A woman at an Upper West Side school board meeting was caught on a hot mic making racist remarks about Black students, seemingly calling a child fighting to save her school “too dumb” to realize it was a “bad school.”
The student, whose middle school has been losing enrollment and is at risk of closure, was asking Community Education Council 3 to intervene in early plans to phase out her program and two others over the next few school years.
“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” the woman, identified as Allyson Friedman, a parent at The Center School, a separate program impacted by the same plan, said online at the Feb. 10 meeting.
“Apparently Martin Luther King said it: If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore,” she added, falsely attributing the quote to the civil rights activist.
The incident and Friedman’s identity were first reported by the hyperlocal news outlet I Love the Upper West Side. In a statement to another local blog, West Side Rag, Friedman, an associate professor at CUNY’s Hunter College, said her remarks were not directed at the student speaker but an attempt at explaining systemic racism caught on an “inadvertent unmute.”
“Regardless of context, my words were wrong and caused real harm,” Friedman said. “I take full responsibility for their impact, and I am deeply sorry to the students, families, educators, and community members who were hurt.”
Hunter College in a statement to the Daily News said it was aware of the incident and investigating.
“Even as these remarks were made in the individual’s role as a private citizen and we understand that the district is conducting an investigation into the matter, Hunter College is reviewing the situation under the university’s applicable conduct and nondiscrimination policies,” school officials wrote.
The student, who attended the meeting in person at Joan of Arc on W. 93rd St., seemingly could not hear the remarks and continued advocating for her school.
Meanwhile, remote participants’ jaws dropped and faces looked horrified at what they had just heard. Another adult interjected online: “Allyson Friedman, what you’re saying is absolutely hearable here. You’ve got to stop.”
In the days that followed, members of the Center School distanced themselves from Friedman.
“We want to be absolutely clear: this parent’s statement does not represent the values of the Center School community,” the Center School PTA wrote in a statement posted to their website. “Yet their words remind us that racism is not distant — it exists in our broader community, and it is our collective responsibility to confront it.”
A recording of the meeting was posted online more than a week later, setting off a firestorm of condemnation.
In a statement, Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, who served as superintendent of District 3 before his recent promotion and helped set the plan in motion, said on Friday that his replacement and family engagement staffers are responding to the incident.
“New York City Public Schools does not tolerate racism or discrimination of any kind, period,” Samuels said. “Citywide and Community Education Councils are independent bodies, and their meetings are expected to be respectful spaces for students, families, and staff. What happened at the meeting was a complete violation of those expectations, and we are providing support to the district to repair the harm done.”
New York City Councilwoman Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn), the former chair of the education committee, called the remarks racist, harmful, and disturbing.
“As a lifelong educator, a Council Member, and a Black woman, I know that this incident is not isolated,” she said in a statement. “It sheds light on a deeper and enduring issue within our New York City public school system: systemic racism that continues to show up in policies, practices, and as we saw in rhetoric.”
“Our children are watching,” she added. “They are listening and they deserve better.”
