Truly Unbelievable

I posted last week about a brave and well-spoken local high school student, Ilana Yurkiewicz, who wrote an amazing op-ed in last week's Nassau Herald regarding her experience teachers who tolerated the expression of anti-Semitic and anti-Orthodox sentiment from their students.

Well.

This week, the outgoing president of the Lawrence Teachers Association, Stephen Clements, decided to print a letter to the editor as a rebuttal. I didn't expect much from Mr. Clements. After his organizing of teacher protests outside a local Orthodox board member's office, accusing him of not looking out for the needs of non-Orthodox district students, as well as organizing the picketing of a local Yeshiva over teachers' contracts, I already knew he was not someone actively looking out for the resolution of this community's truly unfortunate divide. But this letter really sinks him to a new low.

Read it and weep:

To the editor:

Ilana Yurkiewicz is one of the finest students who has ever walked the halls of Lawrence High School. We are proud of her accomplishments and find joy in her success. however, even the best students sometimes make mistakes, and her "Lawrence Lately" column in your June 1-7 issue is one of those times. She makes generalizations about her fellow students'attitudes that are unfair. By implying that anti-Semitism is widespread at Lawrence High School, she disregards the spirit of tolerance that prevails among the overwhelming majority of our teenagers.

In the wake of the onset of a fourth year of austerity, it has been reported to me that there have been a number of incidents of students' making inappropriate remarks that could be construed as anti-Semitic. In every case, teachers reported that they used the remark as a "teachable moment" to advance tolerance. I know that the very day the Herald hit newsstands, I experiences such an incident in my classroom. It was dealt with swiftly and forcefully.

That being said, students are reacting to budget defeats that reveal a highly polarized electorate, with a clear bloc of voters supportive of district budgets, and a clear bloc voting against them. Students are reacting to the reality created by those voting patterns. Clearly there is a split in this community. Students see buildings deteriorating, programs being cut and resources becoming scarce. They read local newspapers and understand the divisions in the community.

We, as adults and teachers, do not believe anger and hatred are healthy student reactions. But we wonder: Did those who organized no votes on district budgets really think there would be no consequences of their anti-budget actions and strategies?

If these are people of good will who want to end this destructive pattern, count us in as partners in this effort. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away.
Stephen Clements
President, Lawrence Teachers Association

So let me get this straight. To recap his talking points:

1. Ilana Yurkiewicz: Smart and accomplished girl, who we are proud of. However, we have one little minor niggling problem with her. She is clearly either a liar or has hearing and vision problems. She says that teachers didn't step in when they overheard students making anti-Semitic remarks. Well, being as Mr. Clements says he knows personally of some teachers who took students to task on such comments, it apparently directly follows that Ms. Yurkiewicz is incorrect in her allegations that she personally saw teachers failing to act on such behavior. Because that's the kind of unassailable logic we would hope to expect from one of our oh-so-highly paid teachers, not to mention the audacity of a teacher stating flatly and publicly that one of his best students "got it wrong".
2. Even if it may be true, can you blame us? You guys voted down our budget, making us subsist on the "meager" per/student cost that are the highest in the county ( and double the state average). Don't you know, anti-Semites don't cause anti-Semitism, Jews do! (Whoops, that doesn't look quite right...is that not how the saying goes?)

Shouldn't we be able to rely on our childrens' teachers to bridge these divides instead of affirming them? Obviously, as Mr. Clements is leaving his post at the end of the year, he feels that his "lame duck" status takes away any constraints he might have felt in the past when it comes to speaking his mind. And what's on his mind seems to be quite reprehensible.