The Department of Education is forcing a Brooklyn middle school to remove a poster of presidential candidate Barack Obama that’s hung prominently above its main entrance, officials said yesterday.
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The move comes after some parents and teachers at MS 61 in Crown Heights complained about the poster – which shows Obama with the Capitol building above one shoulder and a montage of famous black leaders over the other.
“I consider it a form of electioneering,” one teacher, who requested anonymity, complained about the poster.
Although he saw the image as a positive one, parent Robert Foster, 56, said that for the sake of fairness, “if it’s out there, both candidates should be up.”
The action continues the DOE’s crackdown on politically charged expression in schools – as the teachers union defends workers’ rights to wear partisan campaign buttons in class.
Many teachers and students at the school argued the poster was not a political endorsement but an example of black leadership – which is one of the themes of the school’s three internal academies.
“He’s nothing but a positive role model,” said sixth-grader Shannon Hamit, 11. “We look at that poster and say, ‘Wow, a black man running for president – I can become him.’ ”
Ismael Walla, 50, whose daughter is in sixth grade, said he would fight to keep the poster on display.
“I will not let it come down,” he said. “It’s for the kids, it inspires them and it makes the kids aspire to be something bigger.”
The hubbub surrounding political expression in schools began after the teachers union recently distributed thousands of “Obama-Biden” campaign buttons to its members. That prompted the DOE to clamp down on the button usage.
The union filed a lawsuit in federal court last Friday, arguing that the crackdown violated teachers’ rights to free expression. But Schools Chancellor Joel Klein disputed that claim in papers submitted to the court yesterday, arguing that the prohibition “preserves and protects the rights of students to be free from partisan view of teachers in the classroom.”