Principal Joan Monroe of P.S. 120 in Flushing, Queens is taking some heat after she banned children who could not pay the $10 entrance fee from the school carnival.
Instead, kids who could not afford the fee for the carnival on Thursday had to sit inside the school’s auditorium where they watched a movie, reports the Post. Nearly 900 students had the chance to play on inflatable slides, a bouncy room and a teacup ride. The remaining 100-plus students who could not pay remained in the auditorium – the Post reports that the kids affected were mostly from struggling Chinese immigrant families. Teachers told the Post they were upset by the situation.
“It’s breaking my heart that there are kids inside,” one teacher said. The teacher told the Post that one 7-year-old girl cried hysterically because she was the only student in her class who couldn’t go to the carnival. The little girl told her classmates, “My mom doesn’t care about me.” Students who attended the carnival also received small toys as gifts, but the students who did not pay for the carnival did not receive them unless their teachers paid out of pocket for additional toys. Another teachaer told the Post: “If you are doing a carnival during school hours, it should be free … They all should have been out there.”
Frank Chow, president of the parents association that sponsored the carnival, told the Post he would have liked it if all students had been permitted to attend the carnival, but Monroe insisted that it would not be fair to admit kids whose parents did not pay.
Poor Flushing kids were banned from school carnival
Department of Education
