Parkway West Middle students to be punished for “Hit A Jew Day”
Four or five Parkway West Middle School students will be disciplined after administrators found out this week that they had created a “Hit A Jew Day” at the Chesterfield school.
Principal Linda Lelonek learned Monday night that her sixth graders had started an unofficial “spirit week” last week.
According to a Parkway School District representative, the students started with “Hug A Friend Day,” moved to “High Five Day,” “Hit A Tall Person Day,” and then, finally, this Monday, to “Hit A Jew Day.”
The students generally were not being violent or aggressive, said Cathy Kelly, communications coordinator for the district, but instead just “tapping” the students singled out by the theme of the day. At least one student, however, did slap another student, Kelly said.
“It was almost like a tag thing,” Principal Lelonek said. “But then it changed.”
None of the students told any adult about the day, Lelonek said. “They said ‘We were just playing.’”
“Not until Monday did any children realize this isn’t good, we’ve crossed the lines,” she said.
Then, Monday evening, Lelonek got a call from the mother of one of the school’s estimated 35 Jewish students.
Lelonek called an all-sixth-grade assembly first thing Tuesday morning at the 850-student school.
Most of the students knew of the “spirit week,” she said, but didn’t understand what they’d done.
She asked them all if they’d heard of each designated “day.” She said they nearly all raised their hands each time. Then she asked, “What’s tomorrow going to be? Hit a principal day?”
“You could have heard a pin drop,” she said. “One started saying, ‘Oh, no, Ms. Lelonek.’”
“I said, ‘Don’t say a word.’”
Lelonek said discipline will range from parent conferences to suspension.
The Grade is the St. Louis region’s premier blog on education and child welfare. To read other recent posts, go to www.stltoday.com/thegrade.
PWM 6th grade parent here with a tall son. This was not a violent hate crime. This was kids making bad choices, and worse choices, but it certainly was not a hate crime. The principal acted quickly and without overreacting or letting it get out of hand. My thanks go to the principal for dealing with a bad situation quickly.
There was a Parkway School Board meeting last night, with many people (parents, a rabbi, and a couple student) speaking. All but 2 people had good and positive things to say about the handling of this situation and our principal. Only those 2 had anything negative to say about our principal. Neither was a PWM parent, one has a web site with 200 signatures of other parents (primarily non-PWM parents) who want our principal removed. Among them was the second speaker, Jane Cunningham, who went well beyond the 3 minutes all public speakers were allotted so that she could belittle the Parkway School Board, demonstrate her desire to remove our principal based on information she has learned from the web site she signed up on, and generally pull a Barney Fife in front of hundreds of registered voters. Both of these people have only managed to express their ignorance of the facts, and I suggest they take a step back and let the Parkway community deal with the situation.
All you non-PWM parents need to take a seat for a bit, after you’ve apologized to our principal and staff. Stop acting so offended, or thinking the school was at fault. The core group of kids organizing this have been suspended, the parents of said kids are undoubtedly working with their own kids to help them understand the importance of making good choices. Sounds like some of the adults posting here have similar issues.
Life goes on…all we can do is learn from it.