‘Spitzer and Weld’

In your editorial “Spitzer and Weld” [December 27, 2005], you report that William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, who would like to be the next governor of New York, dropped by the offices of The New York Sun last week, and we have to say, the more one listens to him, the more he seems to have thought through these issues. Has he thought through the issue of graffiti?

“I’m a big believer in graffiti as a humanizing force,” he said in an interview that appeared in the New York Times Magazine on January 23, 2000.

Writing graffiti on public property is against the law. So is writing graffiti on someone else’s private property. Supporting graffiti is necessarily a form of supporting lawlessness.

Graffiti writers are cultural imperialists. Their message is always the same: I live in a slum and so do you. Graffiti writers are trying to do away with the variety of urban life and replace it with their own harsh culture.

New York City has the lowest crime rate of the 10 largest cities in the United States. When crime began to go down nation-wide, New York’s drop was the first and the greatest. The reason, almost certainly, was that New York was acting to prevent quality-of-life offenses like graffiti.

GEORGE JOCHNOWITZ
Manhattan

‘Principal Removed’

Ilene Agranoff, the principal of Junior High School 14 in Brooklyn, and the assistant principal, Susan Feeley, are both hardworking professionals with unblemished records. By all accounts their school is well run, and they are respected leaders [“Principal Removed for Mishandling Cases of Alleged Cheating on State Test,” Deborah Kolben, New York, December 23, 2005].

In 2004, Ms. Agranoff and Ms. Feeley faced the difficult job of supervising a problematic teacher with a history of insubordination and complaints.

This teacher repeatedly refused assistance and treated administrators with contempt whenever they broached the subject.

This teacher was well on the way toward an unsatisfactory rating when he made it his mission to exact revenge on the school administration.

By making unsubstantiated claims and repeatedly provoking his superiors, he pushed to engage them in conversations which have now been turned against them. Those conversations were secretly and deliberately recorded, and a tape that includes the teacher’s provocations was given to investigators and the press.

Seven months ago, an investigator with the Chancellor’s office was aware of the teacher’s credibility problem and found Ms. Agranoff and Ms. Feeley had reason to question the validity of his claims.

Veteran school leaders like Ms. Agranoff and Ms. Feeley are under attack every day, and there are times when those attacks are baseless.

JILL S. LEVY
President
The Council of School Supervisors And Administrators (csa-nyc.org)
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Spielberg’s Movie

“Misguided ‘Munich,’ ” [Mitch Webber, Opinion, December, 20, 2005] was a well-written piece. Mr. Webber brings up yet more interesting details about the movie that were more upsetting the more I thought about them since leaving the theater. I am just glad that I didn’t pay to see the film. Bringing up Avery Brundage is yet another example of facts being left out of movies that, unfortunately, help shape public opinion and the spread of misinformation.

ILAN CAPLAN
Denver, Colo.

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