Principal of Failing Brooklyn School Quits, Saying City Lacks an Education Plan

By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS

Bernard Gassaway, the principal of Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, offered Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Education Department one of its sternest public rebukes yet.

Boys and Girls, which has existed in some form since 1878 and is Bedford-Stuyvesant’s main high school, has a long list of distinguished alumni, including Shirley Chisholm, Norman Mailer and Aaron Copland. But in recent years, its reputation has become checkered.

In 2005, a class-action lawsuit against the city alleged that some students at Boys and Girls were essentially warehoused in an auditorium for large portions of the day, segregated from the rest of the students and not given enough opportunity to earn the credits needed to graduate. The suit was settled in 2008; the city did not admit any wrongdoing.