B’nai B’rith Plans Protest at Board of Education Tomorrow over Appoint of Fuentes

B’nai B’rith officials have announced plans for a demonstration at the offices of the New York City Board of Education in Brooklyn at noon Tuesday in protest over the appointment of Luis Fuentes, who has been charged with repeated anti-Semitic remarks, as superintendent of the Community School of District One on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

The announcement followed publication in a New York City Spanish-language daily newspaper, El Diario-La Prensa, of a sharp criticism of Fuentes as a “racist” by Joseph Monserrat, president of the City Board of Education, and a Puerto Rican. Monserrat joined New York City School Chancellor Harvey Scirbner last Thursday in a meeting with representatives of four Jewish a organizations on the Issue of the Fuentes appointment. The four groups represented were the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Labor Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

A spokesman said that though no specific date was set for further discussion on Fuentes, the meeting Thursday was not considered a “final” one by the four groups, which had issued a statement last month assailing the appointment, Scribner issued a statement after the meeting saying that he “understood” the concerns of the four organizations.

Monserrat made his charge in an editorial in the Spanish language daily, declaring he had been present when Fuentes made “one of his racist remarks.” He called on Fuentes to “apologize” to the Jewish, Italian and Puerto Rican communities. Fuentes has been charged with anti-Semitic remarks since he was appointed four years ago as a principal at Public School 155 in the former Ocean Hill-Brownsville district in Brooklyn. The four Jewish organizations renewed the charge when Fuentes was named to his new post on July 19. Fuentes responded to the Monserrat denunciation with a statement that he had sought the district one post to “serve all of the individuals and groups which make up one of New York’s most heterogeneous school districts.”