Social Science Exhibit Causes Stir at Pali Elementary Science Fair

By MATTHEW MEYER | Reporter

Alocal arm of the Los Angeles Unified School District is investigating an incident at Palisades Charter Elementary School this week, after a fifth-grade project was barred from participating in the school’s science fair.

The project was a social science investigation by classmates Éva Engel-Simpson, daughter of a respected journalist, and Natalie Kruglyak, whose parents are leading scientists at UCLA.

The duo created a survey for their peers to test the hypothesis that exposure to the news makes fifth graders “feel stressed.”

The survey originally asked whether a student’s parents talk about the news around them, if their parents seem upset by the news and whether the student themselves ever feels upset about the news.

It also asked if the student’s parents voted for the same candidate in the past election.

Principal Joan Ingle said that the girls’ teacher brought her the survey to confirm it was appropriate for fifth-graders on Thursday, Feb. 2.

Though Ingle told the Palisadian-Post that she’s never rejected a project, she determined that the survey “wasn’t kid-centered [and] wasn’t scientific.”

She also worried that the project was “too negative.”

Éva’s mother, Mariam Engel, told the Post that she reached out to Ingle that Thursday in hopes of helping the students modify their project, but didn’t feel that the principal’s response was clear or urgent enough given the science fair was only a few days away.

She said the girls worked hard on the project, and that they learned important lessons about collecting and analyzing data using quantitative tools like Excel.

Mariam helped her daughter modify the survey, removing the question about how parents voted, and asking whether parents talk about their news “with” the student rather than “around” them.

She dropped off the revised survey for Ingle’s review on Friday, Feb. 3, but said she never heard back from the principal directly. At that point, she helped the girls conduct the survey off-campus, under the impression that the project could still be displayed if they collected data elsewhere.

She also wrote to LAUSD’s West District about her frustrations communicating with the school. The girls compiled their data and finished their display over the weekend.

When Mariam arrived with her daughter to set up their project the following Monday, she told the Post that Ingle met them at the fair’s door and did not allow the project inside. The uncomfortable confrontation has left Mariam concerned that Ingle rejected the project in response to her decision to contact the district.

Ingle denied that her decision to not allow the project inside was retaliatory, instead referring to her initial reasons for objecting to the survey.

She said that their interaction outside the fair was “frank” but the incident shouldn’t overshadow the overall success of the science fair.

Engel has lodged a formal complaint with Erick Hansen, director of Local District West for LAUSD. She noted that she’s never had a negative interaction with Ingle previous to the fair.