NEW ORLEANS – The principal of an alternative school who was suspended after photos of him surrounded by Confederate battle flags at Lee Circle surfaced online has been fired.
“Nicholas Dean will not return as the principal or be associated with Crescent Leadership Academy,” the school’s board wrote in a statement. “We will continue to work in the best interest of all students and cannot further comment on employment matters.”
The decision to remove Dean from his position at Crescent Leadership Academy came the same day a video showing him wearing a ring associated with white nationalism and Nazism appeared on YouTube.
The video, posted late Thursday morning, shows Dean being interviewed ahead of a protest May 7 at Lee Circle, days before the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed from its pedestal.
Dean, principal of Crescent Leadership Academy, confirmed to The New Orleans Advocate earlier this week that he was told not to report to work for the “next week or two” after the earlier photos of him appeared online.
“The children of New Orleans should be able to trust that educators value their humanity, respect them as individuals, and will treat them with a sense of fairness and equality,” Recovery School District Superintendent Kunjan Narechania said in a prepared statement. Educators are role models, and they should prioritize this sacred role above all else. Any educator who is unwilling to prioritize and respect the humanity of all children has no place in schools.
“While the circumstances surrounding this decision are regrettable and damaging, I appreciate the board making a swift decision so that school can move forward and so that our community can continue to heal,” Narechania continued.
Crescent Leadership Academy serves students in seventh through 12th grade who have been expelled from other schools because of behavioral problems.
Dean previously told The Advocate that the photos of him at Lee Circle hours before the statue of Lee was taken “out of context.”
He told the newspaper he was there for a few minutes as an observer and wanted to witness the statue come down. He said he left after he saw the equipment to do so was not in place.
“I went to see history in the making,” Dean told The Advocate. “And now I am history,” adding that the online post in which the photo was shared was “fake-news character assassination.”
The image drew a sharp rebuke online with people asking how someone who runs a majority-black school for at-risk youth could be trusted now.
"Why is this man, a principal of a school of black and minority students, advocating for monuments of hate?" asked Malik Bartholomew, a Dillard University employee who shared the photograph. "The men whose monuments he was supporting were members of the Confederacy and they were against black education."
In the video posted to YouTube, Dean, who identifies himself as Nick Andrews, is seen wearing two rings often associated with and the Nazi movement: a skull ring awarded to members of the SS and a German Iron Cross. He also held a shield and small American flag.
Dean also appeared on an episode of the “Guerrilla Radio” podcast on a few days earlier. The podcast, which calls itself “The official podcast of The Revolutionary Conservative” was recorded before the so-called “Battle of New Orleans” on May 7 at Lee Circle took place.
While the show’s host focused mostly outright false stories about the demonstrations around the removal of the four Confederate monuments, including claims that “thousands of Anti-Fa” were bussed into the city in military fashion to tear down the monuments themselves or that thousands of people are murdered in New Orleans every year, Dean made observations about what he sees as an educator in New Orleans.
“I’ve actually taken this to my students to get a lively debate and some of them say no, some of them say yes,” Dean said when asked about his student’s opinion on the taking down of Confederate monuments. “The students seem as mixed as the regular population is.”
When Dean was asked directly if he is a white supremacist or member of the KKK or any similar groups, he outright told the show’s host that he is not, but said some may disagree with his definition of white supremacy.
Dean was featured in a WWL-TV story in May 2016 in which he noted that 100 percent of his seniors the year before graduated, despite trying circumstances.
“At any given point we could have 25 percent of our students who are homeless,” Dean said at the time, adding that he hoped one day his school would be able to offer housing to students in need of shelter and safety in a city plagued by violence.
“Last week I know of a student who lost somebody in their family, so even as of last week and at any given time we may have one or two students walking around with bullet holes in them,” Dean said.
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