A long-overdue apology to our high school principal

“Hello Mr. Klein. Jonathan Raskin here. On behalf of the class of ‘69, I want to officially apologize.”

It’s October 2023. Like me, Jon Raskin loves to get together with our classmates in New York City, where we attended the High School of Music & Art, a public magnet school that drew young musicians and visual artists from across the city. We talk about our lives in and out of the arts, our retirement plans, our grandchildren.

At that reunion, our 54th, we’ve just learned that our principal, Richard A. Klein, was alive and well, aged 93. Since he couldn’t travel to be with us, we made him a video.

When Raskin finished speaking, classmate Tina Dunkley, a well-known visual artist and curator, added: “Hello [Mr.] Klein. The last time I saw you [at an earlier reunion], you looked at my tag and said ‘Oh my God, the class of 1969. You gave me such a headache.’ And here we are, just loving ourselves and loving you ... Thank you so much.”

Most of us remember no other principal, even though Klein took the job in the fall of 1968, our senior year. Perhaps that’s because this was the most eventful time in our lives, a year that would forever shape us, and him.

We had completely rejected the idea of authority, and many of us believed, as only teenagers can, that revolution was at hand. In the spring of 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson abandoned his quest for another term in office, and assassins murdered Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy; we were convinced the chaotic political climate could provide an opening for radical ideas of love and empowerment.

In other words, we were a handful.

In that environment, Richard Klein had successfully navigated the complicated politics of the New York City school system to become our principal. When I talked with him in June 2024, not long before he passed away, he recounted a casually racist remark by a white colleague also competing for a principal position in Harlem, where our school was. “I speak Swahili, and that’s why they should choose me,” the man joked.

But “that’s what they were not interested in,” our principal tells me, emphasizing his own commitment to authentic community engagement and what today might be called antiracism.

After our class sent Mr. Klein that video, I knew I wanted to talk with him about his experiences as an educator, and how he had handled the challenges of disciplining a class of smart alecks and budding revolutionaries. I had been student government president when he took over as principal. He remembered, even if I didn’t, exactly how I’d greeted him that September day: “Welcome to the Titanic, Captain!”

Turning 39 during that first winter leading Music & Art, Klein was the youngest administrator to become a New York City principal. He had been an art department chairman and an artist. Throughout our senior year, we made life hell for him. Whenever student leaders wanted to get our classmates into the streets, they threw false fire alarms. This seemed to happen several times a month. Finally, as the year ground down to graduation, we took over the cafeteria. Twice.

It wasn’t until I talked with the principal this June, 55 years later, that I fully understood his dilemma during those events. As with all new principals, Klein was on probation for his first three years. So, when his supervisor insisted that he “call the police and get [the students] out” of the lunchroom, it wasn’t a request, it was an order.

I’m not exactly sure if any of my classmates were arrested during these actions. I believe that some of them were briefly held, then released. I was among those taking part in the second “occupation” and I found my way to the streets without interacting with any cops. When he remembers that time, Richard Klein says “I wasn’t into arresting students.”

A few weeks later, we graduated, receiving our diplomas in the hallowed precincts of Carnegie Hall. Someone handed out black armbands. What were we protesting? Vietnam, inequality, authority ... everything. And what of Mr. Klein? After we subjected him to trial by fire in his inaugural year, what was next for him?

After settling into his new job, which also made him principal of our sister school, the High School of Performing Arts, Klein began a single-minded campaign to bring the two schools together under one roof at New York’s premier arts complex, Lincoln Center.

Housing a secondary school for the arts had been the dream of those who created Lincoln Center, but something always got in the way, like New York City’s near-bankruptcy and dim prospects for federal help in the 1970s. (Source of the famous New York Daily News headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”)

As he struggled to move forward with the project, Klein learned that the father of one of his students was a police supervisor who had the ability to close the streets around the prospective site of the school. Once he had a street-closing agreement in hand, Klein got buy-in from top elected officials in Manhattan and New York City, as well as Marie LaGuardia, the widow of Music & Art’s founder, Fiorello LaGuardia, the colorful New York mayor in the 1930s and ‘40s.

The result: the 1973 groundbreaking for the new school became a triumphant publicity stunt — even though it took 11 more years before the school would rise to welcome its first students.

While Klein fought to create a new school, something extraordinary happened: the director Alan Parker’s musical film “Fame” became a global hit. Based on the High School of Performing Arts, “Fame” suggested that kids attending a free New York City school could be on the brink of careers in the arts.

All these years later, the principal is still amused that young people from around the world, mistaking the film for a documentary, wrote to the characters from the movie, letters that ended up on his desk.

At that time, Klein tells me, “There were only five schools around the country that had [full time, immersive] arts programs. We formed a network of specialized schools, and that lit a fire around the world.”

After the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts opened at Lincoln Center in 1984, Klein sought new challenges. Because of his visibility in the arts education, he was asked in 1987 to become founding provost of a school in Miami, the New World School of the Arts. It is still an arts conservatory for high school students, offering a direct path to a college program centered on dance, theater, music and the visual arts. Klein led the institution for seven years.

A three-year stint in Washington, D.C., followed. There, he helped guide the faltering Duke Ellington School of the Arts to stability.

When I spoke with Klein in June 2024 over Zoom, his wife of 70 years, Rhoda, hovered in the background, occasionally dipping into a scrapbook to pull out newspaper clippings about her husband, or to occasionally prompt him with facts or details.

He died a little less than three weeks after our conversation.

Before we’d ended our discussion, Richard and Rhoda both wanted to emphasize the joy they’d felt when they received our tribute eight months earlier. “The best part [of being in touch with your class],” he said, “was receiving the video you children made.”

Then he caught himself and laughed. “Children!” And, for a moment, I felt like a 71-year-old kid, anxious about being called to the principal’s office, but put at ease by his wide smile and the twinkle in his eye.