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Jamaica High play blasts DOE

Jamaica High play blasts DOE
By Anna Gustafson

When Jamaica High School sophomore Nneoma Okorie last week entered the stage as a modern-day Antigone — the heroine who stands up to the former city schools chancellor — hundreds of students raised their hands and cheered for a play that became a rallying cry to save the school the city Department of Education has vowed to close.

“What if we get all the students together, including the students from the new schools that are supposed to be like our competitors, ’cause it shouldn’t be that way, and all of us together march from the school to the chancellor’s office to say no to closing Jamaica High School?” said Okorie, a sophomore from Jamaica who played the main character. Her line brought roars of approval from an energetic crowd that repeatedly booed former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and the play’s authority figures.

Principals at Jamaica High and Queens Collegiate High School, which shares the same building at 167-01 Gothic Drive, had initially told students who wrote the play they would not be allowed to put on the controversial piece, titled “Declassified, Struggle for Existence: We Used to Eat Lunch Together.” The adaptation of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy “Antigone” depicts Klein as King Creon and lambasts the city for trying to close the school.

In the Greek classic, Antigone, who is estimated to be about 15 years old, stands up to King Creon, who has decreed that of her two brothers who died, one will receive proper burial rights while the other will be left “out for the birds to feed on.”

Students also had harsh words for city officials, who they said have created a divisive, unequal atmosphere within Jamaica High by giving more resources to the smaller schools sharing the space and cutting funding to the high school itself.

A spokeswoman for the DOE said it had no comment on the play’s content and said the DOE had nothing to do with the principals’ original decision to stop the production.

The DOE proposed last month that Jamaica HS be “phased out,” or closed within several years, because officials have said the school’s graduation rate is too low.

After the students protested the move to end the play, the principals ultimately conceded and agreed to let the production go on — which it did, to the thunderous approval of hundreds of students, who said they more than ever understood the plight of Sophocles’ Antigone.

“It was originally to be a modest, end-of-the-class presentation, but it became this big rallying cry,” said Brian Pickett, the play’s director, who taught the Queensborough Community College theater class that the students from Jamaica High and Queens Collegiate took for college credit. “This whole situation is ‘Antigone’ being played out. We had a real-life Creon in the form of the chancellor.”

Okorie and many of the students in the play and the audience said they hoped this play would send a message to the DOE: Jamaica High students will not let their school go quietly into the night.

“It’s not our principal’s fault, it’s not the students’ fault that Jamaica High School is closing,” Okorie said. “They haven’t given us what we need.”

This idea, that the city DOE had let Jamaica High fail because it did not give it enough funding over the years, was repeated over and over by students who attended the play, including this year’s valedictorian, Afsan Quayyum, and salutatorian, Doreen Mohammed.

“Our book for calculus is from 1981, and there are more than 35 students in our Advanced Placement English class,” Quayyum said.

Mohammed said she has led the student fight against Jamaica closing and noted that even if the DOE is focused on closing the school no matter what, officials should still ensure students still at Jamaica receive fair treatment.

“We didn’t even have a college adviser in the beginning of the year,” Mohammed said.

Ultimately, Pickett said, the students’ play is about coming together for a common cause. While individuals at Jamaica High said it was hurtful to see students at Queens Collegiate receiving educational goodies they never had, such as laptops, they said it was important to recognize that it was not the students they were against, but the decision-makers.

“The play’s about the attempt to close Jamaica High School, but it’s more broadly about students coming together,” Pickett said. “Antigone’s daring to stand up to the powers that be and that kind of daring is at the root of any meaningful push to make society a better place.”

Reach reporter Anna Gustafson by e-mail at agustafson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.