Submitted by Betsy Combier, Nov 23, 2007 17:10

Ronald -

I am very, very happy for your daughter and your daughter's friends. However, the success of the few is exactly what the NYC BOE wants the public to believe, in order to cover up what is really going on at Stuyvesant High School. As you know, Danny Jaye, the single "best" teacher of rigorous mathematics and the person who advocated for funding the math team at Stuyvesant High School and at other schools in NYC, left suddenly two years ago. At exactly the same moment, award-winning Physics and Chemistry AP Dr. Olga Livanis left as well. Substitutes were put into their classes until March. Most of the teachers at Stuyvesant dislike the Principal, and this leads to many parents hearing about the troubles at Stuyvesant from these teachers, who, for fear of retaliation, have asked me to refrain from revealing their names.

Two years ago Stanley Teitel, the Principal, and the Stuyvesant Parents' Association, with the "help" of a former PA President whose child was no longer in the school, threw a chinese parent out of a PA meeting. Two security guards escorted her out of the building. What was this parent doing? Nothing at all, except trying to have a meeting of Brooklyn parents who cannot always make the meetings at 345 Chambers Street, and the chinese parents were confused by the college application process, so the College Advisor agreed to speak to the parents in Brooklyn.

Perhaps you have no idea whatsoever about what happens to a young person who gets into Stuyvesant and happens to have any learing or behavioral issues... they are charged with false misconduct and driven out of the school, or expelled with a code 39, without, of course, parental knowledge or consent.

Why not research why only 2-3% of te Stuyvesant students are African-American?

And, please tell me where the "missing" cash - $300,000+ - revenue is, and why Stan Teitel was told by Mike Best and Joel Klein never to show the financial records of the Stuyvesant PA 501 C 3? I saw some of the records, and there is a whopper of a story here. The money, it seems to me after viewing receipts, is not allocated to the kids, and IRS procedures are not being followed. Even the auditors told me on June 19, 2007, that they could not do an audit for the past two years because, they told me, "there is too much cash revenue missing." That is a direct quote.

Again, kudos to your daughter, but the kids at Stuyvesant will get into a college despite all of the above, simply because of the continued (for a short time) prestige of getting into Stuyvesant. This does not mean that this school is any good.

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