“LET THEM EAT RHETORIC!” Blocking Hakeem Jeffries: The Political Consequences Cannot Be Ignored

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“LET THEM EAT RHETORIC!”

Blocking Hakeem Jeffries: The Political Consequences Cannot Be Ignored

“The belly that is full does not understand the pain of an empty stomach.”

As a principal, I have asked hundreds of now-sorrowful students sitting in my office the same question:

“Before you decided to do X, did you consider the many different possible outcomes that could result from your decision?”

Of course not. That is part of the adolescent psychological and developmental process. And it is our job as educators to help students grow their awareness of that powerful word “after”—as in:

“What can happen after I do X?”

And why we want to ask that question on the front end of a decision, so you don’t end up sad-looking, sitting in my office.

I am thinking back to those days as I read the large number of anti-Hakeem Jeffries social-media postings from individuals who may be able to claim bona fide revolutionary-left credentials but who, beyond memorizing and spouting a few memorable revolutionary phrases, have clearly not seriously studied the complex histories of revolutionary movements. And I am not talking about the fairy-tale, children’s-book versions of those histories. I am talking about the brutally real and honest stories of how revolutionary movements actually organized, operated, struggled, survived, succeeded, and sometimes failed.

There is another problem here, and it is a recurring one in American political history. It takes me back to my political elders and predecessors, who expressed their frustration with the leadership of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), particularly its inability to take seriously the unique, equally important, and inseparable racial and class dimensions of the American struggle for freedom and liberation.

Attempting to block the advancement of the first Black leader of a major political party in Congress to the speakership is not without potentially devastating consequences. Like an ill-timed split between two groups of political and community leaders who both claim to mean well for the people, this internal struggle—egged on by the GOP and irresponsible members of the news media who make their bread and butter from senseless, unproductive political fights—could have tremendously divisive consequences.

And that, I believe, is why some very wise, patient, and strategically disciplined progressives in Congress are not stepping forward to oppose or challenge Hakeem Jeffries for his leadership position.

Greater Suffering Raises Political Consciousness—No, It Does Not!

Having people suffer from food and housing insecurity, forcing them to endure severe illness, and even allowing them to die in the hope that their suffering will somehow advance a political objective is not a principled organizing strategy.
Thoughtful revolutionaries such as Amílcar Cabral and Liu Shaoqi understood that revolutionary struggle required serious attention to the actual conditions, needs, and well-being of the people.

Yet we still hear variations of this politically seductive proposition:

“The people’s suffering will heighten the contradictions, and they will therefore become more radicalized.”

In my 75 years, I have never found that proposition to be true.

Instead, when people are subjected to tremendous suffering and pain, they quite sensibly devote nearly all their thinking, emotional energy, and working time to trying to remove themselves and their children from those horrible, painful conditions.

And they certainly do not want to be misled by people who are gainfully employed, enjoying the fruits of a wonderful pension-funded retirement plan, eating well, living comfortably in warm homes, or benefiting from excellent health insurance coverage.

And yes, full disclosure: people like me, who have good health insurance and do not have to use a hospital emergency room as our primary healthcare institution, must be especially sensitive to the sacrifices we are asking others to make.

For those of us living in relative comfort, it is always easier to proclaim:

“Sure! Let’s create political upheaval in the process of choosing the Speaker of the House of Representatives! After all, whatever happens, it won’t affect the quality of my life or my comfortable standard of living!”

But what about the people for whom the consequences are not theoretical?

What about the people who have lost their Affordable Care Act healthcare assistance?

What about those who have lost access to federal food assistance?

What about the many people of color who are presently living in fear of being hunted down by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons?

What about the young people who may find themselves risking their lives in another senseless war?

And do you realize that there are Black and Latino farmers whose livelihoods are also being threatened by high diesel fuel prices?

What about the many women who cannot access even the most basic reproductive healthcare services?

What about the people who will actually suffer from the many GOP cuts to essential social safety-net programs—even those who, through their own votes, helped bring about the very policies now harming them?

What about the people who cannot afford to treat political upheaval as an exciting intellectual exercise?

Where Is the Compassion for the Struggles of Everyday People?

Or has their suffering simply become a convenient prop for the political word performances of politically immature adventurists?

When people are struggling to make ends meet, when they are forced to make terrible economic choices between paying for housing, heating, food, and medical care, those sexy political slogans do not improve their circumstances.

Consider what a newly elected governor of Georgia, genuinely committed to expanding Medicaid access, could accomplish. That would be real help for real people who desperately need that assistance—including those who voted for a different political outcome by supporting the newly elected governor’s opponent. As a professional educator, I am passionately opposed to all forms of ignorance. But ignorance is not a crime. And so, let all the people of Georgia benefit from the generous heart and public-service commitment that Keisha Lance Bottoms has advocated.

But this idea of using pain as a political teaching lesson is something Mr. Trump and his MAGA acolytes may have come to understand the hard way, through what they and we now perceive as catastrophic election losses—perhaps the only way they are capable of understanding it.

Because their approach—focusing on the wrong words rather than engaging in the right actions—has built-in limitations.

All the hate speech. The othering of people of color. The brutal anti-Muslim rhetoric. The obsessive political focus on transgender student-athletes, a population so small that only a tiny fraction of America’s school principals will ever encounter the issue directly. The video-game-like language celebrating wars of aggression. The disrespect directed toward people and nations of color. The attempt to characterize necessary criticism of a nation’s genocidal conduct as inherently antisemitic.

All of these divisive, hateful political performances may have considerable appeal when people believe that their most basic needs—food, shelter, safety, healthcare, and economic security—are being met.

But hate speech, like all speech, has limited power to put food on an empty table.

It cannot pay the rent.

It cannot fill a medical prescription.

It cannot keep the heat on in the middle of winter.

And it cannot relieve the suffering of a parent who must decide which of those necessities their children will have to go without.

The people’s inability to buy food, pay their rent or mortgage, or obtain medicine for themselves and their family members cannot be remedied with words—no matter how beautiful, soaring, or revolutionary the language—especially when those words ask them to suffer, sacrifice, or even die to make someone else’s political point.

This is going to be a long and difficult struggle.

For more than 50 years, I have told my fellow educators that our work is not a sprint. It is long-distance work, often requiring us to move forward in painfully frustrating, slow-progressing increments.

Our egos sometimes drive us to want to be the finishers of the changes the world so desperately needs.

But an unselfish understanding of history teaches us something different. We are here in this world for only a brief moment—a small dot on humanity’s historical timeline.

Our responsibility, then, is to faithfully run our portion of the relay race, doing everything within our power to leave better conditions for those who will pick up the work after we have transitioned into ancestorhood.

And as I learned during my years as a science educator, principal, and superintendent, there were times when I had to make extraordinarily difficult decisions about aligning and working with people whose political philosophies, personal values, or worldviews differed significantly from my own.

Why?

To save children.

To create the conditions in which they could survive, learn, grow, and thrive—emotionally, intellectually, socially, and educationally.

And I do not regret those decisions for one moment.

Nor, I should add, did the politically progressive parents who entrusted their children to my care complain when those decisions helped their children succeed.

Moving America toward a society that recognizes and honors the sacred personhood of every human being; ending a brutal, vulgar economic system that turns everything—and everyone—into a commodity to be bought and sold on the auction block of everyday life; and ensuring that every person has access to the basic necessities of human existence, not because they have earned the privilege of living, but simply because they were born into our human family:

That is our long-marching, persevering, world-changing work.

One remarkably consistent lesson emerged throughout my entire professional life in education. And I suspect that many of my fellow educators have heard some version of the same message.

I heard it from parents who had studied literature and could quote the great English writers, and from parents who spoke only a few words of English.

I heard it from incarcerated parents and from parents who worked as correction officers.

I heard it from parents who had read Frantz Fanon, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels, and from parents who could barely read at all.

Different educational backgrounds.

Different economic circumstances.

Different political philosophies.

Different life experiences.

Yet, in one form or another, they all asked me to do the same thing:

“Can you make my child’s life better than my life?

Can you provide my child with the intellectual power to take advantage of whatever opportunities life presents?

Can you help my child become the very best iteration of themselves?

Can you help them realize their greatest human potential?

Can you help them reach their aspirational dreams—and then actually live in those dreams?”

Not quite the politically sexy, world-changing revolutionary assignment I imagined I was preparing for as a twenty-something student at the City College of New York, studying under the tutelage of people such as Professor John Henrik Clarke and, ironically, given my central subject here, Professor Leonard Jeffries. Yes, life often moves in circles!

But over time, I came to appreciate the profoundly world-changing character of my work.

Because I am changing the world.

I am simply working in my own calling-lane.

Changing the world, one student—one human being—at a time.

That decision, that chosen pathway of action, may never make me famous or financially wealthy. But I have learned something important.

It is much easier to talk about changing the world than to do the difficult, disciplined, often exhausting work of meaningfully changing the lived world of even one human being.

And in today’s social media world, that kind of work will probably not earn you many “likes,” “shares,” or rounds of applause. After all, social media algorithms often seem structured to amplify negativity, outrage, and anti-somebody commentaries.

You can vigorously advocate blocking Mr. Jeffries from a leadership position, but what is your workable alternative? What is your leadership strategy for addressing the immediate needs of our country and its most vulnerable citizens?

What happens to the people while you are asking them to suffer and die waiting for your politically progressive Valhalla to arrive?

It is, in many ways, a safer and less demanding form of political engagement.
In fact, it is not an authentic experience of relationship-based service to others.
Because actually changing a human life requires more than the ability to construct a clever political slogan, deliver an emotionally exciting, mic-dropping speech, or post a revolutionary-sounding statement.

It requires showing up.

It requires patience.

It requires discipline.

It requires sacrifice.

It requires accepting responsibility for the consequences of your decisions.

And above all, it requires love.

I saw every one of the thousands of students whose lives intersected with mine as, in some profound way, a living personification of humanity’s evolutionary promise.

Every single one of them.

A Lot of YouTube Gurus Talk About the Popular Notion of “Self-Care.” But What About Community Care?

The question of “What is to be done?” is, at the same time, both simple and extraordinarily difficult.

Simple because the moral obligation is so straightforward:

Serve the people. Do not unnecessarily harm the people.

Difficult because fulfilling that affirming moral obligation requires discipline, humility, patience, and a determination not to inflict even greater pain on the very people we claim to serve.

If what you are doing is not grounded in a genuine love for the people, then perhaps what you are engaged in is little more than callous, self-indulgent, self-satisfying political performance.

A performance that can envision political heaven but cannot endure the long, hard, often unglamorous work required to get there.

Such political adventurists remind me of some of my fellow Christians who desire all the joy and glory of the resurrection without confronting the pain, suffering, and sacrifice of the crucifixion.

And as the gospel song reminds us, “That’s not how the story ends.”

Nor is that how the hard work of human liberation gets done.

To be absolutely clear, Mr. Jeffries and other political leaders must be vigorously challenged when they appear willing to look away from, excuse, or condone the suffering inflicted on the people of Gaza.

They must also be challenged for their silence, complicity, or participation in the many other acts of human degradation, dehumanization, and cruelty being perpetrated both within and beyond America’s borders.

And, to be quite honest, regardless of who is selected as Speaker of the House, I believe the jury is still out on whether House and Senate Democrats will effectively use their newly granted electoral mandate to advance the interests of the people—or whether they will simply revert to their familiar GOP-lite political behavior, seeking a return to so-called “regular working order” in Washington.

And what would that mean?

It could mean that the suffering poor, the disadvantaged, and the disenfranchised will once again find themselves without powerful, determined, and principled advocates in Washington who are genuinely committed to advancing their needs, defending their rights, and fighting for their interests.

Winning political power is one thing. Having the political courage, moral conviction, and principled determination to use that power on behalf of the people who need it most is quite another.

And those who hide behind the false political covering of “moderation”—or, as the news media likes to call it, “centrism”—must not be permitted to escape moral scrutiny. Because moderation in the face of human depersonalization and suffering can become little more than a cowardly way of saying:

“Keep doing those horrible things you are doing to those unfortunate people. Just make sure you pass me my check.”

Blocking Hakeem Jeffries: The Political Consequences Cannot Be Ignored

Blocking Hakeem Jeffries from attaining one of the most powerful political leadership positions in the world—a position for which he has demonstrated the intellectual capacity, professional experience, and political skills necessary to serve—could create tremendous confusion and resentment among large segments of the Black American population.

I am particularly concerned about the message such a political maneuver could send to young Black Americans, especially school-age students and the many students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) who marched to the polls to cast their votes against racism and bigotry.

Imagine their reaction:

“Wait a minute, grown folks! After we heeded your call, organized, showed up, and voted, you’re now telling us that you want to take down a Brother who is on the verge of attaining one of the most powerful political leadership positions in the country?”

That is a bad political plan, made even worse by its extraordinarily bad timing.

Whatever some of my left-progressive friends may have learned about Black people through their predominantly white institution (PWI) college-trained intellectual frameworks, they should understand this:

Black Americans generally want to see other Black Americans succeed.

And not simply because of some superficial attachment to racial identity, but because of our intimate, collective, historical familiarity with the deeply systemic and culturally entrenched racism that continues to infect the American national personality.

We understand the obstacles.

We understand the exclusions.

We understand the indignities.

We understand the invisibility.

And we understand what it means when a Black American successfully navigates those barriers and reaches a position of extraordinary national influence.
That does not mean we are obligated to support every Black public figure, regardless of their actions, political positions, or moral character.

Far from it.

That hopeful sense of collective expectation can change dramatically when members of the Black community judge public figures such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas or Nicki Minaj to have demonstrated, through their public positions and actions, a willingness to advance political agendas that specifically harm the very communities from which they emerged.

But here is the distinction I am making.

In my view, Mr. Jeffries, despite what I regard as his serious moral deficiencies concerning his compassionate concern for the people of Gaza and Palestinians more broadly, has not yet crossed the threshold of becoming an openly hostile political adversary of Black community aspirations. Nor have I concluded that he harbors any particular animus toward Muslims or the Palestinian people.

And that distinction matters.

It matters politically.

It matters historically.

And it matters strategically.

Those of us working toward a better world must continue to lean forward, walk forward, and struggle forward.

But we must do so without harboring illusions about the nature of the freedom struggle in which we are engaged.

We must have no false expectations about a GOP that has made racism and bigotry central features of its political organizing and operating practices, or a Democratic National Committee that too often seems to lack the courageous, principled soul and conscience required to authentically confront those practices.

Yes, temporary alliances with people who do not completely share our values, political philosophies, or long-term visions may sometimes be necessary.

But those alliances must be principled, purposeful, and strategically disciplined.
And they must never cause us to lose sight of our overarching moral mission:

Work for the future. Do no present harm.

During my years in educational leadership, I accepted support for my students from pharmaceutical companies, technology corporations, and other businesses; from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) foundations; and from politicians associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties.
I worked with colleges, universities, religious institutions, undergraduate and graduate professional schools, and organizations such as SUNY Downstate Medical Center.

I received support from countless community and cultural institutions, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which generously provided free fundraising space for my students’ programs over many years.

And then there were the many individual human beings who stepped forward to help.
People representing different faith traditions, nationalities, ethnicities, economic circumstances, and political perspectives.

Some belonged to political parties I opposed.

Some may have held views I strongly disagreed with.

And for many others, I had absolutely no idea which political party they belonged to—or whether they shared any of my political convictions.

I did not require a political-philosophy examination before accepting their willingness to help my students.

I wanted the greatest amount of legal, ethical, and principled support I could secure for the children entrusted to my care.

That was my mission.

That was my responsibility.

That was my calling.

Did I always know why a particular individual, corporation, foundation, political figure, or organization decided to support my students?

No.

In some cases, perhaps I understood their motivations.

In others, perhaps I only thought I understood.

And in still others, I may never know.

But I knew why I was there.

I knew what I had come into this world to do.

And as long as I could pursue that calling with professional integrity, moral clarity, and an unwavering commitment to the well-being of my students—and yes, there were offers of help that I refused on principle—I was prepared to accept the final judgment that history might render on my life.

Because in the end, I would rather be judged for the imperfect, difficult, and at times uncomfortably complicated work of actually improving human lives than be celebrated for delivering beautiful revolutionary rhetorical speeches while the people I claimed to love continued to suffer and die—physically, mentally, educationally, and spiritually.

And so, in the end, the question is not simply whether Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker of the House, whether one political faction defeats another.

The far greater question is this:

What did we actually do with the opportunities, influence, resources, and power entrusted to us during our brief moment on this earth?

Did we feed the hungry?

Did we protect the vulnerable?

Did we stand with the oppressed?

Did we make life more bearable for those who were suffering?

Did we leave this world, even one small corner of it, more humane, more compassionate, more just, and more hopeful than we found it?

Or did we spend our precious time perfecting the language of human liberation while neglecting the difficult, unglamorous, and sometimes politically uncomfortable work of actually liberating human beings from their suffering?

I have lived long enough to understand that history will not necessarily remember our most eloquent speeches, our cleverest political slogans, or the number of people who applauded our declarations of revolutionary purity.

But the people whose lives we touched will remember whether we showed up when they needed us.

And the children, those precious, vulnerable, extraordinary living promises of humanity’s future, cannot afford to wait for us to finish arguing about the perfect political alliance before we decide to act.

They are not being educated today.

They are hungry today.

They are frightened today.

They are suffering today.

And some of them will not survive until tomorrow.

So, yes, let us struggle for a radically better world. Let us challenge ill-used political power, confront injustice, and refuse to surrender our highest moral aspirations.

But let us never become so intoxicated with the rhetoric of tomorrow’s liberation that we become indifferent to the human suffering taking place right before our eyes today.

Because the ultimate measure of our political convictions is not how beautifully we describe the world we hope to create. It is how courageously, compassionately, and effectively we serve the human beings who must live in the world as it exists right now.

And if we cannot answer that moral challenge with something more substantial than another speech, another slogan, or another promise of a glorious future, then perhaps we should stop pretending that our political rhetoric is feeding anybody.

The people cannot eat rhetoric.

And neither can their children.

“College Isn’t for Everyone”—It Depends on Who Is Saying It and Why!

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First, a full disclosure: During my 11 years as a high school principal, I encouraged and witnessed many students who graduated from my high schools and chose not to attend college immediately—even though, consistent with my school’s policy and expectations, they were college-ready, eligible, and, in many cases, had been accepted to several colleges.

Some chose to start private entrepreneurial businesses. Others entered well-paying civil-service careers with excellent benefits or went directly into strong private-sector positions. Some used the STEM education they received while in high school to earn technology-industry certifications and went on to work for major corporations. Others attended specialized skills-training institutes, for example, in the culinary arts, or pursued long-term careers in one of the military services.
Still others entered construction-trade apprenticeship programs after earning both a college-ready high school diploma and a CTE (Career and Technical Education) pre-apprenticeship certification. Some combined pathways, attending a post-high-school specialty training institute or CTE program and later starting their own businesses related to the skills or crafts they had mastered.

Many of these graduates did well, and continue to do well, without having attended college, while others simply delayed college until it made sense for their personal or professional goals.

And that is precisely why I do not automatically object when someone says, “College isn’t for everyone.” For me, the critical questions are: Who is saying it? To whom are they saying it? And for what reasons are they saying it? It is ultimately a matter of the professional expertise and ethical intent of the person giving the advice—and whether that advice is designed to expand the advisee’s possibilities or prematurely limit them.

All of the above is to say that, in public education, the same words and phrases can carry vastly different meanings—and produce vastly different consequences—for students from different socioeconomic classes and for specific cohorts of students, particularly when it comes to college and career advisement.

After spending more than 40 years working at virtually every level of this profession, you certainly do not get to see and hear everything; I stopped saying that somewhere in my third principalship year—but you do get to see and hear a lot. And during my long period of experiential seeing and hearing, I have learned that if I were creating a critical:

“Parents, You Must Pay Attention to This” list, one item would unquestionably appear near the top:

“When the school is speaking about your child, which political language are they using?”

Are they using the vocabulary of high expectations?
Are they using the vocabulary of efficacious care and concern?
Are they using the vocabulary of equity and equality of opportunity?
Are they using the vocabulary of dream-affirming generational advancement?
Are they using the vocabulary of fully developing your child’s innate gifts and talents?

And are they using the vocabulary of having the agape love of wanting for your child what they would want for their own child?

Yes, public education is always, ultimately, and above all, a political act.
Therefore, guidance and counseling, like every other part of the public education system, are not politically or values-neutral. And in an efficacious, ethical, and best-seeking-for-every-student sense, they should not be neutral. They should actively help students overcome external societal factors that would dismiss, diminish, or deny their human potential.

However, there is another side to this reality:

Our economic system is not presently structured as though public schools will successfully prepare every, or even the vast majority of students to enter a meaningful, economically sustaining adult-life after high school, or a meaningful and useful postsecondary school career pathway. And we should at least be willing to ask an uncomfortable question: What would happen to the many institutions, private and civil service occupations, and businesses built around correcting, fixing, supervising, punishing, and incarcerating people if our public schools actually succeeded with nearly all of the children they serve?

Consider, for example, an admittedly imaginary scenario in which New York City public schools fully achieved the often-stated mission that “all children will learn”—including dramatically improved educational and economic outcomes for Black and Latino boys. That achievement alone might not eliminate all known forms of crime or the need for some form of criminal incarceration.

But imagine what might happen if we could substantially interrupt one of the major pathways to incarceration in America—one that has long concerned educators like me and many other human- and civil-rights advocates: the so-called school-to-prison pipeline.

The implications would extend far beyond schools.

Imagine, for example, how dramatically the debate over the future of NYC’s Rikers Island might change if far fewer young people ended up there after being repeatedly exposed, grade after grade, to inadequate educational experiences, low expectations, and denial of access to high-quality learning opportunities—conditions that can contribute to eventual involvement with the criminal justice system. The numerical realities themselves could fundamentally alter the political conversation: fewer people entering the pipeline would mean fewer people needing to be incarcerated.

And so, when I hear the statement “College isn’t for everyone,” I immediately and instinctively follow it with two questions:

“Who is saying it—and why are they saying it?”

Because after more than four decades in public education, I have heard colleagues, from classroom teachers to district superintendents, propose, implement, support, or mandate pedagogical practices and educational policies for other people’s children that they would never accept for—or impose on—their own children.
And therein lies the problem.

The question is not whether every child must attend college, or even attend college immediately after high school graduation; my opening full-disclosure statement makes that student-by-student, personal-journey point clear. The question is whether we are providing other people’s children with the same range of high-quality advice, choices, preparation, encouragement, information, and opportunities that we would insist upon for our own.

“We need to bring back vocational education!”
(Enthusiastically cheered on by the social-media professional education experts.)
Actually, we don’t—not if by “bring it back” we mean returning to the way vocational education was too often used as a targeted, group-demeaning practice for separating students into two categories: those who allegedly could only work with their hands and those presumed to possess the intellectual “gray matter” required to work primarily with their brains.
We know better now. That was an artificial—and, dare I say, often cynical pedagogical division.

What we should do instead is continue upgrading and expanding a modern Career and Technical Education (CTE) philosophy: one that prepares students for meaningful post-high-school careers while refusing to separate technical skill from intellectual development, academic rigor, entrepreneurship, college readiness, or future professional growth.

What many members of the NYC public may not fully appreciate is that schools such as the High School of Fashion Industries, Transit Tech, and Aviation High School are CTE schools. These schools demonstrate that career preparation and serious academic preparation need not be competing educational philosophies. They can enrich both the minds and the skilled talents of young people.*
In other words, we can educate both the mind and the skilled talents of a young person at the same time.

That power of CTE conversation brings me to NYC’s Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers.

I recently read a sad story about this historically significant NYC high school. A school with the physical capacity to serve approximately 3,000 students is now serving roughly 90 students.

Speaking as a former high school principal and superintendent, I don’t know how to look at those two numbers—3,000 and 90—and conclude anything other than that something is terribly wrong. And when a problem reaches that level of magnitude, tinkering around the edges is not enough. Sometimes an extraordinary problem requires a radical reimagining of what a school could become.

So, here is mine.

Think about the extraordinary possibilities represented by the Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers name, mission, location, and physical capacity. This is a school situated in New York City—the financial capital of the world; home to an enormous civil-service workforce; thousands of small businesses and major corporations; thriving technology, healthcare, construction, and skilled-trades sectors; and one of the world’s great tourism and hospitality destinations.
Why not radically reimagine Murry Bergtraum as a powerful, comprehensive, 21st-century CTE high school organized around multiple career-themed majors?

Imagine a school offering rigorous college-ready academics alongside pathways in finance and banking; accounting; entrepreneurship and small-business development; hospitality and tourism; information technology and cybersecurity; artificial intelligence and AI coding; public administration and civil service; construction management and skilled trades; healthcare administration; marketing and digital media; and other emerging fields tied directly to New York City’s present and future workforce needs.

Then build partnerships around those pathways—with corporations, labor unions, government agencies, colleges and universities, professional associations, apprenticeship programs, and successful entrepreneurs. Give students opportunities to earn industry-recognized certifications, college credits, paid internships, apprenticeships, and authentic workplace experiences before they graduate.
And make entrepreneurship more than an elective course. Make the school itself an entrepreneurial incubator, where students with the interest and ability to build something of their own can graduate not merely knowing how businesses work, but having already begun the process of creating one.

That would be my proposal: a total CTE redesign for Murry Bergtraum High School. Based on my experience, I have found that students enrolled in high-quality CTE programs are often strongly self-motivated to come to school every day, engage passionately in their CTE courses, and be inspired by a like-minded group of fellow CTE students and dedicated CTE teachers. They also benefit from access to industry partnerships, external stakeholders, internships, and other authentic work-based learning experiences.

And perhaps most important, there is the very real possibility of a good job—not four years after graduating from high school, but immediately after graduation. That makes the incentive to stay in school, successfully complete the program, graduate, and enter a meaningful career pathway extraordinarily powerful.

A school building designed to educate approximately 3,000 young people but serving roughly 90 should not simply generate a conversation about declining enrollment. It should force us to ask a much larger educational question:

What could we create here that thousands of New York City students and families would actually want—and deserve—to attend?

The larger point, however, is not simply about one school.

Communities that have historically experienced educational disenfranchisement need to pay very close attention to the “love language” being used when their children are discussed—even when those communities are represented politically by people who look like them.

Is the school or district message:

We love the fact that your child’s presence helps pay the bills and sustain an educational system in which some other children will receive the highest-quality educational opportunities?

Or is the message:

We love your child enough to insist that, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, immigration status, parental wealth, or political power, your child receives every reasonable opportunity to become the highest expression of their best potential self?

Those are two very different educational agape love languages.

And if I had to grade myself on one aspect of my own career, I would probably give myself somewhere between a D and an F for my inability to convince some of our most educationally dismissed and American-Dream-disinherited communities to consistently ask a few basic questions whenever a major education policy is announced:

“Which groups of adults, and which groups of children, are being enfranchised and empowered by this policy?”

“Which groups of adults, and which groups of children, are being disenfranchised and disempowered by this policy?”

And, even more importantly:

“What will the implementation of this policy mean for my community—and specifically, what will it mean for my child?”

Whether the issue is the misguided and politically motivated proposed paraprofessional bonus, the annual class-size debate and its disconnection from the far more important question of a school’s instructional quality, or New York State’s changing Regents examination requirements, parents should resist evaluating educational policies solely through education’s rhetorical “greatest hits,” political slogans, endorsements from stakeholders whose primary interests may not be the children, or the racial and cultural identities of the people promoting them and the policies.

Every public-school-system action can play out differently across different school districts, and in different schools within the same district, and with different groups of children within the same school building.

So do not simply rely on—or automatically trust—a person because of their skin color (“all skin folk ain’t kin folk”), nationality, political party, organizational affiliation, or political rhetoric. Ask the question that matters most for your child:

“Will this action expand or restrict my child’s educational opportunities?”

Malcolm X offered a warning that remains relevant here: “If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you’ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.”

Which brings me back, once again, to the statement at the center of this essay:
“College isn’t for everyone.”

But before accepting that advice when it is directed toward your child, ask the three questions that have guided this entire discussion:

Who is saying it?
Why are they saying it?
And who is your child?

That third question may be the most important of all. Who is your child—their interests, gifts, talents, academic strengths, aspirations, temperament, dreams, and possibilities? And is the person offering advice about your child actually taking the time to know that child before deciding which educational and career doors should remain open—or be quietly closed?

Because ultimately, the question is not whether the speaker is a political friend or enemy of you. The far more consequential question is:

Is the person saying “College isn’t for everyone” speaking as a friend—or an enemy—of your child’s future possibilities?

________________________________________
*And, since we are on the subject, here is another CTE proposal: Congress could significantly increase federal Perkins funding and expand its funding portfolio to explicitly include career-intensive visual and performing arts high schools such as New York City’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, Baltimore School for the Arts, Alabama School of Fine Arts, Los Angeles’s Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, and Washington, D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Why shouldn’t we recognize these schools as engaged in serious professional career technical/technique education?

A young person intensively studying instrumental or vocal music, dance, theater, technical theater, filmmaking, visual arts, or another professional arts discipline is not simply participating in an extracurricular activity. That student is developing specialized techniques, professional habits, technical competencies, discipline-specific knowledge, and potentially marketable career skills.
If we are serious about expanding our definition of career and technical education for the 21st-century economy, then Congress should consider expanding the federal Perkins funding framework so that qualifying career-focused visual and performing arts programs can benefit from those federal resources as well.

Peering into a jury of racial peers—The Lindsay Clancy case.

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I have served on several juries over the years, twice as jury foreman. And yes, those deliberations were sometimes tense. Disagreement is a natural and necessary part of the jury process, and the majority is not always right simply because it is the majority.

But in the Lindsay Clancy case, I find myself wondering: Why was it necessary for one juror, when discussing the lone dissenting juror, to publicly identify him as a Black man? Why not simply present her disagreement with his reasoning and explain why she believed his position was wrong? What purpose does identifying his race serve?

And perhaps more troubling: What is the expectation of her hope of what will happen to him next—or to people who share his racial and cultural heritage, now that his race has become part of the public narrative surrounding his dissent?

A juror should be able to disagree, even strongly and even alone, without his racial identity becoming an explanation for—or a public marker attached to, his disagreement. We are (and have been for a long time) in a bad place in this country when a disagreement over evidence and judgment cannot simply remain a disagreement over evidence and judgment.

Who Are the Real Donald Trump Supporters?

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“How Many People Support Trump but Don’t Want to Admit It?”—NY Times, 9/16/2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/campaign-stops/how-many-people-support-trump-but-dont-want-to-admit-it.html

Who Are the Real Donald Trump Supporters?

This is actually one of the best news media commentaries I’ve encountered attempting to explain a phenomenon that almost no one seems willing to discuss honestly. At least Mr. Edsall brings us closer to confronting it.

I stopped watching many cable news programs and reading much of the political commentary in the print media on this topic because they repeatedly seemed to be missing what I believe is an important element of the story.

After food and gas prices don’t go down. After senseless, seemingly endless wars are initiated. After we witness unbelievable displays of grotesque self-enrichment and corruption—after, after, after—what explains the enduring and, as this article suggests, remarkably high levels of Trump’s political support? Is part of the explanation hiding inside of people living amongst us in plain sight?

As I read this well-researched and analytically grounded article, I kept trying to make sense of what, from my perspective, appears to be a profound contradiction:

“You are ashamed to publicly tell someone that you support a person whom many regard as a racist and a bigot—and yet, you still support that person.”

And so, I am left with what I can only describe as my kindest spiritual hypothesis:

Perhaps that sense of shame is the last expression of a fleeting sense of godliness and human kindness decency—still fighting for your soul.

I ain’t mad one bit at Lonnie Bunch. In fact, I totally get it.

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“And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet.”
—Matthew 10:14

I probably should play it safe, stay with educational topics, and leave romantic-relationship advice to those who are far more capable and knowledgeable about the subject. But I do believe this much about romantic relationships is true: When someone emphatically and clearly chooses someone else over you, let it go—and move on. It took me a while to learn that “moving-on” lesson: sometimes the best move is simply to move on.

So, Dr. Bunch, take your intellectual gifts, vast store of wisdom and knowledge, leadership skills, and historical expertise, and share those gifts somewhere else; somewhere where you are appreciated and can receive the honor you deserve.

Museums are powerful learning vehicles that strengthen the informal educational system and, in turn, wonderfully complement the formal PreK–12 education system.

The political conflict surrounding Bunch’s departure is real. The Trump administration has sharply criticized the Smithsonian’s presentation of American history, accusing the Institution of emphasizing oppression and promoting what it considers an anti-American historical narrative. The administration has also threatened federal support and pressed for changes in how the Smithsonian presents the nation’s history. Dr. Bunch, meanwhile, has defended the importance of presenting an accurate, inclusive, and complex American story.

And I can’t help seeing all of this through an educational lens.

History, after all, is supposed to teach us something. When citizens encounter political movements that draw upon exclusionary nationalism or authoritarian ideas, one of the most important educational questions they can ask is: What happened the last time a nation traveled down a similar road? That is why serious historiographical studies matters. History should not merely make us feel good about ourselves; it should help us recognize dangers, understand consequences, and avoid repeating catastrophic mistakes.

That brings me back to Dr. Bunch and the Smithsonian.

Perhaps the most important contribution of Bunch’s leadership has been his insistence that America is strong enough to confront the complexity of its own history. He spent nearly four decades at the Smithsonian, became its first African American Secretary and first historian to hold that position, and, most significantly, transformed the National Museum of African American History and Culture from an idea—with essentially no collection, building, or substantial institutional infrastructure—into one of the nation’s major historical institutions.

That kind of historical truth-telling is not an argument against America. It is an argument that America can become better by understanding America more honestly.
A museum should never become a monument to comforting falsehoods. Nor should it become an instrument for excluding some Americans from the national story while artificially exalting others.

At its best, a national museum system should invite us into deep, sometimes uncomfortable, but ultimately constructive reflection about who we have been, who we are, and who we still have the capacity to become.

That means recognizing both the profound beauty of the American experiment and the ugly historical wounds that remain part of our national inheritance. It means acknowledging extraordinary achievements while also confronting slavery, racial discrimination, dispossession, exclusion, and other injustices that shaped the nation. And it means recognizing the contributions of people who, despite suffering those injustices, nevertheless helped build America into the economically, culturally, scientifically, and politically consequential nation it became.
That is not a denunciation of America.

That is historical honesty and societal maturity.

And perhaps that was the larger significance of Lonnie Bunch’s work: presenting America not as a finished masterpiece without blemishes, nor as a hopelessly irredeemable nation, but as a still-evolving national project—possessing both ugly warts that must be confronted and profound beauty that deserves recognition.
Museums can help a nation engage in that kind of honest reflection. And honest reflection can lead to corrective national action.

Because there is something deeply ungrateful about enjoying the greatness of a nation while refusing to acknowledge all of the people—especially those historically excluded from its promises—whose labor, sacrifice, creativity, courage, intellect, and perseverance helped make that greatness possible.

Or, to put it in the theological language I grew up understanding:

God don’t like ugly.

And ungratefulness is ugly.

Episode 3 of Lanterns Reclaims the Uncorrupted Meaning of “Woke”: Black Protection and Black Progress

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Episode 3 of Lanterns Reclaims the Uncorrupted Meaning of “Woke”: Black Protection and Black Progress

I promise: this essay contains no spoilers. I will only suggest that you watch Episodes 1 and 2 before watching Episode 3, so that what happens in that episode can land in your heart and mind with its full meaning and power.

As I watch the current use of the word “woke,” I am struck by how far it has traveled from the meaning I first understood in the early 2000s—and from its much earlier expressions in Black political and cultural life. Marcus Garvey, for example, issued his Pan-African call to “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!” And in 1938, blues and folk musician Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter), speaking in connection with his song about the Scottsboro Boys, urged Black people traveling through Alabama to “stay woke.”

Today, the term is routinely deployed by ideological descendants of the anti-civil-rights and anti-Black-progress coalitions of the 1950s and ’60s. More recently, they have been joined by a younger group of self-described progressives who sometimes find themselves apologizing for, and distancing themselves from, what is a false presentation of “woke” or “wokeism.”

And then there is a large cohort of extraordinarily talented Black journalists—all younger than I am—who rarely correct their White colleagues when the term is used in ways that bear little resemblance to its original meaning. Surely many of them are more knowledgeable than I am about its linguistic and cultural origins. (Where is the New York Times’ John McWhorter when we really need him?)

I can understand people in my 75-plus age group being confused about the Woke phrase. The only reason I became familiar with the contemporary use of “woke” many years ago was that, as a lifelong public-school educator, I remained connected through social media to many of my former students.

And what I encountered as the meaning of “woke” was not that complicated.

Stay awake.

Don’t sleep on dangers intended for you. Study—and, in particular, study your history and the history of America’s racist traditions. Stay alert to current events, especially those forces capable of harming your present existence or restricting your future. Recognize threats. Recognize opportunities. Protect yourself. Prepare yourself. Make progress for yourself and your cultural community.

In essence, as I understood it, being “woke” was a call for Black Protection and Black Progress.

I don’t recall anything about DEI, who could use which bathroom, men playing in the WNBA, or canceling the language of White America. In fact, the “woke” commentaries I encountered were not anti-White at all. They simply were not addressed to White America.

They were positive Black messages, by Black people, addressed to Black people.

Who stole “woke” and then cynically corrupted its meaning is an analysis I will leave to those working in the political, cultural-linguistic, and historiographical arenas.

My primary interest, as always, is educational.

And that brings me to Season 1, Episode 3 of Lanterns.

What the writers, director, and actors accomplish in this episode is to educate a nation about the painful fragility of Black existence—especially for Black boys, who are too often forced to surrender their childhoods much too early because, in the eyes of too much of America, their birth certificates might as well have been stamped:

Dangerous if he survives to adulthood.

In that sense, Episode 3 reclaims and restores what I understood to be the original, unadulterated meaning of being “woke”: a compassionate commitment to Black survival and success.

We All Received “The Talk”

Black boys of my generation received “The Talk” when we reached a certain age and, perhaps more importantly, a certain size.
I remember being told that I could no longer run on the sidewalks of Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

“If you want to run, run in the playground at P.S. 9 or in Prospect Park.”

That rule seemed strange to me, since joyfully running was an essential part of our early-adolescent play world. But I was also given very specific instructions about what to do—and what not to do—if stopped by the police. I was told to carry identification and a dollar or two in my wallet.

Like young people everywhere, however, we were determined to prove that the old folks worried too much.

So one day, walking home from Middle School 294, my friends and I decided to race along Vanderbilt Avenue between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue. Our adolescent logic was impeccable: there were mostly factories along that stretch and no pedestrians, so technically, we reasoned, we were not really violating our parents’ prohibition against running on crowded sidewalks.

Halfway up the block, a police car pulled us over.

The officers emerged menacingly, shouting and snarling commands.
Suddenly, “The Talk” was no longer an annoying collection of parental rules.

It was a survival manual.

I immediately reminded my friends: Don’t run.

We put our hands against the wall as directed. Continuing down my mental checklist of instructions, I spoke loudly, clearly, and politely, without turning around or making any sudden movements:

“I am reaching into my pocket to get my wallet and I.D.”

Without turning, I handed my wallet to the officer closest to me. Prominently displayed inside was my Police Athletic League (PAL) membership card.

The atmosphere suddenly changed.

One officer said something to the effect of, “Oh, these are Officer Powell’s kids”—referring to the officer who ran the PAL program at our local police precinct.

They let us go.

We continued our journey to the Brooklyn Public Library—shaken and, needless to say, no longer running.

We also reached an immediate and unanimous agreement:

We were not telling our parents about the incident.

I certainly wasn’t, because I had no desire to stand quietly—which is what children were expected to do in those days—through a long Caribbean-American parental speech titled:

“I thought I told you not to…”

That would have been followed by several versions of “What were you thinking?” Followed by: “Oh, you were not thinking?”

And the lecture would not have ended at home. Neighborhood and church elders, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and godparents would eventually have been informed of our bad-decision deed, requiring us to endure multiple sequels of that original admonition speech.

But there was another childhood lesson in Black protection that I did not understand until years later.

I was a dedicated reader of Ebony and Jet magazines. One month, however, I could not find the latest issue of Jet. And, as my mother undoubtedly hoped, I soon forgot about it. There were too many scooters to build, war games to play, comic books to read, and stickball and skelly games demanding my attention.

Years later, I learned why that issue had disappeared.

It contained the horrific open-casket photograph of Emmett Till.

That next summer, without any explanation to us kids—not required in those days—the Black parents in our neighborhood canceled their children’s trips down South. My mother explained to me years later, when I was in college, that the neighborhood “ban” had been imposed largely to protect Black boys from the possibility of suffering a similarly murderous fate.

That was those parents being protectively “woke.”
Not a political slogan.
Not a partisan insult.
Not a cable-news debating point.

Protection. Awareness. Survival. Preparation. Progress.

And That Is What the Parents in Lanterns Are Trying to Do
The Black parents in Lanterns are trying to protect their Black boys the best way they know how—albeit in heightened and dramatic ways appropriate for television.

The two extraordinary actors, Jasmine Cephas Jones and J. Alphonse Nicholson, are portraying what generations of Black parents before, during, and after my generation have tried to do.

First, get their children safely to adulthood.

Second, make them strong enough to confront unfair and undeserved societal obstacles without allowing those obstacles to define or defeat them.

And finally, help them discover and realize their innate gifts, talents, possibilities, and special calling in life.

That is the essential arc of effective parenting.

And schools can either assist or hinder that work.

I resented then—and still resent today—those portions of my childhood that had to end prematurely. I resented having to think about survival to adulthood as a goal at such a young age. And I hated hearing another warning that sounded grossly unfair to my young ears, but turned out to be painfully true: “You must be twice as good to get a fair chance.” My teenage years seemed to exist between dangerous extremes: Would my life be damaged or ended by a police bullet or arrest, drugs, imprisonment, or the unsolicited violence of another Black or Latino teenager in the neighborhood?

As an educator who spent many years working with teenagers, I know that growing up is hard enough. Young people should not also have to calculate their chances of surviving to adulthood while simultaneously trying to discover who they are. They should be thinking about future careers, occupations, aspirations, and possibilities—not wondering who they might become if they can safely make it to adulthood.

That is one reason we desperately need well-educating, intellectually challenging, emotionally nurturing, and physically safe public-school buildings where Black and Latino young people do not feel hunted—or haunted—by society’s fears of them and low expectations for them.

Parents cannot fight this battle alone.

Public schools must do their part.

They must create safe, secure, and educationally rich learning environments capable of bringing forth the best gifts and talents of children whom too much of society has already decided are unworthy of our best adult efforts.

The Baton Must Be Passed

And speaking of gifts and talents, a personal disclosure:
One of the wonderful young actors in Episode 3 of Lanterns, Lumi Oniyide, is the child of two of my former students. One of those former students—despite all of my shortcomings as a principal—decided to become a principal and is now a great one.

There is something beautifully circular about that for me.

A former principal watches the child of his former students portray, in a powerful work of art, themes that connect directly to the lives of generations of Black children—and to the educational responsibility of those adults entrusted with preparing them for the future.

There is always hope in the positive passing of the baton.

One generation protects, prepares, educates, and encourages the next. And then that generation must do the same for the children coming behind them.

Perhaps that is another way to understand what “stay woke” was always supposed to mean:

Know what came before you.

Know what could be coming for you.

Understand what surrounds you.

Protect what is precious to you.

Prepare an easier path for those who will follow you.

And every day, keep moving forward as the best presentation of yourself.

That is our collective, sacred Woke-Hope.

That is Woke Black Protection.

That is Woke Black Progress.

Ask yourself: “Are You Afraid” of a Positive Black Future?

And that is why I hope Episode 3 of Lanterns, “OutKast,” receives the Emmy recognition—and award—I believe it deserves.

Lanterns, Season 1, Episode 3, “OutKast,” is currently streaming on HBO Max and through the HBO Max Amazon Channel in participating regions.

Public Education Has an Anti-Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bandwagon Problem

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Public Education Has an Anti-Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bandwagon Problem.
So, I have a question for the anti-AI celebrants: Are we creating yet another technology and educational-opportunity gap?

Because while some public schools debate whether students should be permitted to use artificial intelligence at all, some elementary and middle school parents will be teaching their children coding at home, enrolling them in after-school or weekend coding programs, or sending them to summer coding camps where AI technology will absolutely be incorporated into the learning experience.

And therein lies the danger.

Too often in public education, the least-informed—and frequently the loudest—nonprofessional pedagogical voices are allowed to drive educational policy, while professional educators with deep theoretical knowledge and practical experience in a particular field are pushed to the sidelines.

We have also entered an age in which simplistic, non-thinking solutions to extraordinarily complex problems are increasingly treated as preferable to thoughtful ones. Instead of carefully examining a problem, identifying its multiple dimensions, consulting knowledgeable practitioners, anticipating unintended consequences, and then developing a measured response, we reach for the sledgehammer when a scalpel is required.

We can see versions of this phenomenon far beyond education. Consider America’s immigration policy—or lack thereof. Rather than developing a sensible, comprehensive, humane, and well-contemplated approach to a profoundly complicated national issue, political pressure can produce sweeping, ugly policies and practices that disregard both the humanity of the people affected and the long-term best interests of the nation and its citizens.

Public education should not operate that way.

Everything cannot be rushed into policy because the loudest activist voices demand immediate action. Historically, some of public education’s biggest mistakes have emerged from precisely that kind of reactionary policymaking. (Do any former NYC high school principals remember the 1994 Sequential Mathematics Program disaster?) And those mistakes have often done the greatest damage to students from economically disadvantaged communities and, disproportionately, to students of color who are already positioned on the disadvantaged side of educational-opportunity gaps.

I remember, as a superintendent, meeting with a contingent of parents from a non-Title I school who wanted to eliminate those “bad” standardized state examinations.
I listened patiently to their arguments—talking points that, interestingly, closely mirrored those of another political entity in the district. But I digress.

Two important issues emerged from that meeting.

First, the parents made a legitimate point: state examinations did not—and could not—measure the full range of their children’s intellectual capabilities, talents, creativity, and possibilities.

I agreed.

But I also explained that the responsibility of school-based educators—and certainly my responsibility as superintendent—was to ensure that the state curriculum standards upon which those examinations were based represented the ground floor, not the ceiling, of what students were expected to know, understand, create, and intellectually accomplish.

A standardized state examination should not define the totality of a child’s education. But neither should we confuse the limitations of an assessment with the absence of a legitimate need for common academic standards.

The purpose of state standards and assessments is, in part, to establish a common expectation that every child in the state—and therefore every child in our district—should demonstrate sufficient proficiency to master grade-level, school-level, and course requirements while acquiring the prerequisite knowledge and skills necessary to succeed at the next learning level.

What is the alternative?

Should every classroom, school, or district simply create its own subjective definition of proficiency?

We would never accept that approach in other professions. Dentists, plumbers, lawyers, firefighters, airline pilots, and, yes, even school superintendents cannot simply declare themselves proficient, licensed, and certified. Some legitimate external authority, informed by expert practitioners, establishes knowledge and performance standards that must be met before someone receives a professional designation.

Why should we believe that determining whether a student has mastered essential fourth-, eighth-, or twelfth-grade knowledge and skills requires no common external standard whatsoever?

Can state assessments be improved?

Absolutely.

Should they constitute the entirety, or even the most important part of a child’s educational experience?

Absolutely not.

But eliminating them completely is another matter, particularly when our public schools already operate across enormous gaps in expectations, educational opportunities, access to resources, and parental capacity to independently supplement what schools provide.

Then came the second revealing moment in that parent meeting.
I asked:
“Are you willing to go on record as opposing all standardized examinations—the Gifted & Talented (G&T) admissions exam, eighth-grade Algebra screening exam, SAT and ACT, Advanced Placement examinations, International Baccalaureate examinations, the LSAT, MCAT, teacher-certification examinations, professional licensing examinations, and so forth?”

Silence.

My response was mental, not verbal:

“Oh, I see. Not those standardized examinations. Just the state examinations.”

And that brings me back to artificial intelligence.

The New York City Schools Chancellor made what I believe was a good and sensible interim decision. Having served as a superintendent in that city, I understand that sometimes educational leaders need to deliberately create a pause-and-think working space, particularly when outside political voices become so loud and distracting that thoughtful policymaking becomes almost impossible. And in New York City, educational decisions are inevitably complicated by political actors who will seize almost any opportunity to undermine a mayor or chancellor they oppose.
But a pause cannot become a permanent policy.

The next step should be the creation of a well-informed task force composed of experienced educators, curriculum and instructional specialists, developmental psychology experts, STEM practitioners, researchers, parents, students where appropriate, and—yes, absolutely—people from the technology industry, where many of our students will one day seek employment, establish professional partnerships, or perhaps create their own technology-related companies.

Its mission should be to develop a thorough set of meaningful, pedagogically sound, developmentally appropriate, and grade-specific recommendations to the Chancellor that can inform the development of guidelines governing how students should—and should not—use AI.

The question should never be reduced to:

“AI: Yes or no?”

That is far too simplistic.

The more useful questions are:

At what age? For what educational purpose? Under what conditions? With what safeguards? With what degree of teacher supervision? What should students be required to know and do independently before AI assistance is permitted? When does AI enhance intellectual development, and when does it replace the productive struggle necessary for intellectual development? How do we teach students to verify AI-generated information, recognize bias and fabrication, protect their privacy, and use these tools ethically?

Those are worthy and complicated educational questions that require the thoughtful work and informed input of highly skilled, experienced educators—not political performers.

And there are other realities that we cannot ignore.

Wearing my principal’s hat, I recognize the practical limits of what a central-office staff—especially in a large school district—can realistically monitor and enforce when it comes to carrying out official directives at the school and classroom levels. The reality is that there will be some NYC students, in some NYC elementary and middle school classrooms and schools, who are going to learn how to use AI applications regardless of what the official policy says.

And,

Public schools cannot control everything children learn through informal education outside the school building and beyond school hours. So, while one group of adults celebrates keeping AI out of a school, another group of parents, in that same or another school, may be enrolling their children in outside-of-school coding, robotics, engineering, science, and technology programs where those same children are learning how to use AI productively.

Five or ten years later, we may suddenly discover that we have an “AI achievement gap” and act mystified about how it happened.

We should not be mystified.

We created it.

I hope educators, STEM practitioners, parents, and community organizations—particularly those serving historically underserved communities—are already thinking about after-school, weekend, and summer programs that teach children the responsible use of AI in coding, robotics, mathematics, engineering, scientific inquiry, and other intellectually productive activities.

Technology, like so many human innovations, is not inherently the enemy. Students can benefit greatly from thoughtfully designed software-based instructional tools. The point is not that technology should replace teachers or student thinking. It should not. The question is whether technology can be intelligently designed and responsibly used to strengthen teaching, learning, practice, exploration, and intellectual independence.

We should therefore resist jumping onto every educational bandwagon that comes rolling down the street—whether that means enthusiastically and thoughtlessly going all-in on AI or reactionarily and reflexively going all-in on being anti-AI.

Instead, parents, educators, and community leaders should continually ask:

How will this policy decision affect my child’s ability to become the fullest intellectual and skilled expression of themselves?

How will this policy decision affect my community—particularly those children whose families may not have the financial resources to purchase privately what the public schools decide not to provide?

And, paraphrasing a warning I learned from my former Columbia University professor and mentor, economist Eli Ginzberg:

When major public policies are put into place, we had better ask very carefully whether Black people will once again receive the short end of the stick.

Finally:

What community-based educational defenses, enrichment opportunities, and support systems must we build now to prevent today’s policy decisions from strengthening tomorrow’s educational disadvantages?

Those are the questions we should be asking before we prematurely celebrate the demise of AI. Because when it comes to artificial intelligence and public education, the greatest danger may not be AI itself.

The greater danger may be making poorly informed educational decisions about AI—and discovering years later which children were given the opportunity to master the technology while other very capable children were prevented from learning it.

A Moral-Based Journalism Means Challenging MAGANOMICS, Not Mayor Mamdani

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“Bodegas of New York, Unite!”: A Washington Post Editorial Badly Misses the Mark

It’s amazing watching non-New Yorkers try to wrap their heads around a city of more than 8 million people.

And many “throwing shade” savvy native New Yorkers can recognize what looks like a false-flag, right-wing-initiated political campaign when we see one—particularly when its ultimate objective appears to be undermining the credibility of New York City’s popular mayor.

It won’t work.

This week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is supposedly anti-bodega. Last week, it was the politically attractive but substantively inadequate bonus proposal for paraprofessionals—workers who, along with New York City public school employees represented by DC 37, need something far more meaningful: a permanent, pensionable increase in their base salaries, substantially improved benefits, and those improvements codified in long-term collective-bargaining agreements.

Meanwhile, the much larger economic story receives far less outrage: the impact of MAGANOMICS on the ability of working- and middle-class Americans to feed their families.

I spent most of my life in New York City—born there, raised there, and having spent much of my professional career there. I also lived in Washington, D.C., a city that has struggled with serious food-access disparities in some neighborhoods. Full disclosure: not in the Ward 4 neighborhood where I lived.

People who actually live in New York understand something that seems to get lost in these national discussions. NYC already has more than 700 city-funded community kitchens and food pantries spread across the five boroughs, in addition to other charitable, religious, nonprofit, site-based and mobile food-distribution efforts.

I guess the newly mobilized “bodega bros” could complain that all of those organizations are also cutting into their profits. Perhaps they should sue the food pantries for giving groceries away to struggling New Yorkers.

Of course, that would not be a particularly good political look.

But it illustrates the absurdity of the argument. The sheer size of New York City’s population means that even hundreds of organizations distributing free food to New Yorkers in need have not somehow destroyed the private grocery marketplace.

And in addition to those emergency food providers, New Yorkers have access to thousands of commercial food-purchasing outlets: nontraditional and convenience grocery retailers such as CVS, 7-Eleven, Duane Reade, Walgreens, and Rite Aid; medium- and large-scale supermarkets; small neighborhood grocery stores; specialty markets, including health-food stores; permanent and pop-up farmers markets; food co-ops; delis; specific cultural-nationalities, and religious related food stores, produce markets; and, of course, the so-called bodegas found throughout the city—sometimes two or three on the same street and certainly within a few blocks of one another in many neighborhoods.

That is why adding three, four, or five government-supported grocery stores to a city of this size is not going to fundamentally transform New York City’s overall grocery marketplace.

The scale simply does not support that argument.

Did The Washington Post send a reporter to New York City to actually walk through these neighborhoods and assess the likely impact of these scattered grocery outlets before reaching its conclusions?

And the word scattered matters.

New York City is not one single walkable neighborhood. Yes, it has extraordinary population density, a relatively compressed geography for its population size, and one of the world’s largest and most extensive public transportation systems. But outsiders can still misunderstand the everyday shopping habits of New Yorkers.

Brooklyn residents generally do not travel to the Bronx to do their routine grocery shopping. Manhattan residents generally do not travel to Queens or Brooklyn for it. Queens residents are not routinely heading to Staten Island—or across the city—to buy tonight’s dinner. Grocery shopping is overwhelmingly local, particularly in a city where, thankfully, the majority of residents do not own cars.

Therefore, any serious analysis of the potential competitive impact of a handful of new publicly supported grocery stores must examine: where each store will be located, what food-shopping options already exist within its realistic customer radius, what prices those existing stores charge, and what unmet community need that particular store is intended to address.

That is the type of investigative analysis I would expect from a major national newspaper.

And this is where the larger journalistic question arises.
Why expend so much editorial energy attacking a mayor for trying something, whether one ultimately agrees with his particular approach or not—to address the high cost of feeding a family, while minimizing the much larger national economic forces making groceries increasingly difficult for working- and middle-class families to afford?

That should be the story.

Stop engaging in a news-media practice that minimizes the impact of MAGANOMICS on working- and middle-class Americans’ ability to feed their families.

For, at least one elected official is attempting to do something tangible about grocery affordability rather than simply recycling the familiar political rhetoric: “We will not tolerate these high POTUS caused food prices!”

Fine, then what are you going to do about them?

Mayor Mamdani has offered an answer. People can debate whether his answer will work. They can challenge its economics, examine its implementation, scrutinize its costs, and demand evidence of its effectiveness.

As an avid, consistent daily news consumer, I believe that is good journalism.

But turning every policy proposal from Mayor Mamdani into another opportunity for reflexive anti-Mamdani commentary—with anti-New York sentiment seemingly serving as a secondary motivation—is something else entirely.

And if The Washington Post is genuinely concerned about government policy, grocery competition, affordability, and access to nutritious food, perhaps its editorial board should devote some of that investigative and editorial energy closer to home.

Go to Ward 8.

Talk with Washingtonians living in communities where obtaining affordable fresh fruits, vegetables, and other nutritious foods remains a challenge. Ask residents what grocery competition looks like from where they live. Ask how far they must travel. Ask what healthy food costs when they get there.

And while you are there, consider this remarkable contrast: a recent District of Columbia government assessment reported that: Ward 8 had only one full-service grocery store, while each of Wards 1 through 6 had at least nine.

Now that is a grocery-access disparity story worthy of serious editorial attention.

And then ask the most important question:

How do we get those Ward 8 families what Mayor Mamdani is trying to provide for New Yorkers struggling with grocery costs: greater access to good, higher-quality food at a reasonable price?
That would be journalism rooted not merely in political “hating” and partisan posturing, but in moral purpose and journalistic ethics.

“Bodegas of New York, Unite!”: A Washington Post Editorial Badly Misses the Mark: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/27/minority-owned-bodegas-will-be-hurt-by-mamdani-city-run-groceries/

“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes (and ears)?”: Reframing the “Secret Meeting” vs. “Private Meeting” Distinction

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I think we need to make an important distinction between a “secret meeting” and a private, non-public meeting. The difference has everything to do with context, purpose, professional legitimacy, and—perhaps most important, whether the participants would be comfortable acknowledging that the meeting took place.

As a principal or superintendent, it is entirely appropriate—and happens all the time—to have a private, non-public meeting with a labor union representative, particularly when an employee’s confidential personnel information is being discussed. In fact, such a meeting can serve a very constructive purpose. It might provide an opportunity to resolve a problem informally, to mitigate or completely eliminate the need for formal disciplinary actions, clarify a misunderstanding, or find a mutually acceptable solution that prevents an unnecessary grievance from being filed.

Those are private meetings, not secret meetings.

I never had a “secret meeting” with a labor union representative because the very characterization would credibly suggest that we were “up to something”—something one or both of us believed needed to be hidden from one or both of our constituencies.

And that is an entirely different matter.

Think of the married man who is caught walking out of what the old folks once called a “house of ill-repute.” (I know, I’m telling my age—look it up, youngins.)
His explanation?

“You see, I only went in there to emphatically explain to the proprietor that I believe intercourse should occur exclusively between married couples, and further, to inform him that I intend to vigorously hold him and his associates accountable to those standards and rules!”

Good luck selling that. Because at some point, what people reasonably observed will overwhelm whatever elaborate explanation you construct after the fact.

That leads to a leadership lesson I regularly offer prospective school administrators—and, for that matter, anyone entrusted with organizational or institutional leadership:

If you find yourself expending enormous amounts of energy after an incident explaining why your actions were appropriate, innocent, ethical, or misunderstood, you may already be standing on very shaky leadership-credibility ground.

Effective leaders should certainly protect confidentiality. And they will sometimes need to meet privately. They will sometimes engage in sensitive conversations that cannot and should not—be conducted publicly.

But privacy and secrecy are not the same thing.

Privacy protects legitimate confidentiality.

Secrecy protects something from being discovered.

And whenever leaders find themselves repeatedly asking people to disregard what they plainly saw and heard and instead accept an increasingly complicated after-the-fact explanation, they should remember that old comedic vaudevillian line:

“Who are you going to believe—me, or your lying eyes?”

Black Educators Leadership Principle: Home Is the Only Safe Place to Get Healed

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They will only see and cheer the individual you when you betray the collective you…

If members of your own cultural community, whether justified or not, hurt your feelings—and if you serve as a principal or superintendent for even one week, your feelings are almost certain to be hurt regularly—it is simply part of the job. For instance, when students, staff members, parents, or community stakeholders begin with, “I don’t mean no disrespect…” be prepared: some form of disrespect is usually about to follow.

In those moments, immediately shift into a mindset of respectful deflection and emotional resilience. Recognize that such criticism, however poorly expressed or delivered, often emerges from a place of genuine concern, frustration, disappointment, or principled disagreement. Your responsibility as an educational leader is to maintain your composure, listen for whatever truth may be buried beneath the delivery, and respond in a way that reflects a calm, disciplined, and emotionally mature leadership temperament.

But if you feel publicly wounded by criticism from a professional organization to which you belong—even if you believe that criticism is unfair—you must resist the temptation to seek comfort, affirmation, or public validation from outsiders, particularly those who do not have your community’s best interests at heart. Instead, take a deep breath, decenter from your hurt feelings, and prioritize understanding, accountability, and resolution within your own professional and cultural community.

For instance, if the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE) were, hypothetically, to give me a “thumbs-down” rating, my immediate response would be to request a private meeting with the NABSE executive board to seek explanation, clarification, and, if necessary, correction. I recognize NABSE as a respected body of knowledgeable and experienced educational leaders who care deeply about our community and the quality of education our children deserve. For that reason, I would take their concerns seriously and value the opportunity to hear their perspective.

As I did when serving as a principal and superintendent, I believe it is an educational leader’s responsibility to remain open to the possibility that our ideas, words, decisions, or actions—even when well-intentioned—may unintentionally cause harm to the students, educational staff members, families, and communities we serve. Effective school leadership therefore requires enough humility to listen, enough courage to self-correct when necessary, and enough commitment to the community to seek constructive dialogue and resolution within your own professional and cultural community before seeking validation outside of it.