High School Assistant Principal Reassigned For Appearing In Trey Songz Video
Schools will never not be weird about popular music; witness, for instance, the contest-winning California high school that recently turned down a $10,000 grant because it came with a Macklemore appearance. And now we get another example: A Long Island high school assistant principal who’s basically lost her job because of a two-second appearance in a mildly rauncy rap&B video.
The video for “Best Friend,” a song by the rapper J.R. and the R&B star Trey Songz, has a fairly standard rap-video setup: A middle-aged couple goes on vacation and inexplicably hires J.R. to house-sit. J.R. proceeds to invite Trey Songz and a battalion of video chicks to have a big, nasty party. One of the two people in that couple turned out to be Esther Adler-O’Keefe, assistant principal of Long Island’s Southampton High School, as NBC reports. Her role in the video is pretty minimal. In the intro, she smiles and chews gum and kisses J.R. on the cheek and says one line. Then, at the end, she sees the sort of partying that’s been going on, and she silently fumes. Observe:
She threw a beach ball at J.R.’s head! She clearly disapproves! Still, superintendent Scott Farina says that the school district was “unhappy” with Alder-O’Keefe appearing in the video. And now she’s been moved to a different job, in which she’ll oversee “a variety of academic support services throughout the district.” Maybe they’re afraid she’ll hire J.R. as a substitute teacher? And he’ll throw another crazy party in the school? I hope she throws a beach ball at that superintendent’s head.