By now I am sure some of you have heard that there was a pepper spray incident yesterday at Queens Collegiate, a new small school located in the Jamaica High School building. Multiple students and an assistant principal were hurt. This was not the first major incident at this 6-12 school that was shoved into Jamaica before Jamaica High School faced phase out. I am not reporting on this to criticize QC. This could have happened anywhere.
What was particularly interesting for us was the Department of Education, according to a reporter, first put out a statement saying that this particular occurrence took place at Jamaica High School when our school, our students and staff had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Did DOE make an honest mistake?
Students at Jamaica think not and expressed that openly today.
It looks to them like the DOE is no longer content to sweep incidents under the rug in the new schools, instead they are now trying to sweep the mess over to the school they don't like: Jamaica.
Truth did win out in the end mostly after we called CBS, NBC, and the Daily News. Updated versions of the story were much more accurate.
Note the student comments in the Channel 4 version.
Here also is the Jamaica Times version. At least they called me before they printed it.
Whenever there is an incident at a colocated school, the DOE always counts it towards the statistices of the host school. Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteWe can't win.
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