Staff Reports
The new lawsuit over the Park Slope Food Coop didn’t just throw the coop into chaos — it tossed a teacher’s alleged praise for a Hamas leader onto the front steps of an elementary school. The National Jewish Advocacy Center’s complaint names a coop organizer who allegedly wrote “Long live Yahya Al‑Sinwar” in a private chat and identifies him as a teacher at PS 77. Now the New York City Department of Education says it has referred the allegation for a personnel investigation. Parents deserve answers. So do taxpayers.
The allegation and the city’s weak response
The claim comes from a civil complaint and a NJAC press release that summarize internal messages tied to the boycott fight at the coop. The complaint is new and serious: it links activism inside the coop to harassment and relies on chat screenshots. The city schools’ office — led by Chancellor Kamar Samuels — says antisemitism and support for terrorist groups have no place in classrooms and that the matter is under investigation. Fine. But “under investigation” is not the same as protecting kids while the inquiry runs its course.
How did someone with these views end up in a classroom?
We should be asking how a person identified in a lawsuit as praising a terrorist leader could be cleared to teach impressionable children. Background checks, references, and principal oversight are supposed to catch red flags. If they didn’t, that is an institutional failure — not a one-off mistake. And when community groups and parents raise alarms, the mayor’s office under Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels can’t just issue stern statements and hope the heat dissipates. Parents want action, not platitudes.
Accountability, not cover-ups
This is bigger than one alleged chat message. It’s about the wider tolerance of radical ideas inside institutions that touch children every day: schools, universities and neighborhood organizations. The Park Slope Food Coop controversy and the NJAC lawsuit show what happens when ideological campaigns bleed into civic life. The DOE must do more than “refer for investigation.” It should be transparent about any interim steps: suspension, reassignment, or clear communication to families. And the coop should explain whether this was a lone activist or a symptom of a broader problem.
Let’s be blunt. Parents aren’t asking for censorship — they want safe classrooms and teachers who promote learning, not extremist sympathies. Voters should remember who runs our schools and who looks the other way. We can respect the legal process and still demand swift protections for our kids. If officials refuse to act, voters can act at the ballot box — because trust, once lost in our schools, is a lot harder to rebuild than any lawsuit.
