Student Voice Plays a Key Role in Townsend Harris Shakeup

As the student union president and a graduating senior, Alex Chen said he now felt assured that Townsend Harris High School was in good hands.

The Queens school will have a new principal starting on May 1, after a tumultuous school year under an interim acting principal, Rosemarie Jahoda, who did not get the permanent job. Chen is also co-chair of the School Leadership Team which was involved in the hiring of the school's new principal, Brian Condon.

"I was really just focused during the entire process because we had to find the best candidate," said Chen. "And because I was the student representative, I had to look at it through the students' lens to see who would be able to interact with the students the best and who would hold the students' interests at heart the most."

Over the past several months, students, teachers, parents and alumni, raised concerns about what they called Jahoda's combative management style; about allegations of harassment at her previous school; and about the tensions building up at Townsend Harris since her appointment at the start of the school year. Students organized a sit-in, press conference and rally against Jahoda. 

And the students most doggedly tracking these issues, while trying to stay out of the fray, were journalists at the school paper, The Classic.

The paper published dozens of articles exposing problems with Jahoda and covering the protests against her. Student reporters took their coverage seriously, and so did readers. Page views increased five-fold. 

"A couple of students — we do know they would use our articles and send them to local politicians or send them to news sources," said Mehrose Ahmad, a managing editor of The Classic.

Sumaita Hasan, an editor-in-chief, said it was rare for students to be able to showcase their work so publicly, especially work done outside of traditional academic classes.

"The fact that we were able to demonstrate our strengths in such a large and grand way has been a great thing," said Hasan.

After months of turmoil, and a protracted hiring process, education officials named Condon the permanent principal of Townsend Harris last week. He is currently serving as principal of the School for Tourism and Hospitality in the Bronx.

An assignment for Jahoda is pending, said Will Mantell, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Education.