NEW YORK — Brooklyn Friends School teachers and staff could vote this week to authorize a strike as the progressive Quaker institution continues its efforts to disband their union through policy set by the Trump administration. 

The recently unionized staff opened a strike authorization vote Monday after Head of School Crissy Cáceres refused to withdraw the school’s petition to the National Labor Relations Board proactively challenging the staff’s right to bargain collectively. 

“I’m genuinely frightened this action will actually bring the school to an end,” English teacher Rachel Mazor said of the BFS petition. 

“It’s going to be a pyrrhic victory if they win, the school will not make it. And that breaks my heart.” 

In response to NY1's request for comment, the Head of School and the BFS Board of Trustees issued a statement calling on the union to discontinue the vote, which they said pulled focus away from the students.

"This kind of fractiousness and tension is detrimental to the culture we want to maintain at BFS," the statement reads. "The children should be our paramount focus right now, not a labor dispute."

These concerns also appear in a letter sent to families this week, the head of school defended the petition and chastised teachers for considering to strike. 

“The thought of a strike is scary,”  Cáceres wrote. “We sincerely hope that our moral center as educators, who have an ethical code to guide and protect children, will lead our collective way.” 

The letter angered several union members and supporters, both for its claims to the moral high ground and language that they say misrepresented their leadership. 

“I felt physically ill when I read it,” Mazor said. “To suggest  that my desire to stand up for the rights of myself and my colleagues is immoral, it’s so unethical and deplorable.”

At the heart of the debate is the BFS teachers and staff's vote in 2019 to join the United Auto Workers Local 2110, a union that represents workers from multiple industries.

In both the letter and an FAQ document issued to parents, BFS refers to UAW leadership as separate from BFS colleagues, which some parents interpreted to mean the decision to strike would lie with union organizers in Detroit or the New York City chapter. 

But Mazor said the union leadership the school is refusing to meet with are actually the teachers and staff it employs.

“It had a lot of inaccuracies,” Mazor said of the letter. “They have alternate facts.” 

Cáceres also used this argument, that UAW leadership and BFS colleagues were separate groups, to dismiss recent efforts from three former Board of Trustee members to negotiate a stand down through a mitigator in exchange for the school’s withdrawal of the NLRB petition.

“To be clear, the School has no intention of withdrawing the petition,” Cáceres wrote. “Brooklyn Friends School has a right to know whether and how federal law applies to the School.” 

BFS union members have until Sunday night to issue their vote on whether or not to strike, they said. 

Should the authorization be approved, the BFS teachers will ask once more for the school to withdraw its petition, which argues third-party representation limits Brooklyn Friends' ability to practice its Quaker values by honoring “the 'individual’s inner light.”

Several parents told NY1 they support the union’s right to strike but hope the school will agree to mediation before it becomes necessary. 

“I don’t think a strike is good, but I think the precedent the school might set could be worse for the entire country,” Ben Rubin said. 

“There’s enough hypocrisy in the world,” he added. “I don’t need it in my kid’s school.” 

Staceyann Chin, a poet activist and Brooklyn Friends mother, said she cannot place blame alone at the feet of Cáceres, the school’s first head of school to be a woman of color, who suddenly found herself tasked with educating children amid a global pandemic. 

“I understand that Crissy is in a particularly difficult situation,” Chin said. “She is the head of a school in crisis.”

But neither can Chin support any methods that would restrict the rights of teachers and school workers who take such good care of her daughter.

“There’s no easy answer, but there is a right answer,” Chin said. “BFS, at the heart of its mandate, shouldn’t be trying to bust the union.” 

But Macon Jessop, a current BFS parent and former Board of Trustee, raised concerns over what the conflict between union members and administration was doing to the students.  

“Having that kind of stress around them is not the best thing for the kids,” Jessop said. “I hope that we remember that they are reason BFS is in existence.”

Mazor, an English teacher, relied on Sophocles’ “Antigone” to explain why she needs to see greater flexibility from school leadership, whom she compared to the despotic patriarch Creon. 

“A rigid reed will break in the wind,” Mazor said. “Creon doesn’t come to a good end. He loses everything he loves.”