Imagine you are a teacher at a local public school in Brooklyn, New York. You’ve missed your students all year, had to navigate online learning and watch some of your co-workers #livingtheirbestlives, who simply just did not want to return to the classroom. Then, you get a note from your Principal.

Wait a second…is it a note or a directive? This Brooklyn Principal doesn’t indicate whether or not it is one or the other. A Brooklyn middle school principal by the name of Amanda Bueno urged teachers and administrators to demand government sanctions against Israel this week in a letter imploring them to take action.

If you have been watching the news in absolute horror, you are not alone.

You can take action today by protesting, attending a vigil, making a public commitment to Palestinian Liberation, signing a petition, or calling your government officials to place sanctions on Isreal (sic).”-Amanda Bueno

Here’s your first clue here-this Principal, this Administrator, does not even know how to spell Israel! This is who is at the top of the helm at a school? Giving this principal the benefit of a doubt, perhaps she does not use spell-check. Again, this is who is at the top of the helm.

Principal Bueno offers up a list of popular movements her teachers can support to include Black Lives Matter, #GazaUnderAttack, #StopAAPHate, you get the drift. “Empathy is the bare minimum”, she says. Principal Bueno, stellar administrator that she is, also provided a list of suggested reading to her staff to include known anti-Semite, Rashida Tlaib‘s claim that “American taxpayer money is being used to commit human rights violations in Israel. She spelled Israel correctly, this time. Copy-and-paste is a wonderful tool.

American taxpayer money, huh? What say you, Principal Bueno, of the American public education system as of the past year? Isn’t education a human right? Do we think our public school students in this country got the education they deserved this past year? Really, let’s make an honest assessment here. Let’s talk about the marginalized population of color because we already know white kids and kids who are Jewish don’t rate at Principal Bueno’s school. Were their teachers available to help them get caught up on work and get that work turned in or did Principal Bueno require or “strongly urge” them all to take the time out of office hours to do a “mandatory” (pro-dev) training on Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility or perhaps an equally as obnoxious time suck? Now, instead of reaching out to their students who may be on the verge of failing their classes, Principal Bueno is encouraging her teachers to attend a protest after-hours. Because empathy is the bare minimum.

Let’s add another layer onto this. Imagine you are a teacher at Principal Bueno’s school and you are Jewish. After all, this is BROOKLYN, where one out of every four residents is of Jewish descent. Principal Bueno is not very smart, is she?

I opened the email and I was in shock. I felt very targeted and very attacked by her words. These resources she provided, it’s propaganda. There was nothing in the email about Hamas rockets targeting innocent Israeli civilians.”-Teacher at MS 136

Of course, there wasn’t. More layers.

(Educators) are intimidated and afraid to speak out to counter such messages in fear of losing their jobs.”-Inna Vernikov

Vernikov, a lawyer who is running to succeed ex-City Councilman Chaim Deutsch (D-Brooklyn), sent a letter to DOE calling for Bueno to be reprimanded.

While there is no word yet of Principal Bueno being reprimanded for her actions, this raises a great question regarding our school administrators that perhaps should be brought up at school board meetings nationwide. What is their role? How much are they making off of American taxpayers? How is their leadership affecting the climate at their particular school and their students’ learning?

Throughout my son’s school years, I have seen very caring, interactive principals and administrators. I have also seen very hands-off administrators, more interested in riding it out until retirement and/or playing the political game. And while schools and classrooms are peppered with posters encouraging kindness, to “be a buddy, not a bully”, one cannot ignore the passive-aggressive bullying that seeps out through the administration doors. I personally know Conservative educators who are tight-lipped about their political stances because their opinions are not the popular ones. What would happen if a teacher or parent were to call out the wall of “White Fragility” book reviews at a high school to the principal as propaganda? What would happen if a teacher or parent called out the principal for the obvious placement of their “In this house, we believe”, virtue-signaling BS posted on their office window? (Of course, science is real, jackasses. You WORK IN EDUCATION!) What if teachers and parents called out administrators on their social media pages for inflammatory remarks and for pushing obvious political agendas? My guess is a fair amount of these teachers and parents are afraid to do so.

Principal Bueno’s note to her teachers is just another passive-aggressive bullying stance that school administrators seemingly get away with because they are on the perceived “correct” side of the discussion. My guess is some brown-nosing, wanna-be admin-educator will take Bueno’s e-mail to heart and will encourage her students to do the same. And there we have it, indoctrination at its finest in our public school system. The fish rots from the head down and it’s (no) Bueno.

Photo Credit: Juliette Cezzar/FlickR/CC BY-SA 2.0/Cropped