An uber-woke, $65K-a-year New York City private school will allow “emotionally distressed” students to skip class the day after the election next week — in an eyebrow-raising move that drew ire from parents, including comedian Jerry Seinfeld, whose kids once attended the elite institution.
The upcoming presidential election “may be a high-stakes and emotional time” for students, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School administration wrote in a newsletter to parents titled “Election Day support.”
Students will not be assigned homework on Election Day and there will not be any assessments on Wednesday, the email obtained by The Post explained.
Kids will also be allowed “excused absences” on Wednesday or whenever the election results are announced if they feel unable to “fully engage in classes,” according to the note, which was first reported by The New York Times.
Psychologists would be available during the week to provide counseling.
The announcement prompted eye-rolls from parents, including Seinfeld, 70, who told the Times that decisions like this are what forced him and his wife to transfer their own son out of the out-of-touch prep school, nestled in the leafy and affluent Bronx suburb of Riverdale.
“This is why the kids hated it. What kind of lives have these people led that makes them think that this is the right way to handle young people?” he scoffed.
“To encourage them to buckle. This is the lesson they are providing, for ungodly sums of money.”
Seinfeld’s youngest son, Shepherd, was transferred to Riverdale Country School in the eighth grade, according to the Times.
Another former Fieldston parent, Dr. Logan Levkoff, echoed these concerns — saying the school wasn’t adequately preparing children for life.
“To say that this is absurd is a gross understatement,” Levkoff told The Post.
“Young people need to engage in thoughtful debate, learn to deal with disappointment, and develop resilience. Catering to the ‘trigger warning’ generation is not a successful strategy for life or adulthood. And it’s certainly not the way to develop bipartisanship politically or in our friendships,” she insisted.
The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, which positions itself as a bastion of cultural diversity, also recently came under fire for not supporting Jewish students and parents in the face of antisemitic bullying and graffiti following Hamas’ sneak attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Many fed-up parents now see this decision as a disturbing extension of its response to the Israel-Hamas war — and have accused the elite institution of prioritizing its own liberal political anxieties over the well-being and development of its students.
“To me this is the school just being consistent with their stance on Jews and non-Jews,” one current Fieldston parent told The Post.
“Fieldston is so arrogantly sure who the good guy is and who the bad guy is,” the parent fumed.
“Israel is the bad guy all year round and Palestine is the good guy and now they are clearly saying that Trump is the bad guy and Kamala is the good guy in this election and they are worried about what will happen if Trump wins. They’re apparently more worried about a Trump win as far as the kids go than they are about the rampant antisemitism on campus.”
A mother of a Fieldston student who did not want to be identified raged that the school had complained about Jewish students wearing yellow ribbons on Oct. 7 this year but are going overboard when it comes to coddling students over the outcome of the election.
She likened it to being a “tacit endorsement” of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, 60, over her Republican rival former President Donald Trump, 78.
“It was a sh–show last year when it came to antisemitism at the school,” she recalled.
“But my frustration now is that this is such a tacit endorsement of Kamala and further evidence of the left-leaning groupthink that we’re all supposed to go along with at the school.
“They’re basically endorsing Kamala and telling us that you expect our kids to fall apart. I agree with what Jerry Seinfeld said. It’s not giving our kids credit for any emotional maturity. I told my daughter ‘You’re going to school no matter what happens,’ and she said, ‘Of course I am. I don’t even care what happens or who wins. They (the two candidates) both suck.’”
The Ethical Culture Fieldston School did not respond to The Post’s request for a comment.
The privileged school was founded in 1878 by the son of a rabbi.
Known for catering to the offspring of celebrities and Manhattan elite, the picturesque Riverdale campus boasts an impressive roster of alums that includes Eli Zabar and Diane Arbus.
However, over the last year, the school became a seedbed of anti-Israel hate in the wake of the war in the Gaza Strip.
In May, two seniors wearing keffiyehs wrote “Free Palestine” in chalk on the brick wall above the Bronx campus’ front entrance.
The incident prompted administrators to host a “listening session” with parents, including “Jewish affinity group parents,” The Post reported at the time.
“The biggest issue is that when things pop up around antisemitism, they are not taken as seriously as issues like racism or homophobia,” a source claimed.
“They only care about the impact that something involving race or homosexuality has on students. It’s a big double standard, like antisemitism doesn’t matter as much.”
“This pro-Palestine, pro-Hamas stuff is not just coming from the students, it’s coming from the teachers as well,” added one former parent.
Later that month, the daughter of “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin celebrated her graduation from Fieldston by posting a scathing, anti-Israel message on her Snapchat.
“Now that I got my diploma: FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE,” Paloma Hostin wrote in a Snapchat post obtained and shared on X by StopAntisemitism.
“And to all the mfs who screenshotted my stories and showed them to your parents trying to get me suspended or expelled, look at me now,” she continued.
Hostin’s rep did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for a comment on the school’s Election Day plans.
Seinfeld’s oldest son, Julian, graduated from Fieldston in 2021.
In her celebratory graduation post, mom Jessica Seinfeld described the school as a “joyful, caring (and complicated) place.”
