"It was gross. I did not want to do it," Randy Estevez, a 14-year-old eighth-grader at In-Tech Academy in the South Bronx, tells the Daily News. Estevez is referring to his detention punishment last fall, when he and another student were allegedly assigned janitorial duties on two days, with tasks including cleaning up feces. Now the Department of Education is investigating the school, but In-Tech's principal is all like whatever: "Someone's on a mission. This is so untrue," says Principal Rose Fairweather-Clunie.
Estevez claims he landed the toilet duty because his teacher said he "was behaving badly." And an unidentified source at the school says the administration had approved the corporal punishment "as being 'legal' because permission was supposedly granted by the parents." Estevez's mother tells the News, "I think it's okay. He learned his lesson. It's the only way he's going to learn. Now, next time he wants to misbehave, he'll think about the punishment and behave better."
But another mother whose son was forced to clean bathrooms says she never gave permission, and insists, "I don't agree with that punishment. It's degrading. It's not the right punishment for an educational institution. They need to find other forms of punishment." What do you think? Is toilet cleaning too harsh a punishment? Or should the detention program be expanded to create student work force chain gangs to help keep our city's streets and subways clean?
