The flag in the public high school has been there for months, “intimidating” students and staff, said union head Moshe Spern.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The United Jewish Teachers (UJT) union is furious that a Brooklyn public high school is refusing its call to remove a full-sized Palestinian flag from its hallway, The New York Post reported Saturday.
“It’s a blatant political statement, and it has no place in a public school,” union head Moshe Spern told the New York daily. “For five months, this flag has been a constant, political presence in this school’s hallways, and it’s impossible to ignore the message it’s sending to the school’s staff and children.”
The banner has been hanging in Leaders High School in Brooklyn since at least April.
Spern said he at first thought it might be part of an innocuous cultural display, but when it was not removed by the end of the school year, he wrote the principal, Thomas Mullen, quoting the Department of Education (DOE) policy against political displays on school property.
When Mullen did not respond, he wrote again, saying that Jewish staff, parents and students were “very concerned” about its presence.
“The flag is clearly a political statement, and you’re making Jewish stakeholders really uncomfortable,” he wrote, to no avail.
Spern also contacted “district leadership” on the matter, he said, but was similarly ignored.
“That’s simply unacceptable,” he said. “They had every chance to correct this before students even walked through the door for the new school year, but they left it up. How can we trust that similar violations in other schools are not going unchecked?”
Since the lower echelons were not responding in a positive manner to his concerns, Spern also called for the United Federation of Teachers and the DOE to intervene.
“Every stakeholder has the right to attend a school without feeling intimidated or scared,” he said.
On Saturday, DOE spokeswoman Nicole Brownstein said the Palestinian flag was one of 20 that represented nationalities of students attending the school, and included photos of seven other flags hanging in Leaders hallways.
“Every student and staff member who wishes to have their nationality represented as part of this collection of flags will have their request honored,” she said.
She did not respond when asked if Israel’s flag was among those displayed.
Spern did not accept the clarification.
“Although flags were sporadically displayed around the school building, the singular placement of this flag was perceived as intimidating by Jewish teachers and students,” he said.
New York City, and particularly Brooklyn, with its large, visibly Jewish, Orthodox population, has suffered an astronomic rise in antisemitism since Hamas sparked war with Israel by its October 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 men, women and children.
Large, anti-Israel demonstrations in which the Palestinian flag figures prominently have taken place all over the city, with some descending into violence.
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