The leader of one of New York’s most elite private schools has left his post after an academic year marked by infighting among parents, students, faculty and alumni over the war in Gaza.
Joe Algrant stepped down on Thursday as the head of school at Ethical Culture Fieldston School after a two-year tenure, “to pursue other personal and professional goals and opportunities,” according to an email sent to the school community by the Fieldston board of trustees. Mr. Algrant, who said in the email that the school “has the strongest and most vital mission, purpose, and values of any school I have known,” declined to comment.
This spring, Fieldston was torn apart by pro-Palestinian student activism, including graffiti on the high school that drew widespread public attention. Parents complained that school administrators did not do enough to bring factions together or to articulate and enforce rules around activism, antisemitism and Islamophobia.
The friction at Fieldston was mirrored at private schools across the city. Mr. Algrant’s departure comes less that two months after the board of the Collegiate School, another elite private school in New York, announced that its head of school would depart, after an internal report found “disquieting problems of religious and cultural bias” at the school.
Fieldston was founded in the late 19th century on principles of social justice. Today, it serves a diverse student body of 1,700 on campuses on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and in Riverdale in the Bronx. A focus on personal identity is baked into the school experience. In the fourth and fifth grades, students are enrolled in a program in which they opt into groups, with choices that include “African-American, Black & African diaspora, Asian & Pacific Islander, Latino/a/x/e, Multiracial, Jewish, White or General Discussion Group,” according to an email from a school spokeswoman.
Annual tuition is more than $65,000.
Fieldston will now be run by Kyle Wilkie-Glass, the chief executive officer, with the lower, middle and upper school principals, along with other administrators, reporting to him.