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Parents protest loss of School District 29 principals

By Ayala Ben-Yehuda

The skies may have been sunny Saturday, but the mood was anything but cheerful outside the Rosedale offices of Community School District 29 as dozens of parents gathered to protest the loss of three principals just two weeks before the new school year.

District 29, which covered Rosedale, Laurelton, Springfield Gardens, Cambria Heights and part of Fresh Meadows, has been absorbed into Region 3, which covers central and eastern Queens, under the new reorganization of the city school system.

On the restructuring, parents in District 29 “are willing to give it a chance,” said Kangela Moore, co-president of the district's Presidents' Council of parent-teacher associations. “But they have to include us in the decisions being made.”

Moore said parents found out through the grapevine that three principals – Dr. Antonio K'tori of the new PS/IS 208 in Glen Oaks, Shango Blake of IS 109 in Queens Village and Nichele Andrews of PS 268 in Jamaica – were removed from their positions.

“It's disrespectful to the community,” said Moore. “We should be informed of all these decisions made in regards to the principals of our schools.”

Efforts to confirm the principals' removal with the Department of Education were unsuccessful as of press time Tuesday.

Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott told a town hall meeting at York College in Jamaica Monday night that K'tori had been transferred to another school in the district. The fate of the other two principals was unclear.

Moore said repeated attempts to find out more information about the removals through the Region 3 learning support centers had been futile.

Locksley Greaves of Laurelton, whose daughter will be attending the new District 29 school on the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center campus in Glen Oaks, said he found out about K'tori's removal two nights earlier from School Board 29 President Nathaniel Washington, who had just found out himself.

“How can you change a principal with only two weeks to go before school opens?” wondered Greaves. “It's a recipe for disaster.”

Moore and Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) were more sure that K'tori had been removed than the other two principals, although the councilman said he was trying to verify exactly what had happened.

Comrie said it was possible that K'tori, who he said had been in a serious car accident two years ago, had been removed for health reasons. He said Blake may have been moved to interim acting principal until a new permanent replacement was found at IS 109.

Maris Bailey, the other co-president with Moore of District 29's Presidents' Council, said Monday that K'tori had been made principal of PS 268.

School Board 29 member Christopher Afuwah was disturbed at the lack of clarity on the issue.

“We don't feel like we've gotten the answers to most of our questions,” said Afuwah. “Parents are frustrated … we don't know where to turn.”

Comrie held a town hall meeting Monday with other southeast Queens politicians, parents and education officials to discuss the restructuring.

Parents at Saturday's protest spoke highly of K'tori, former principal at IS 59 in Springfield Gardens.

“Dr. K'tori is the type of person that always strives for excellence out of all kids,” said Dwayne Moore, whose children graduated from IS 59 when K'tori was principal there.

Moore and Sandra Dastagirzada, whose children will be entering PS/IS 208 on the Glen Oaks Campus, said K'tori had mailed out math and science preparation materials to new students over the summer.

“This principal gave us a sense that you were going to get somewhere here,” said Dastagirzada, former PTA president at PS 138 in Rosedale.

A compromise allowed Districts 26 and 29 to each have a new school on the Glen Oaks Campus.

Dastagirzada said she believed K'tori had been removed from PS/IS 208 because people in District 26 did not want a black principal to share the campus with them. District 26 in northeast Queens is the city's best performing school district.

“They don't even want our kids there either,” she said.

Reach reporter Ayala Ben-Yehuda by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 146.