Thread by @Jill_Jorgensen

Here’s my story on what’s been happening at Success Academy in recent days: ny1.com/nyc/all-boroug…

I spoke to Ebony Woods, a former staffer at Success Springfield Gardens where a white assistant principal put up a bulletin board that immediately struck black educators as inappropriate. It featured black children hanging upside down from a branch covered in a leafy vine.

Woods and others raised the issue to school leaders who said they hadn’t thought of it that way.
"How could you be so insensitive not to think that, and why do we have to teach you?” Woods said. “Why is it our job to teach you the insensitiveness that you have?"

Most of the students at the school were black, as are most of the students across Success.

“Those parents that believe that just having the word ‘Success’stamped on their child’s shirt is like this Ivy League thing ..., but it does more damage than good,” Woods said.

Success Academy managed to send me many paragraphs of “on background” responses, all of it criticizing me for asking them to respond to the anonymous allegations on Instagram, insisting it was “journalistically problematic.”

But, Success could not muster a response to my questions about their own problematic—to put it mildly—bulletin board, which I was reporting based on an on-the-record, on-camera interview with a former staffer who complained when it happened.
They entirely ignored the question.

Success also did not respond to what are fairly standard questions these days — what, if any, teacher training for cultural sensitivity is happening?

Anyway — if you are at a parent or teacher or student concerned about what’s happening at Success, reach out. My DMs are open. My email is in my bio.