Brooklyn principal leaves center college just after instructor grievances mount

An embattled Brooklyn center faculty principal is leaving his publish adhering to months of tensions with academics. 

M.S. 51’s Neal Singh will be changed on Feb. 1 by Pui-Lam (Jack) Chan, who will provide as performing interim principal as the university embarks on the formal choosing system, in accordance to a letter District 15 Superintendent Rafael Alvarez sent on Thursday to dad and mom. Singh will be signing up for the superintendent’s workforce. 

Singh took more than Park Slope’s M.S. 51 in August 2020, following the former principal of 14 decades abruptly retired just before an primarily challenging new university 12 months. His very first task: To figure out all of the sophisticated COVID-related city advice all over reopening the campus, although also running distant pupils and staff. At the exact same time, the school was understanding to adapt to educating a college student system with a wider range of educational wants adhering to a main admissions alter throughout District 15 in 2019. 

M.S. 51, like other colleges across the metropolis, also has been grappling with higher needs in typical, both academically and socially, since of the pandemic-connected isolation and college disruptions. 

Singh’s leadership style clashed with numerous of the teachers, as Chalkbeat formerly documented.

By March 2021, a team of annoyed educators experienced compiled their problems in a 3-page document, charging Singh with “gross mismanagement of our school” and describing comprehensive concerns about basic safety, lack of communication, “capricious and arbitrary choice-earning,” and interference with union functions, according to a copy of the doc attained by Chalkbeat. Two-thirds solid their ballots in favor of the no-assurance vote in the principal. 

A couple of months later on, the United Federation of Academics submitted a grievance on behalf of 41 staffers alleging a sample of harassment and intimidation of union users. It was the largest so-named union animus grievance in UFT record, union officials stated. Numerous lecturers have due to the fact still left their positions at the school, various educators explained to Chalkbeat. 

Singh did not respond to requests for comment. 

“We thank Mr. Singh for his unwavering devotion and assistance to the university and group, and we want him the greatest in his new placement supporting schools across the entire district,” Alvarez wrote in his letter to dad and mom. 

According to City Council member Shahana Shanif, Singh (who is Indo-Caribbean) stepped down right after a “coordinated marketing campaign of racist harassment,” a assertion she posted on Twitter claimed. 

“As a person of the number of principals of shade in District 15, Principal Singh broke so lots of barriers in our community and was a very pleased chief in the battle to desegregate our racially divided university procedure,” she wrote.

Singh had been an assistant principal at Brooklyn Substantial Faculty of the Arts, and right before that a math trainer at LaGuardia Superior School, exactly where in 2012 he gained a prestigious Sloan Award for excellence in training. 

District 15’s center university range system, heralded as a product by many integration advocates, has transformed the demographics at many educational facilities, together with M.S. 51, a sought-following choice regarded as one particular of the district’s “big three” center educational facilities with a competitive software method prior to the district moved to an all-lottery technique. Final yr, extra than fifty percent of M.S. 51’s college students arrived from low-earnings family members, up from virtually a third the yr in advance of the admissions improve, according to public info. 

Chan has much more than 20 years of knowledge at New Utrecht Substantial College, in Brooklyn’s District 21, exactly where he has been an assistant principal due to the fact 2009, according to the letter from Alvarez. Even though there, Chan oversaw social-emotional understanding and grownup education plans, and as president of the Social Reports Supervisors Association has comprehensive connections with New York City’s community companies.

“Mr. Chan is also a educated coach,” Alvarez wrote, “and he has leveraged his abilities as an empathic listener to intentionally create trusting and supportive interactions in the college ecosystem.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Get hold of Amy at [email protected].