BY JULIANNE MCSHANE
Call it a lesson learned.
Faculty at an elite Dyker
Heights prep school agreed to
instate sweeping cultural reforms
at the academy, after
its students of color demanded
administrators publicly condemn
racism and crackdown
on bigotry following the discovery
of a video that showed
one-time white pupils of the
school imitating monkeys
while in blackface.
Poly Prep Country Day
School’s head of school Audrius
Barzdukas promised his staff
will do more to explicitly support
its students of color during
an after-school meeting
with some of those pupils on
Jan. 22, where he outlined a
plan to address concerns leaders
of a black-student group
raised at an assembly days after
the video surfaced on Jan.
11, according to school spokeswoman
Jennifer Slomack.
Slomack said that plan proposes:
• Creating a task force of students,
faculty, and administrators
to add to and strengthen
the school’s code of conduct.
• Forming a second task
force to develop policies that ensure
discipline is administered
equitably and consistently.
• Committing to working
with an outside organization
that will evaluate the school’s
efforts to advance diversity
and inclusion.
Barzdukas also delivered
written apologies from the
two female students involved
in fi lming the video — statements
the student leaders
called for at the assembly — at
the recent meeting, according
to Slomack, who confi rmed a
New York Daily News report
stating neither girl is still enrolled
at Poly Prep.
But she declined to say
whether the students left voluntarily,
1700 Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
COURIER L 6 IFE, FEB. 1–7, 2019 M B G
or were expelled,
citing privacy concerns. The
third student involved with
the video left the school last
year for unrelated reasons,
Slomack confi rmed.
The head of school also sent
multiple e-mails since the Jan.
18 assembly, all of which specifi
cally described the video
as containing blackface, complying
with another of the student
leaders’ demands.
Barzdukas told attendees
of the after-school meeting
that he and fellow administrators
are committed to hiring
diverse faculty at Poly Prep,
where people of color currently
account for about a quarter of
the staff, Slomack said.
He also promised the faculty
would honor the students’
requests for required civics
and empathy classes by pressing
forward with an already
in-the-works plan to create an
academic department called
the “Institute for Ethical Leadership,”
which would offer a
“character-based curriculum”
for all Poly Prep pupils starting
in nursery school through 12th
grade. A trio of the school’s directors
will run that department,
according to Slomack,
who said they began preparing
its curriculum last year, before
the video surfaced.
The spokeswoman said the
Jan. 22 meeting was the latest
in a series of school-wide gatherings
to address concerns following
Poly Prep leaders’ discovery
of the video, and the
subsequent New York Daily
News report that published
the footage on Jan. 19, one day
after the assembly led by pupils
of color, who make up 39
percent of the academy’s student
body, Slomack said.
The blackface video is just
the latest in a series of biased
incidents to plague the prestigious
school — which is no
stranger to controversy —
over the past few years.
In 2017, a vandal scrawled
swastikas, along with racist
and homophobic slurs, in
a classroom and on windows
there, according to a report
in the school’s newspaper that
Slomack confi rmed. But offi -
cials never identifi ed the perp
despite a month-long investigation
into the incident, she said.
Class reaction
Poly Prep staff concedes to changes demanded by
students of color after blackface video surfaces
SUPPORTING STUDENTS: The head of school at Poly Prep Country Day
School agreed to make sweeping cultural changes on campus demanded
by students of color after the discovery of a controversial video showing
former white pupils in blackface. File photo by Paul Martinka
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