A Brooklyn couple is seeking $5 million from the city, claiming school officials tried to have them arrested and fired their 9-year-old daughter as a hall monitor after they questioned her school’s dismissal policy.
Their suit, filed yesterday in Brooklyn federal court, also seeks to stop a “brainwashing” ritual at PS 115 in Canarsie in which the couple says all 1,300 students are required to greet Principal Mitchell Pinsky with: “Good morning, Mr. Pinsky. Nice tie. Ooo-la-la.”
David and Mutiya Vision claim Pinsky limits their access to the building and keeps their kids, Edna, 9, and Alinah, 6, from other students during arrivals and dismissals.
“He’s engaged in psychological warfare against our children,” Mutiya said.
Pinsky did not return phone calls. But Department of Education officials and school workers defended him, saying the Visions’ access has been restricted because they are combative and hall monitors are rotated, not fired.
As for what the complaint calls “the questionable ‘ooo-la-la’ policy,” officials and parents said kids flatter Pinsky in jest and that the adulation is not required.
“The Visions have no one supporting them in this effort,” said Superintendent Gloria Buckery, who oversees the school.
The Visions claim their troubles began in December after they complained about a dismissal policy that keeps students waiting to be picked up in the schoolyard, rain or shine.
When Pinsky told them he was following school protocol, the Visions organized a petition to convince him to reconsider in inclement weather.
They gathered more than 600 signatures, but officials and staffers charge that the Visions aggressively recruited people with no relation to the school to sign.
The Visions claim all the signatures are legitimate and that while collecting them outside the school, Pinsky called cops and tried to have them arrested for trespassing.
After that failed, school officials relieved Edna of her hall-monitor duties and ordered her and her sister to wait inside with safety agents at dismissal, away from other kids, the complaint claims.
The family’s lawyer, Jeffrey Brown, a partner at Leeds, Morelli & Brown, said the case was a federal matter because the Visions’ First Amendment rights were violated.