series of controversial
Facebook posts following
George Floyd’s killing. In one
post, Vito LaBella, a retired
police offi cer, called Black
Lives Matter a “dog-whistle”
for injuring cops, and said he
preferred to use the phrases
“All lives matter” and “Black
lives matter too.”
“Everyone is against bad
policing. I’m pro-good policing,”
LaBella told Brooklyn
Paper, clarifying that he believes
only some of the Black
Lives Matter movement has
taken to attacking cops and
that he strongly condemns
the police killing of George
Floyd. “Our men and women
in the police department are
being targeted for assassination.”
He added that he thinks
children calling each other
slurs does not always indicate
a culture of unchecked racism.
“Kids talk smack to each
other, funny thing that hasn’t
changes in a thousand years,”
he said. “My son has been
called names, being a dumb
white boy. At some points it’s
kids talking, at some point
they cross a threshold.”
He said he “wasn’t sure” if
the amount of racist incidents
in District 20 crossed that
threshold, but agreed with
Superintendent Costantino’s
approach to addressing complaints
of racism.
“The best thing to say is we
condemn hate speech against
everybody,” he said, adding
that she has received undue
backlash for the George Floyd
letter. “I think it was a draft
letter that went out and people
are parsing this unsigned
draft letter. They’re bullying
her.”
Superintendent Costantino
did not respond to a request
for comment. The DOE
and Community Education
Council 20 also did not respond
to requests for comment
by press time.
Photo by Meaghan McGoldrick