34 The Great Neck News, Friday, July 9, 2021
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Sassouni named new ed board prez Continued from Page 1 souni said. “To that end, although I am honored to hold this gavel … I hope never to use it.”
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HEN YOU THINK ABOUT SOME OF THE
CHALLENGES THAT OTHER SCHOOL DISTRICTS FACED, I FEEL QUITE CONFIDENT IN STATING THAT THERE WAS NO ACADEMIC LEARNING LOSSES FOR OUR STUDENTS.
Teresa Prendergast DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT
Berkowitz, who had been president since 2006, will continue to serve as a trustee. “I will certainly do my part, just not as president in the coming year,” she said. “It’s time for a change for the board, and I realize for myself.” District Superintendent Teresa Pren-
PHOTO BY SAM PETRUCCELLI
Rebecca Sassouni was named president of the Great Neck Board of Education last week.
dergast also attended the meeting. She offered thanks to the schools’ faculty and staff and gave an assessment of student learning progress during a year spent adjusting to life with coronavirus. “When you think about some of the challenges that other school districts faced, I feel quite confident in stating that there was no academic learning losses for our students,” Prendergast said. “Social and emotional components were also available to meet their needs as well as the needs of their family.” Trustees changed more than their seats on the board. The district’s policy on bullying and harassment also got an adjustment, courtesy of an act signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2019 that clarifies discrimination based on race including hairstyles or other associated traits. The amendment outlines characteristics that bullying or harassment may be based on, such as hair texture, protective hairstyles and sexual orientation. It was adopted unanimously.
EWSD defends handling of grad speech Continued from Page 2 said. “The Board of Education categorically rejects any reports of insinuating our district’s educational environment is anything but safe, inclusive and welcoming of all races and ethnicities. We will not allow others to attempt to redefine who we are as a school district and community.” Kamberg called Ayaz’s speech and the events following it unfortunate, and they placed the community in an international spotlight. He gave a timeline of the events before and after the ceremony. “Speak for those who don’t have a voice, and stand up for any injustice that you see,” Ayaz said in her speech at the school’s graduation. “Educate yourself about international dilemmas, including the ethnic cleansings of Palestinians and Uighur Muslims. Families are continuously torn apart, and real human lives are being lost but ignored.” Kamberg told the public that Wheatley School Principal Sean Feeney had a conversation with Ayaz and her family later that evening and did not hear any word that she was harassed by students or staff. But in a letter to the Wheatley community following commencement, Ayaz said that at least two men confronted her and said her speech was “bullshit” and “a piece of crap.” This is in addition to the allegation made by CAIR-NY of an adult
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shouting “go back to Pakistan.” Ayaz and her family are Muslim and of Pakistani descent. Kamberg shed little light on specifics
As a Jew and as someone who
supports Israel, I was offended. I’m all for supporting free speech, but to me, I interpreted it as I saw it, that was hate speech.
Michael Stanger A RABBI AT THE OLD WESTBURY HEBREW CONGREGATION
of the encounter but confirmed there was an interaction between Ayaz and adults. “According to reports, one of the two men made inappropriate statements to Huda Ayaz and her family about the speech,” Kamberg said. “As the audience began to disperse, another parent attempted to confront Huda Ayaz and her family as they spoke with Dr. Feeney. Dr. Feeney redirected that parent away from them and an officer and administrators walked with Huda and her family to their car.” During open time Maliha Ayaz, Huda’s youngest sister, expressed concerns for the safety of herself and other members of minorities in the school who choose to speak up.
“You must condemn what happened to my sister and my family,” Maliha Ayaz said. “And you must take steps to provide accountability and a safe environment for me and students like me.” Maliha Ayaz pointed to differences in the school’s private response versus what was emailed to the community in the following days. “It completely threw my sister under the bus,” Maliha Ayaz said about the administrator’s emails. “Especially when a school official was apologetic to us in person at the graduation but flipped the script in a public address.” Feeney accepted fault and admitted to not reading the speech carefully enough in private after the graduation, according to Mohamed. In a statement on June 24, Feeney acknowledged that the revised version of the speech was sent to the school, but said he was not made aware an updated version had been submitted. Mohamed also spoke to trustees, urging more direct support for Ayaz than in their statement considering the alleged comments by attendees. “A student that you the school district had an obligation to protect from harassment, from bullying, from intimidation of a minor,” Mohamed said. “You have all the evidence as you stated earlier in your statement in a security video footage. And unfortunately, you failed. The school district failed Huda, failed stu-
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dents in this scenario.” “As far as I understand this school district stands against hate,” Mohamed said. “If anyone had said that about another group of individuals, you all would have condemned it. Where is the condemnation of the parents’ actions?” Michael Stanger, a rabbi at the Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation who said he was not speaking on behalf of the congregation, said he felt sorry for Ayaz, and the comment to “go back to Pakistan” should never have been made. He also said he not to condone harassment of anybody, especially a 17-year-old. “As a Jew and as someone who supports Israel, I was offended,” Stanger said. “I’m all for supporting free speech, but to me, I interpreted it as I saw it, that was hate speech.” “For a lot of us it was controversial … because it delegitimizes Israel,” Stanger said. Andrea Bolender, chairperson of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center, told trustees that she was not there to offer an opinion, but a solution. The Holocaust center offers a curriculum that can deal with these issues, Bolender said. “This is what we do and we are willing to do it for this district,” she said. “The only vaccination for ignorance is education.”
