Report: Principal Tried ‘Magic' To Cure School

Staff writer Sara Polsky sent this my way this afternoon. From the New York Sun, a principal tried some innovative (?) tactics to improve her school.

By Elizabeth Green
Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 8, 2007

A principal who took an unusual approach to improve her TriBeCa high school — allegedly hiring a "black magic" practitioner to cleanse evil spirits through a ceremony involving sprinkled chicken blood — is being forced out a month before the school year starts. A replacement principal has not yet been named.

"There was always a running joke that, because many of the students were ill-behaved, we should use sage to cleanse the building," an assistant principal at the Unity Center for Urban Technologies on Sixth Avenue, Melody Crooks-Simpson, told city investigators. Then, during midwinter break in early 2006, Ms. Crooks-Simpson said, Principal Maritza Tamayo invited her to a Santeria ceremony that would involve chicken blood, according to a report released yesterday by the Department of Education's special commissioner of investigation, Richard Condon.

See the full story here.