The Mis-Education Of My Son Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública

Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública:

The Mis-Education Of My Son

Bukola Shonuga 

May 29,2013

Editor's Note  milton@blackstarnews.com: The following Op-Ed article was written by a concerned parent who voiced grievances to the Chief Operating Officer Katie Duffy at Democracy Prep Charter school and some teachers about what she believes is psychological abuse of her son there. This newspaper sent questions to Ms. Duffy to give the school an opportunity to respond. She declined to comment, writing: "Thank you so much for your email. Per our network policy, we do not comment on specific scholars or incidents related to specific scholars. Thank you for understanding."

Mother Says Son Trailed And Videotaped In Charter School To Crush His Spirit
Here is the parent, Ms. Bukola Shonuga's article:

It's time to examine the police state structure of some of the charter schools model in the minority community in New York.

While I was gathering the facts to write this article, the stalemate situation at my son's school, Democracy Prep middle school in Harlem is unraveling faster than I can keep pace. On May 22nd, my son told me that at lunch time, his teachers were directed to video tape him in every classroom. One of the teachers according to him followed him with a camera into the lunch room when he went to pick up his lunch, followed him up the stairs into the hallway and continued videotaping him while he was eating lunch. I was so outraged. I couldn't believe the school would actually break the law by videotaping a scholar without parental consent.

So I emailed the principal and copied all the teachers including the superintendent of the Charter Schools in