Principal’s Welcome - Curriculum Night

I speak to families every year at the start of curriculum night. I talk about the state of the school and welcome everyone. This year, I realize this speech may sound a little salty at times. But we have some things to work on as a school, and if you can’t speak honestly at Central Park East I, where can you tell the truth? The real truth is that we as a community have some areas to improve. So I want to give you three assignments: for our history, for our present, and for our future.   

First, let’s talk about history.  Please get excited and involved as we honor the fiftieth anniversary of our school.  Back in 1974, a small group of teachers knocked in doors around East Harlem, convincing families to take a chance on a new, different kind of school.  Together, they started a small school with a huge influence.  Central Park East proved to educators that progressive learning belonged in public schools.  CPE sparked the nationwide movement to create smaller schools.  And in 2024, educators from around the nation will be coming to discuss what CPE’s legacy means today.   

So, this is the first part one of your homework from history: when those events are announced, attend.  If educational historians and the teachers who made history are talking about our school, you, me, we should be there. 

For hundreds of CPE graduates, this milestone means something different.  I will now quote some graduates from the 1990s: 

As I’ve gotten older I really learned to appreciate a school like CPE1, and everything it stood for those days, which were some of my best childhood memories.  There’s really no place like CPE, my second home. 

It was my second home.   

I felt it was my family outside my home. 

Most wonderful childhood home. 

Did you catch that home, home, home, home?  When we invite alumni to a CPE celebration, when beloved teachers tell alumni, I’ll see you at Fall Festival, those CPE graduates will come home. 

So here’s the second part of our homework for history: make Fall Festival 2024 feel like home.  We will need to make plans earlier, make more room, make more food.   

Honestly, we need this year to practice.  Fall Festival 2023 is only 24 days away.  Until last week, no one had volunteered to be co-chairs of this event, and now, we’re behind.  We have to return to our history, when this community stepped up to make community.  Let me give an example.  For years, the school tradition  was that fourth grade families would organize a graduation reception for fifth grade families.  Last year, I think our fourth grade families didn’t know, and others ended up pulling the reception together in the final hours.  If you had a fourth grader last year, I’m not calling you out; I’m passing along the shared knowledge we missed.  So let’s get traditions right for this year.  Fourth grade families, step up when it’s time for graduation, and next June, this year’s third grade families will plan a reception for you. 

Our history is not a few families contributing many hours.  Our history is many families contributing just a few hours.  A little later, our parent association co-presidents will tell you how. 

Now, here’s your assignment from the present.  A year ago, I stood on this spot and talked about resetting our community’s expectations for attendance.  We were then, and we still are, adjusting to the physical and emotional effects of the pandemic.  Last year we had surgeries, deaths in the family, cases of COVID.   

But those hardships do not account for this: last year, thirty percent of our children were considered chronically absent.  That means thirty percent of our students missed eighteen or more days of school.  We averaged twenty-nine absences per student.  Twenty-nine.  And also, the ten school days with the lowest attendance occurred the week before a vacation or the Friday before a three-day weekend.  Almost half the school was absent on December 22, and most kids weren’t sick.  Those extra absences next to vacations are the first thing we can agree to change.  

In the depths of the pandemic, however you got your kids to school, online or in person, families were doing the best they could.  Now, when I hear that a child will miss a week because Disney World is cheaper between public school vacations, that doesn’t feel like best we can do.  When I hear a family say, “Just give us some work to do on the plane,” or, “It’s only pre-K,” it sounds like we’re giving children the wrong message about learning.  The kids who are here more, learn more.   

To those of you whose children who have been coming to school so consistently through such hard times, I know teachers appreciate you.  I do, too.  And to everyone with a child who has missed a lot of school, this is the year you’ll be here more.  Thank you for each day we get with each child. 

Now here’s the future.  By the time your child is in seventh grade, your child probably will be able to name more gender identities than you.  Most of us grew up aware of two genders – male or female, boy or girl.  But our adult brains are not as flexible as kids’ brains.  Children’s brains hold more than simply boy and girl.  And no matter what you as a parent believe, your child will be part of generation that talks so frequently and so easily about more complex identities.  In middle schools today, kids are talking with each other – TikTok is talking to them – about ideas most of us didn’t grow up with.   So when the kid you love is thirteen and really wants to talk with you about their gender, how prepared will you be?   If you’re not ready, your child will learn more from TikTok on someone else’s phone.  Or, through your words on that day your child comes to you, you can really show up for your child. 

So here’s your invitation to prepare for the future.  On November 16 at 6:00, come to a special workshop.  The Gender and Family Project of the Ackerman Family Institute is coming to CPE1.  Ackerman Family Institute will lead a workshop to help families understand more about gender terminology and gender’s impact on children’s development.  They’ll talk with us about supporting gender-expansive children.  They’ll make us all think deeper.   

This Monday, our staff has our first workshop with Ackerman’s Gender and Family Project.  We are learning more to support our children.   

I will say clearly that people of every gender identity have a right to express their identity in New York City Public Schools.  That’s the law.  Beyond that, Central Park East I has longstanding obligations to support children and families against hate.  I can understand different values and different politics.  I cannot understand attacking gender-expansive children for political gain.  The gender-expansive children and families in our school are living through a national wave of hate.  Our school cannot be neutral.  As a community, we need to keep learning to be safe and inclusive for all of our kids. 

That stands on its own.  I just want to leave you with a different reason to show up for November 16’s workshop on gender.  Yesterday a girl in our 2-3 classes told me a story.  She said a pre-K child asked her why she was wearing a Sonic the Hedgehog tee-shirt, because Sonic is for boys.  Sonic is for boys?  What does that even mean?   

The girl who likes Sonic seemed deflated, and suddenly unsure.  The only thing she said with certainty is that the little kid who asked her was wearing an Elsa shirt – Elsa, from Frozen, a movie in which the ruler of a country has superpowers, but she happens to be female, so she also has to wear ball gowns and find a husband.  That kid with Sonic shirt didn’t explain why she noticed Frozen on the younger child’s clothes.  But you can see it, right?  When someone make children feel that they’re handling gender all wrong, they start comparing themselves.   

So let me summarize this collective work.  First, for the future, come to our November 16 workshop for families led by Ackerman Family Institute.  Second, for the present, let’s increase attendance collectively.  Let’s start by not taking extra vacations.  And finally, for our past, come to the anniversary events to learn more about our school’s legacy.  Bring back the part of our history where just about every family gave time and effort to make the community a community.  That step begins by signing up to volunteer, which our parent association co-presidents will tell you how to do in one minute.

Thank you for coming tonight, and for all of the work you will be doing this year.