Tensions Boiling Over at Stuyvesant Over Plan for Chinese Parents Group

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The New York Sun

Tensions are boiling over at Stuyvesant High School, where a Chinese parent leader was removed from her post and accused of holding a meeting in Brooklyn where she planned to break off and form a separate Chinese parents association.


Under the chancellor’s regulations – which are only available in English – all parents association meetings must be held at the school and only one official parents association is allowed.


At a contentious executive board meeting of the parents association at the elite school on Chambers Street on Tuesday night, Chinese parents packed into the first-floor conference room in the principal’s office to demand an explanation.


“Where’s my name card? Where’s my name card?” asked the Chinese outreach co-chairwoman, Mary Lok, who was stripped of her post on January 26. “You can zip my lips, but you can’t silence parents.”


She was informed that she was out of order by the board’s second vice president and parliamentarian, Simeon Baum. Mr. Baum kicked off the meeting with a quick lesson about “Robert’s Rules of Order.” To maintain calm, he said the classic guide to parliamentary rule, first published in 1876, would govern the meeting.


A Chinese mother in the corner quietly translated for a group of parents, many of whom traveled from Brooklyn and Queens.


More than half the students at Stuyvesant are Asian-American. The school, one of the city’s best public high schools, is open to students who score well on an admissions test.


Ms. Lok, a stay-at-home mother with two children at the school, said she was unfairly removed and she is being “denied rights.”


The issue exploded last month when several Chinese language daily newspapers published an article about a January 7 meeting held in Brooklyn by a group of Stuyvesant parents who now claim they only wanted to talk about getting their children into college.


They allegedly asked one father whose child was recently accepted to Harvard to come talk about what he had done right.


The newspapers carried varying accounts of that Saturday afternoon meeting. One newspaper, the World Journal, claimed parents aimed to form a Chinese Parent Association in Brooklyn, according to parents who translated the article for The New York Sun. A reporter for the World Journal confirmed their account.


Several weeks later, Chinese parents gathered for an outreach meeting in the Stuyvesant cafeteria. According to several members present at that January 26 meeting, the parent support director from Region 9, Joann Makris, showed up and told them it was a violation of the rules to hold meetings off the premise. She said Ms. Lok violated section A-660 of the chancellor’s regulations.


Several Chinese parents, many of whom speak limited English, cried foul.


“She’s done nothing wrong,” a computer programmer whose daughter is a senior at Stuyvesant, Hogan Chen, said. He attended both the gathering in Brooklyn and the meeting where Ms. Lok was removed. “If you want to remove her, you have to follow the rules,” he said. Some parents came with photocopies of a section of the chancellor’s regulations stating that parent associations must “respond to questions raised by members.” They demanded an explanation of Ms. Lok’s removal.


Following an hour-long debate governed by Robert’s Rules of Order, the parents association’s executive committee voted to hold a separate meeting later this month to air the issue.


“This is about a parent’s right. No matter if the parent is immigrant or don’t speak English, they should have the right to join the PA and to serve the parents,” Ms. Lok told The New York Sun by phone yesterday afternoon.


The second vice president, Mr. Baum, who is a lawyer and professional mediator, said he believes the issue can be worked out if everybody sits down together to discuss what happened.


“I’m much more concerned with helping them talk to each other and I see this as an issue within the Chinese Outreach community,” Mr. Baum said after the meeting.


Ms. Makris, who also attended Tuesday night’s meeting, declined to comment except to say, “This is a parent association matter.”


The city Department of Education sent a representative to this week’s meeting, but is leaving the matter in the hands of parents. “We will try to help facilitate a resolution, but this is clearly an issue that needs to be worked out by the PA,” a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, Kelly Devers, said.


The New York Sun

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