At a school leadership- team meeting last week, Kim told staffers, “Do not celebrate Christmas, do not celebrate gift-gifting, do not celebrate Santa”.
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Eujin Jaela Kim, who recently took over PS 168 in the Sunset Park neighborhood, made widespread changes, including banning Christmas, Santa Claus, and Thanksgiving.
According to PTA President Mimi Ferrer, Thanksgiving had to be celebrated as a “harvest festival” despite surrounding schools still continuing all holiday festivities.
“We definitely can’t say Christmas, nothing with Christmas on it, nothing with Santa”, PTA president Mimi Ferrer told The New York Post. “We can’t even have a star because it can represent a religious system, like the Star of David”.
In addition to the ban on anything Christmas, the school also banned the mention of anything related to Kwanzaa or Hanukkah. DOE officials told the publication that PS 169 administrators were mistaken – Santa is allowed as a “holiday symbol with secular dimensions”, but depictions of religious figures or texts are banned. “Harvest festival” has replaced Thanksgiving, and “winter celebrations” substitute for Christmas parties. The person behind the ban is the Principal, 33 year-old Eujin Jaela Kim. “Sounds like this school needs a new principal”.
The combined Asian and Hispanic student population at P.S. 169 is 95 percent.
District 15 Superintendent Anita Skop stormed in the front door at 9:50 a.m., and minutes later, two fifth-grade boys were brought to the main office to lead a recital over the public-address system of the Pledge of Allegiance, teachers told The Post. When Kim arrived, the school-wide pledge ended.
She also dumped boxes of newly purchased reading books in the basement because she preferred another curriculum, staffers said.
Kim has other wacky priorities, school sources say.
One of the first things Kim did after becoming principal was buying seven flat-screen smart TVs, for approx.
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“I’m ecstatic that Santa can come back”. Twitter user Catherine DiGennaro wrote, “oh for heaven’s (yes i said heaven) sake! the pledge is for the U.S. no religion indicated as is thanksgiving!” “Just because we don’t celebrate it, or a handful of people don’t celebrate it, does not mean that the whole school should not be learning from it”.
