School Official Faces Firing Over Mistreatment of
Haitians
By SUSAN SAULNY

Published: April 26, 2005

School officials said yesterday that they have begun
proceedings to fire an administrator at a Queens
elementary school after investigators confirmed that
she recently called a group of Haitian students
animals and ordered them to eat lunch without utensils
on a gymnasium floor.
   

But the investigators said they did not find
sufficient evidence to substantiate a claim from some
of the students and their parents that the
administrator, Nancy Miller, an assistant principal at
Public School 34 in Queens Village, made a derogatory
statement about their Haitian ethnicity.

The students had asserted that Ms. Miller called them
animals one day last month and made them eat on the
floor because that is the way people eat in Haiti,
"like animals." Parents and their supporters protested
outside the school two weeks ago and called for Ms.
Miller's termination.

"This is wholly unacceptable behavior and should never
have happened," Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said.
He added, "I anticipate that Ms. Miller will be
removed from her job as assistant principal and from
the school, and that we will begin termination
proceedings against her."

Mr. Klein also said that Ms. Miller would not be
allowed to return to the school and that she is
scheduled to have a disciplinary conference later this
week.

Releasing its findings in a 22-page report, the school
system's Office of Special Investigations largely
upheld what the children - a group of fourth- and
fifth-grade students in a bilingual Creole and English
class - said happened during lunchtime at the school
on March 16. The report included 27 interviews with
student and adult witnesses, many interviewed multiple
times. It also scrutinized written accounts that some
of the students involved in the incident wrote just
days after it happened.

In the report, the investigators said they found the
students' claims credible because of the consistency
of their accounts and their demeanor while being
interviewed.

One fourth-grade girl told an investigator, "I was
upset because Ms. Miller called us animals and made us
sit on the floor and eat with our hands."

Another student said: "People were looking at us. We
were embarrassed. There was a girl laughing."

Ms. Miller denied many of the allegations. But the
investigation did not find all of Ms. Miller's account
to be credible.

According to the report, Ms. Miller said she thought
the class was finished with lunch when she seated them
on the floor, which she described as an attempt to
separate several misbehaving children who had been
pushing and shoving in the lunch line. She also said
she never used the word "animal."

A spokesman for the union that represents Ms. Miller
said the office was closed yesterday and that no one
was available to comment on the case.

The executive director of the Haitian Centers Council,
Dr. Henry Frank, did not return several calls for
comment yesterday. Dr. Frank, a leading voice of the
Haitian community, became involved after parents asked
him to intervene because they were not getting any
responses to their complaints from school officials.

The school was closed yesterday for spring break.