The Upper East Side’s tony Spence School expelled a black girl on financial aid days before finally caving to pressure and going after a wealthy white kid who had committed the same infraction — making idle threats against a classmate on Facebook, students told The Post.
Nearly 60 teens from private schools citywide staged a protest Monday in front of the all-girls school on East 91st Street to complain that Spence expelled minority student Arnelle Cook, 17, a junior from The Bronx, on Thursday.
The school expelled the white classmate, Camille Macris, an Upper East Side junior, only after being threatened with a protest, the students said.
“It’s like they expelled the other girl to make up for the fact that they expelled Arnelle, to save their own reputation,” said Raina-Simone Henderson, a black sophomore at Horace Mann in The Bronx, who attended the rally.
“I don’t think it was a coincidence — I think it wasn’t until after they decided to expel Arnelle, and that speaks for itself.”
The girls were expelled for putting threats on Facebook, saying they’d find the classmate who made up allegations that the two were dealing drugs to students.
The girls did not know the classmate’s identity.
On May 18, Macris said she was going “to get” the person who caused the trouble, according to a friend of Cook, who followed the next day with a similar threat.
The school found no evidence of drug dealing, but notified the girls’ parents anyway, Cook’s pal said.
School administrators met with Cook over breakfast on Sunday, and asked her to call off the protest because they were also going to expel Macris, according to Cook’s friend.
Even Macris openly questioned the school’s decision to expel only Cook, in a Facebook post that has since been deleted.
“Even if she made threats . . . a lot of people in that situation might handle it that way,” Ayaana Marie, a supporter, said on the Facebook wall of the group “Freenellededecook” that was set up to shed light on Cook’s “unjust expulsion.”
“And again, at the end of the day the more privileged student was not punished in the same way. It isn’t fair.”
As of Tuesday night, 2,010 people had liked the Facebook group.
When students questioned whether they should still rally following Macris’ expulsion, an administrator for the event posted on the Facebook wall: “The fact that they expelled a white student does not devalue the fact that they have been discriminatory in the past, and especially in Arnelle’s case. This expulsion doesn’t change the way that they handled Arnelle’s expulsion and the way that independent schools at large handle disciplinary matters for students of color. Therefore, the protest is still going on.”
A Spence rep did not returns calls for comment.