Paula Lev Wiki – Paula Lev Biography
Paula Lev, principal of the Law and Public Service High School, is now under investigation by the city’s Department of Education for allegedly telling a faculty member that she was “going to get rid of all these white teachers who are doing nothing. for the children of our community ”, states a complaint.
Lev, a Dominican, also asked the teacher to “conspire with her” to try to expel a white colleague, according to the complaint filed last week with the DOE’s Office of Equal Opportunity. She definitely has something against white people, ”says the complaint, obtained by The Post.
On the last day of school, Lev gave the faculty member a notice that she had been “over-placed,” meaning that she was no longer needed at school and that she should look for a job elsewhere in the school. DOE.
Paula Lev Age
Paula Lev is 39 years old.
School staff “don’t trust” the principal after the race
A Washington Heights high school faculty is rebelling against its principal, accusing in a vote of no confidence that she has “flagrantly but unsuccessfully tried to divide our school by race.”
“He blew the whistle on him and a week later he was over the top,” said a colleague. It is unclear if Lev was aware of the complaint. The complaint came amid latent unrest at the school, which staff attributed to what they said was Lev twisting current concepts of equity and anti-racism, which the DOE promotes and teachers overwhelmingly support.
Dissatisfaction with Lev, 39, flared in February, when teacher Nick Bacon, the union’s section leader, filed a routine complaint about a scheduling problem that could have affected most teachers, the teachers said. employees.
In front of half a dozen other employees, Lev questioned Bacon’s motives.
“I wasn’t sure what your problem was with me, maybe it’s because I’m a woman of color and you’re a white man?” Lev asked Bacon, according to a March 2 letter to District 6 superintendent Manny. Ramírez, signed by the majority of the regular members of the school.
Employees were outraged that Lev apparently accused Bacon, who was raising his workplace concerns, of being a racist. The school has a diverse staff, roughly half white, somewhat Jewish, and Greek. A mix of blacks, Hispanics, and some Asians make up the rest.
The complaint raised by Bacon was resolved in favor of the union. In an effort to quell the furor over Lev’s comment, Ramírez agreed in a meeting that what she said was “inappropriate,” but added that the comment expressed Lev’s feelings and urged Bacon to work with her, they said. the employees.
In a later meeting with Bacon, Lev apologized for making the comment openly at a staff conference, but not for the gist of his comment, saying it reflected his true feelings and that it should have been expressed only to him, people informed of the report said. discussion.
At the same time, they said, Lev suggested that Bacon read Robin DiAngelo’s 2018 book “ White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, ” which argues that whites get defensive when they are asked about racial inequality.
He said Bacon could join her and other staff members in studying the book and having “courageous conversations,” using a term coined by a consultant hired by the DOE to deliver workshops on implicit bias for employees.
Four months after the conflict involving Bacon, another faculty member filed the discrimination complaint alleging that Lev had pressured him to help her engineer the removal of a colleague of hers, an unidentified white employee.
Lev wanted the faculty member to obtain a state education certification, the complaint says, so that he would not have the same title as the target colleague, clearing the way for Lev to “outperform” the higher-level staff.
“Millisecond. Lev has asked me to conspire with her on a couple of occasions to get rid of my colleague,” the faculty member alleges at the OEO presentation.
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“He also told me in Spanish that he was going to ‘get rid of all these white teachers who are not doing anything for the children of our community,’” the complaint says.
He concludes: “I think Ms. Lev is not suitable for the position of director because of the comments she has made to me about white people and the malicious ways she thinks and speaks. She is in no condition to be the leader of a school.
“As a school staff, we have lost trust, credibility, trust and, most importantly, we have lost hope in Ms. Lev as principal of the Law and Public Service High School.”
The frustrated employees said Bacon approached Chancellor Meisha Porter in early July, begging her to intervene after Ramirez failed to resolve the conflict.
On June 24, most of the school’s nearly 50 faculty members met to consider four possible reasons for voting censure on Lev, including that she had 1) “flagrant but unsuccessful attempt to divide our school community by race. “and 2)” lack of respect, slandered and / or arbitrarily persecuted respected educators, to the detriment of our entire school community. ”
The ballot also gave reasons why Lev “constantly violated our contract” and did not collaborate with staff on important school decisions.
“With nearly all 40+ members voting, including tenured and non-tenured teachers, paraprofessionals, and related service professionals, 83.3% voted that they no longer trust our principal to run our school,” said an email. electronic to employees.
No-confidence votes against DOE school leaders are unusual. The Forest Hills HS faculty in Queens voted against then-principal Ben Sherman in 2019 after complaints, among others, that he allowed students to smoke marijuana. The DOE eventually pulled Sherman out of school, but gave him a bureaucratic position with the same salary.
Lev was named Acting Director of Law and Public Service, one of five schools on the George Washington educational campus, in February 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 shutdown. He was awarded the position late last year after replacing beloved founding director Nicholas Politis, who retired.
Previously, he served for three years as an instructional specialist for the DOE’s special education data system. Before that, she was an assistant principal of special education for three years and a special education teacher for three years.
Lev, whose salary was $ 165,542 last year, is married to another DOE director, Benjamin Lev.
She did not return messages. DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer declined to comment on the school’s no-confidence vote. “The superintendent and executive superintendent are working closely with the principal, students, and the community to address the concerns,” he said.