From TEACHERS FOR CHOICE Steering Committee
3-24-21
NY Teachers For Choice completely disavows the racist statements and disrespectful actions apparently made by Stephanie Denaro in a video of her at Starbucks that has recently gone viral. The disgustingly racist comments and offensive behavior of Denaro is nothing that TEACHERS FOR CHOICE supports.
No one on our Steering Committee has ever met Denaro.
Denaro has reached out to us when we were sponsoring or supporting legal actions against the NYC DOE, and she was selected by our attorney Michael Sussman to be one of the petitioners in our case KANE vs. NYC DOE. However no one on our Steering Committee has ever met Denaro, nor has our attorney Michael Sussman met her. The lawsuit KANE vs. NYC DOE was litigated entirely virtually and did not require any of the litigants to appear in court, physically or virtually. Originally there were over 40 petitioners asking to be plaintiffs on the case, and our attorney Michael Sussman narrowed that number down to 8 final plaintiffs of his selection. KANE vs. NYC DOE was ultimately successful, and won a court-ordered stipulation ensuring all specimens collected during in-school COVID testing would not be used for anything other than getting a positive or negative COVID result, and the samples would be destroyed thereafter.
Although we do not know Ms. Denaro personally, we strongly encourage her to make a sincere public apology for her words and actions. We live in very divisive times, and such words and actions do nothing to help anyone today.
Teachers For Choice 
Did you know that Ms Denaros husband is black and so are her 2 children? The comment was ill advised. But having known many black people from work, the neighborhood and life in general I’m sad to say that I’ve seen too many young black men and women use the N word against each other in anger and in jest.
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While I understand your point that does not apply to what I saw on the video. Ms. Denaro was NOT talking to a friend or in jest, she was speaking to someone employed to assist her. That is COMPLETELY different than talkimg with friends. She must applogies sincerely immediately. Even that is not sufficient, but is a start.
Additionally since Ms. Denaro has decided to join lawsuits as a plaintiff against the NYC DOE she should recognize this can and will bring public scrutiny to her person and character. She is doing HARM to efforts she claims to support.
And I say this to anyone who supports TEACHERS FOR CHOICE — YOU MUST be very aware of how you hold and portray yourself in public. We live in an age of a million cameras around us, ALWAYS. What TfC is fighting for is BIG. We need our supporters to hold themselves to a high level of accountability otherwise you place our efforts in jeopardy. – mk
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