Hasidic Principal Transforms Bronx School
April 8, 2008 – 1:51 pm by
Glen
Warning: the following story made me cry with pride.
Good Tuesday. A friend of mine sent me a link to this story on MSNBC. It took me nearly a day to actually open the email. I’m glad I finally did.
For the past several days, the blog posts here were pretty depressing. This post will make up for it. See for yourself.
Shimon Waronker is a junior high school principal in the Bronx. Junior High School 22 was once on the list of city’s 12 most dangerous schools. They’d been through six principals in two years. Then Waronker joined and parents/teachers thought the school board had lost their minds.
Why? Because Waronker is a Hasidic Jew from Crown Heights. And he has a beard & Yarmulka. In fact, one mother was so suspicious of the Orthodox Jewish principal that she acknowledged to wondering ““Wow, we’re going to have a Jewish person, what’s going to happen? Are the kids going to have to pay for lunch?”
Guess what happened? The school has since made many drastic improvements. A few highlights:
1) it’s no longer on the dangerous school list
2) attendance is above 93%
3) Junior High School 22 received an A on its school report card
Several tidbits about Shimon Waronker:
- He’s a former public school teacher
- He has a military background and credits “textbook counterinsurgency” for helping him the patrolling the hallways
You can read the NY Times article here. It was a front page story!
Why did I cry? Well, for one, it’s that time a week for me. (I am generally highly emotional on Tuesdays.) Also, this story is very close to home for me. I am from the same Hasidic community. And I realize the importance of education.
A few years back, there was another Hasidic Jew from Crown Heights that made headlines. His name is Matisyahu. For me, it was cool for a while that someone from my community was a superstar. But the excitement for me soon wore off. How many lives does a Reggae song impact? How many students are doing better in school because of a song on a radio? Probably none.
The same cannot be said about Shimon Waronker. Enjoy the clip.
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