STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK DAD FURIOUS WHEN DAUGHTER GETS ANTI TRUMP ASSIGNMENT

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A veteran Staten Island teacher who
slipped an anti-President Trump question into her homework assignment
to her sixth-grade class has been disciplined by school authorities for
using “poor judgment” in the matter.

Adria Zawatsky, a sixth-grade English teacher at Paulo
intermediate School (I.S. 75) in Huguenot since 2005, had a letter of
reprimand placed in her personnel file, according to officials. The
letter followed a sit-down with Paulo Principal Kenneth Zapata.

“We have clear standards and regulations in place to ensure
school staff maintain neutrality with respect to their political beliefs
while in school,” said Department of Education spokesman Michael
Aciman.

Vincent Ungro, an Annadale father of four, and an unabashed
Trump supporter, had complained to the Advance when his 11-year-old
daughter, a sixth-grader at Paulo, came home with a vocabulary
assignment containing sentences he believed were disparaging to the
president and inappropriate for the classroom.

The vocabulary sheet drawn up by Zawatsky, gave students
sentences and had them fill in the blanks, choosing from a list of words
that would complete the sentence and make sense.

“President Trump speaks in a very superior and _________
manner insulting many people. He needs to be more __________ so that the
American people respect and admire him,” Zawatsky wrote.

The sentence was supposed to be completed using the words “haughty” and “humble”.

A second question, that read “Barack Obama set a _________
when he became the first African American president,” was supposed to be
completed with the word “precedent”.

Ungro had his daughter turn in the assignment, minus the
three answers for the Trump and Obama sentences. Instead, Ungro circled
the sentences and penciled a hand-written note to the teacher on the
bottom of the sheet. “Please keep your political views to yourself and
do not try to influence my daughter,” he wrote.

Zawatsky — who took 15 points off the assignment for the three missing Trump and Obama words — wrote back.

“Firstly, I do not believe I was expressing a political view
at all on my vocabulary sheet. My reference to President Trump was
about his personality traits rather than his ability as a president,”
Zawatsky responded.

Still, Ungro said the reference to Trump, followed by Obama,
was inappropriate, and he believed the teacher should have avoided the
political reference altogether, or at the least, offered an apology when
it was called to her attention.

“First, I don’t think that putting your personal feelings
about politics into a sixth-grader’s homework is proper. There were at
least a thousand sentences that she could have used besides disparaging
our president,” Ungro told the Advance.

While Ungro, said he didn’t want to see Zawatsky fired or suspended, “she should have known better,” he said.

Zawatsky, who earns a six-figure salary, has been teaching since 1996.

Ungro said he’s glad he called the assignment to the
attention of school officials, and believes he taught his daughter a
valuable life-lesson through the experience.

“I taught my daughter a valuable lesson,” he said. “That she
should stay strong with her beliefs even if it’s not the beliefs of her
peers. That you don’t have to block traffic, wear silly costumes or
destroy other people’s property to be heard.
Through patience, persistence and the power of the pen, you can accomplish many things.”