School of ‘stars’ on principal #3
AN ICONIC Bronx junior high school that produced celebrities like Penny Marshall, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren has been thrown into turmoil.
Junior High School 80 on E. Mosholu Parkway, part of the city’s high-profile effort to turn around 26 failing schools, will likely have three principals this year.
The city removed beloved Principal Lovey Rivera in March, and her replacement is slated to be out in the coming weeks, the Daily News has learned.
Parents say the leadership crisis is taking its toll on morale.
“I was very angry, because (Rivera) was the gel holding everything together,” said Cecilia Donovan, president of the parents association. “It’s extremely political, and it’s not helping our children.”
Rivera, who had been at the school since 2003, was replaced about three weeks ago by Lauren Reiss, who was principal of Intermediate School 166 before it closed last year.
Now education officials say they plan to replace Reiss in the coming weeks. They have not named a replacement.
“We believe a new principal will help this school improve, and during our search we have made sure the school has had a strong interim princi- pal,” said city Education Department spokesman Frank Thomas.
Parents and students, who staged a protest last week, question why officials would put a principal in place for such a short period.
“We had a principal and she failed, and then we got a new principal and she failed, too — they closed her school,” said soft-spoken sixth-grader Anny Florentino, 11.
The school is among the 26 that Mayor Bloomberg announced during his State of the City address that he wants to close and reopen after replacing half the staff.
It’s a cruel twist of fate for the 650-seat school, once a training ground for a slew of famous alumni. They were dubbed “The Parkway All-stars” — for the green expanse across from the school where they used to hang out in the late 1950s — at a colorful reunion 30 years ago. “I have my yearbook from kindergarten,” said Marshall, who played the character Laverne in the hit television show “Laverne & Shirley.”
“It was a big part of my life,” she told The News from her home in California. “Public schools in New York were great back then.”