Jewish Teachers Want out Fuentes’ Appointment Breeds ‘real Fear’ on Lower E. Side, School Board Memb

“There’s real fear on the Lower East Side. Jewish teachers call to tell me they’re scared and want out,” Mrs. Natalie Schutzer, the only Jewish member of the Community School Board in District One, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today when asked to comment on the appointment of Luis Fuentes as the District’s school superintendent. Fuentes, former principal of PS 155 in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district of Brooklyn, has been accused of gross anti-Jewish prejudice. He was elected to the $37,000-a-year post on July 12 by the unanimous vote of six members of the school board.

“What the newspapers neglected to report was that there are nine board members,” Mrs. Schutzer told the JTA. Three did not participate in the July 12 vote. They are herself, Mrs. Antoinette DiMauro and Albert Zachter, who was the only other Jewish member of the board. Zachter was “dumped,” Mrs. Schutzer said. She explained that the board had voted him out recently because he allegedly moved out of the district though he retains an address on the Lower East Side.

Mrs. Schutzer said she and Mrs. DiMauro did not attend the school board meeting the night Fuentes was appointed because the screenings for the post were held during the day when they both had to be at work. “There were six candidates for the job and they (the board) picked the worst of the lot,” she said. She described the six who voted for Fuentes as “militant extremists” and herself and the other two members as “moderates.” She claimed that Mrs. DiMauro was struck on the head in the course of a recent board meeting. She said school board and executive board meetings were being held in areas “too dangerous for cabs.”

Mrs. Schutzer contended that she was being kept in the dark about school board events but said she intends to continue attending meetings “as long as I am still on the board.” She recalled that the present chairman of the District One School Board, Georgina Hoggard who, like Fuentes, is Puerto Rican, had said of Fuentes’ candiacy for the superintendent’s post four years ago, “He’ll be appointed over my dead body.” Apparently, she said, “lots of things have changed on the Lower East Side since then.”