…let’s make note of what happened last week at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens (just a few blocks from where our family moved after I graduated high school, and where I lived until my wife and I were married).
I can write about this very passionately. But why do so when it would essentially replicate what is in Bob McManus’s article for the New York Post?
Here are several key excerpts:
Some young scholars at Hillcrest High School in Queens last Monday learned that one of their teachers had attended a pro-Israel rally shortly after the Oct. 7 atrocities – and, by God, they were having none of that.
A mini-mob surged through school corridors; the teacher was locked into an office for her own safety; cops cleared the building after two long hours – and presently highlights were all over TikTok.
Because, you know, that’s how a lot of folks relate to Hamas’ acts of genocidal savagery these days – they hector Jews and make celebratory videos.
Mayor Adams finally caught up with events Saturday; predictably, he was, ahem, shocked.
“The vile show of antisemitism at Hillcrest High School was motivated by ignorance-fueled hatred, plain and simple, and it will not be tolerated.”
The thing is, it was tolerated, for almost a week, until this newspaper blew the whistle and City Hall spooled up its outrage generator.
Three Hillcrest scholars face “superintendent’s suspensions,” but because of supposed privacy claims, we’ll never know who was punished and how. The consequences lack the moral authority an immediate announcement and crackdown would have.
As we’ve seen in universities, the administrators are afraid of offending their own students.
“We are better than this,” Adams huffed, but who is teaching them to be?
Reading scores at Hillcrest are pretty dismal – 27 percent at or above grade-level – so it would be generous to suggest that last week’s rioters were up on their Mideast history. To say nothing of the Holocaust.
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
Don’t you just love those impassioned words from Mayor Adams? Is his idea of “it will not be tolerated” actually the suspensions – anonymous, of course – of three students (assuming this even takes place? The “students” – a term that is hard to justify, given the abysmal 27% reading proficiency at that school – have apparently been immortalized on social media.
Those media images and videos are as available to the school as they are to the students who are happy to put them up for everyone to see. So why aren’t more “students” held to account for terrorizing/physically threatening a teacher – actions that, in a more realistic world would put some of them in front of a judge?
Since over 96% of Hillcrest High School students are non-White minorities – about 30% Black, about 35% Latino and 31% Asian – let’s reverse things and imagine what would happen.
What if, say, a Black teacher who, say, attended a Black Lives Matter rally, were chased through the school by a bunch of non-Black students and had to lock herself in an office out of fear that she would be physically attacked.
Do you think that would result in nothing more than a few anonymous suspensions and a huff-and-puff template statement by the Mayor? Do you think that would be the end of it?
But this of course, was not a Black teacher attending a BLM rally (don’t even start me on what I think of BLM). This was a Jewish teacher supporting Israel after a terrorist group, dedicated writing to annihilation of Israel and death to all Jews, invaded Israel and slaughtered 1,200 – 1,400 civilians.
So, as is evident by the official reaction so far, there’s almost nothing that should be done about it.
Sort of makes you wonder what the EFF they’re teaching students in that high school (and others as well), doesn’t it?
Oh, one other thing. According to the 2021-2022 NY Department of Education data, the graduation rate at Hillcrest High School is 86%. Only one-quarter of the school can read at or above grade level, but 86% graduated.
All this on a per-pupil expenditure of $44,806 (that is NOT a typo).
How proud New York City and it’s magnificent teacher’s union must be.
