Eva Gets Spanked

As recently noted by several fine bloggy outlets, Eva Moskowitz set a new standard in arrogant reckless disregard when defending herself against a John Merrow piece on PBS that outlines some of the less-than-awesome practices of Success Academy.

Specifically, she defended herself by breaching the confidentiality of a young student's records at the school. I'm not a lawyer (nor do I play one on TV), but it sure looks like a FERPA violation to me when you release everything down to excerpts from the teacher narrative about disciplinary incidents for a student who is readily and easily identified.

Well, apparently the child's mother thinks so, too. Yesterday, Moskowitz was slapped with a cease and desist letter. The letter is reproduced here at NYC Public School Parents. 

I demand that you immediately remove the letter you wrote to PBS and sent to the press on October 19, that contained details of my son’s disciplinary record and is posted at [link removed] , as well as the second follow up letter you posted and sent on October 21 at [link removed.]

The mother notes that actual text of Moskowitz's letter includes the information that the parent did not consent to having her child's private records released. But Moskowitz was willing to smear a ten-year-old child with his six-year-old behavior to defend her pretty PR picture.

As I noted in an earlier post, the picture that emerges of Success Academy in Moskowitz's letter is of a place that deals with a problematic child by emotionally beating him into submission (or out the door, or both). In the past, we've seen her deal with elected offcials who won't give her her way by having her buddies at Families for Excellent Schools mount ugly PR campaigns and by having her friends in Albany beat the Mayor of New York into submission. Now we get to see if either of those techniques are effective against an angry parent with a lawyer.

Stay tuned.