Teachers at Manhattan’s famed La Guardia HS up in arms over the recent hiring of an educator who once read an anti-Semitic poem to students at a previous school where she was also criticized as abusive and irrational to staff.
Before stepping down as an assistant principal at Brooklyn Tech in 2005, Tracy Atkins-Zoughlami was accused by staff in multiple news accounts and union blogs of scolding and intimidating teachers.
Atkins-Zoughlami also caught flak for having kids read a poem by Amiri Baraka propounding a creepy conspiracy theory that “Israeli workers” knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks.
“Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed?” the poem asks. “Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers /To stay home that day? /Why did [Ariel] Sharon stay away?”
Now, Atkins-Zoughlami’s appointment as “talent coach,” supervising and rating teachers at La Guardia, the elite public magnet school for music, art and performing arts, has educators there concerned.
“There are amazing teachers here and people are worried,” the teacher told The Post.
“She will be a disaster. Teachers are s–tting bricks. She is a huge anti-Semite,” another teacher said, citing the Baraka poem incident.
Atkins-Zoughlami declined to comment.
A spokesman said the Department of Education could not comment except to confirm that Atkins-Zoughlami is, in fact, a talent coach at the school.
Additional reporting by Laura Italiano