You are evil, Mrs. Grinch!
Debra Mastriano, the manager of PS 166 on the Upper West Side, once forbade a kindergartner from eating a piece of birthday cake from her takeout lunch because she thought he was overweight, according to a letter written by 64 tired parents and obtained from La Poste .
In fact, the tall, thin educator doesn’t have a great place for snacking in general, sometimes banning students from eating treats from their lunchboxes and even confiscating Department of Education-approved potato chips at the cafeteria and hiding them, insiders told the Post.
“He was so grumpy,” said one educator.
In another bout of snacking, Mastriano, 66, was photographed standing over a student in the lunchroom ordering him to give up a donut he’d brought from home.
And after ordering a freshman to fire her candy bar, the headmistress was faced with a staff meeting in October. She defended her actions, saying that she was “once” and that she “wanted to[ed] that they are healthy, they want[ed] May they have a good day. He was a kid once,” according to meeting notes seen by The Post.
The parents’ letter to District Superintendent Kamar Samuels detailed the principal’s alleged “pattern of toxicity” and called him “unfit” to run the school. Parents and teachers also cast a vote of no confidence in Mastriano on Dec. 1 with 28 educators and more than 73 current and former parents voting against her. Eighteen staff members abstained but none voted for her.
Mastriano has instituted bizarre punishments, including forcing kids to have lunch standing up last year if they spoke in the cafeteria or making them circle around outside during recess, said Lucio Verani, who has a son in the third grade and another college graduate. school.
Teachers said Mastriano micromanages them, tearing down bulletin boards she doesn’t like, directing the colored paper students can use, and even issuing an edict banning pencils because she doesn’t want kids to use them. Instead, they should use markers.
“I don’t know how many T-shirts he’s destroyed,” a parent said of his daughter.
The Post reported that bags of unused artwork and school supplies were repeatedly tossed onto the sidewalk at the end of the school year.
Mastriano has run the school since 2012. While test scores have improved, morale has plummeted, with around 100 teachers and staff leaving, according to an account provided by parents to The Post.
A departing teacher sent a farewell email to staff last year, which was seen by The Post, saying she hoped ‘you can leave too as it’s not worth it’.
Only 14 percent of teachers said they trust the principal in the most recent school survey, compared to a citywide average of 86 percent, according to DOE statistics.
Educators told The Post that Mastriano also held racist views, including assuming that the school’s Black and Hispanic students all lived in the NYCHA building on the same block of West 89th Street as PS 166.
“I wish someone would level” the building, Mastriano said, according to the letter to Samuels. “It just causes dysfunction. Except when they rebuild it, there should also be good role models, so they can learn good behavior.
An April school teachers’ union survey seen by The Post found that 70% of respondents had heard racist and derogatory comments about students on the social housing site, and 93% said the remarks came from the director.
The letter also stated that Mastriano had said the school was getting “too Asian. i hate asians.
Mom Daphne Vigo said Mastriano took aim at her son, who is of Puerto Rican descent, by yelling at him last year when he was in fourth grade and asking, “Who lives with you? Do you also have a father at home? Is your mother on drugs?
She said her son is now in another school and that he had “never touched a drug in my life”.
Another parent said Mastriano freaked out in March after her 10-year-old son accidentally urinated on the bathroom floor, screaming and screaming in front of a desk as he sat and talked to an assistant director and school counselor.
“He says, ‘Mom, I was so scared. I don’t know what I did to make her so mad at me,” her mother said.
Parents said he targeted special education students, even asking teachers to lower their grades.
“It’s his way of saying we don’t want you here,” said a relative.
Mastriano and the DOE did not respond to requests for comment.
Samuels told the parents that the allegations in the letter would be investigated.
