WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES FEBRUARY 6, 2020 13
LETTERS AND COMMENTS
WE MUST ENSURE HISTORY
DOESN’T REPEAT
ITSELF
The Auschwitz concentration camp
was liberated by the Soviet Army
75 years ago. Within the camp,
over 1 million individuals were killed
by brutality, starvation and gas. Their
belongings and gold teeth were gathered
as bounty by the Nazis. The horrors and
smells remain in the minds of those who
survived, their saviors, and the families
and children who came aft er.
I was born in the shadow of the
Holocaust. Those like me, born as Baby
Boomers to Jewish families, listened to
the names of loved ones who cruelly
died. The lives lost, their stories, their
very names became part of us. Not to
believe the soul-impacting reality which
is a voice heard within the recesses of my
mind would simply be a lie.
As Americans blessed to reside in a
nation wherein the guiding principle
is freedom of religion, news of new outrages
and hatred seem foreign and of
no immediate threat. Yet synagogues
are now guarded and nightly reports of
anti-Semitism are frequent.
The United States has never sustained
such constant televised hate speech as
today, attacking anyone deemed diff erent.
The fear of caravans of immigrants
surging our borders, the changing of
the American demographic landscape
to a nation with a white minority, the
age of technology destroying blue collar
employment, have many of our citizens
in need of fi nding “others” as the reason.
Our national history has had episodes
of prejudice, hate and fear. The “Yellow
Peril,” Japanese internment, the KKK,
the John Birch Society, McCarthyism
and, today, militias.
Over time and with the strength of
leaders of morals who were committed
to the ideals of American exceptionalism,
sense and moderation were restored to
the national discourse. In the absence
of leaders today who will speak truth
to power there is no reason to believe
the mania that allowed the creation of
Auschwitz could not happen here.
Ed Horn
Baldwin, Long Island
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OP-ED
My kids deserve a school
BY JOSE ROSARIO
I’m tired. And it’s not because being
a public school principal is an intense
job. It certainly is that — like
so many public school principals in
America, I work around the clock. But
I love being the principal of Success
Academy Far Rockaway. Laughing
with my kids and watching them
fl ourish and fulfi ll their potential
as readers and writers, dancers and
chess players, scientists and artists,
makes the hours of each day fl y by.
No. I’m tired because since the start
of this school year, I have been helping
my fourth-grade scholars and
their families cope with the almost
unbelievable reality that they may
be forced to leave the school they
love because Mayor de Blasio won’t
provide them with adequate space for
a middle school, even though there
are district buildings that could
share space because they are underutilized.
Parents from my school and three
other Success Academies in Queens
have been waiting for a permanent
space for a middle school for three
years. Success made the initial request
in January 2017, and since then
parents have been patient and cooperative,
even as the city repeatedly
reneged on its promise to provide a
solution. Now, these parents are facing
the imminent eviction of their
fourth-graders: Success Academy
middle school starts in fi ft h grade,
there are less than six months left of
the school year, and their children
have nowhere to go.
Supporting my families as they
face this looming threat is draining,
particularly because I have an acute
understanding of what’s at stake. I
grew up in Washington Heights, sharing
a one-bedroom apartment with
my mother and two siblings. I didn’t
have access to many resources, let
alone a top-tier education. I was able
to make it through high school and
on to college thanks to my mother’s
unfl agging support and the strong
value for education she instilled in
me. But it should have been so much
easier — and it would have been, if
I had attended a school like Success
Academy.
I have watched Far Rockaway parents
move from palpable anxiety to
deep anger. They see the tremendous
opportunities that Success Academy
middle and high schools provide for
kids: Advanced Placement courses
and extracurriculars in the high
school, where students are acing the
SATs and gaining acceptance — and
generous fi nancial aid packages — to
top colleges. They see a middle school
experience just out of reach, where
their kids would be known, loved and
supported, where they would have
access to great programs in sports,
debate, chess and art, where they
would take — and excel in — three
high-school Regents courses by the
end of eighth grade.
And they see the possible alternatives,
reflected in the community
around them. Only one in three adults
in Queens have completed college.
They want something diff erent for
their kids, and that’s why they chose
Success Academy Far Rockaway: to
make sure a path to college would be
opened.
The deepest source of their anger
is the fact that this problem has a
straightforward solution. There
are six public school buildings in
this part of Queens, each with 400
to 1,000 empty seats. They know
that Mayor de Blasio is dodging his
responsibility by hiding behind the
widespread misperception that colocation
poses a burden on existing
schools. The reality is that two-thirds
of all public schools in New York City
are co-located — in most cases, it is
either utterly unnoticeable or actually
benefi cial.
Take the co-location in my building,
for example. As participants in the
NYC DoE’s District-Charter Partnership
initiative, we share professional
development opportunities so that
educators in all our schools benefi t.
And we are a community: We just
enjoyed a building-wide Halloween
celebration. Far from being burdened,
our co-located district schools
are thriving. Since Success Academy
opened four years ago, both district
schools have experienced a rise in
enrollment and test scores — a trend
that research has found to be the rule
rather than the exception for district
schools co-located with charters.
Each day, as I contemplate the
mayor’s cynical obstruction, I think
of my fourth-graders. They are some
of the hardest-working kids I have
ever met. They truly love to read —
half the time I have to tell them to
keep their noses out of a book! They
are also really, really funny — I regularly
fi nd myself laughing on the way
home as I think about what they did
or said that day. And fi nally, they are
some of the best singers and dancers
I’ve ever seen. I have a high bar for
singing and dancing — but they make
me feel like I have two left feet.
These kids are amazing. They deserve
everything. But day aft er day,
the mayor gives them nothing.
Wouldn’t that make you tired?
Jose Rosario is the principal of Success
Academy Far Rockaway.
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