Humans Of New York Subject Slams Park Slope School

Image via Facebook.com/HumansofNewYork

Remember when Humans of New York was just a nice compilation of photographs of New Yorkers and the often sweet/poignant/shocking stories behind them? For the second time in a week, HONY creator Brandon Stanton has stumbled upon a subject who decided to use the moment as an opportunity to draw attention to a cause. Last week it was the chicken-eating guy protesting the plans of the New York Public Library's main branch to tear down the research stacks. This week, it's a PTA mom from the Secondary School of Journalism in Park Slope who is fighting mad about how budge cuts are affecting the student population there:

Let me tell you what's happening to me. I'm on the PTA at my child's school, the Secondary School of Journalism in Park Slope. I'm currently advocating on behalf of my child, and seventeen other children whose parents don't speak English. These kids are from Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, everywhere. These kids have all done very well on their Regent's exams-- I'm talking 90/95th percentile. Very smart kids. They were on their way toward qualifying for an Advanced Regents government scholarship,that would give their parents badly needed money to help in their education. But the fine print of that scholarship says the children need three full years of a foreign language. 

And the principal at the school FIRED the Spanish teacher. She is not hiring another foreign language teacher for an entire year, effectively disqualifying all these kids from that scholarship they need. When we try to talk with her about it, she acts like she doesn't owe us an explanation. When we try to call the Board of Education, they tell us to put it in writing. They get us all excited. They have us think if we write a nice letter, and use good grammar, and use all the correct punctuation, something will happen. Meanwhile another year passes, and nothing. And the kids don't get their scholarship. You know something like this would never happen at a nice Manhattan school like Stuyvesant.

Dayum! The post has over 146,000 likes on FB, and nearly 5500 comments, which seems higher than any other recent posts (besides chicken-eating library dude). It will be interesting to see if this publicity helps these kids out.