This story is part of “Faces of the dead,” an ongoing series exploring the lives of Americans who have died from the novel coronavirus.
Romain listened to Thousand sob over the phone last June as he learned he’d failed the Regents Exams required for graduation in New York. She let him walk at commencement anyway, he recalled, telling him she knew he could pass if he just kept trying.
She FaceTimed him this January with a big smile to tell him he’d finally done it.
She died last month.
The loss made little sense to those who loved Romain, who at age 36 became the first New York City Public Schools employee to die after contracting covid-19. It made 20-year-old Thousand wish schools had shut down earlier, though how Romain got the virus is not clear.
“I know that school’s never going to be the same,” Thousand said of Brooklyn Democracy Academy, which has an enrollment of about 200 and serves students who have struggled and fallen behind elsewhere. “It’s never gonna be the same. I don’t think I’m ever going to go back up there.”
New York City started keeping students home on March 16, four days after officials say Romain last reported to her school and amid growing pressure to take drastic measures against the spread of the coronavirus. Leaders around the country have been reluctant to close schools in large part because they provide a crucial support system to the country’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged young people — a role Romain exemplified.
Lucinda Mendez remembers meeting with Romain about six months into her tenure as principal and watching as student after student popped by with questions not confined to academics. They came in needing a Metro card or asking for water or anxious to tell Romain about something that had recently happened to them.
“And she always made time for all — including her staff, but what always stays with me is the way she treated her kids,” said Mendez, the director of transfer schools for New Visions for Public Schools.
“They were her kids,” she said, “as they are for many of us.”
Julia Forman, who works with transfer school leaders at New Visions, was in Romain’s office when a young woman, an undocumented immigrant whom Romain had helped out of an abusive situation, dropped by to pick up her diploma. She was hoping to become a U.S. citizen.
Romain started crying after she left the room, Forman said, knowing what the young woman had been through.
Faces of the dead
The principal shared with students her own story of emigrating from Trinidad as a teenager and growing up low-income. Raised by a single mother who came to New York in search of a better life for her kids, Romain fell in love with art class at her public high school, according to her former classmate and longtime friend Mohamed Q. Amin.
Romain and Amin spent the summer after graduation going to museums: Romain loved to linger at the Egyptian history exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reading all of the placards.
She worked her way through college as a hairdresser and started out as an art teacher, Amin said. Working in education was an all-consuming passion for her — “Dez-Ann was never out of school,” he said — and in 2017, she became principal at Brooklyn Democracy Academy.
It’s not clear whether Romain had an underlying medical condition that may have made her more vulnerable to covid-19, which can strike people of all ages but tends to be more serious among the elderly. She died on March 23 after being hospitalized, according to officials.
She’s survived by a sister who did not respond to inquiries and has not felt ready to speak with reporters, Amin said.
The sister struggled at times to speak during a March 26 vigil for Romain that had to be held over Zoom.
“Today we are celebrating rather than mourning,” she said. Her voice shook.
Thousand wasn’t always a fan of Romain — “rocky” is how he describes their early relationship — but he respected her all along, he said. He knew she meant it when she threatened to, say, keep him off the basketball court for skipping class.
“There was a whole lot of tough love, but that’s all she knew,” Thousand said. He saw that right from the start, when a teacher sent him to Romain’s office when she was assistant principal.
Romain was used to doling out stern advice to much older students working to catch up, Thousand said, she warned him to start behaving better. “You’re not 15 years old,” she said, not realizing that at 16 he was one of her youngest charges.
They laughed and laughed.
Thousand, who plans to attend Niagara County Community College this fall, says he cried on his bedroom floor when he heard that “Ms. Romain” was gone. Romain was more than a principal. She was his cheerleader, his “second mother,” his after-school tutor.
For a while, when Brooklyn Democracy Academy was missing an English teacher, Thousand said, she even took on English class duties — and that was the year he passed.
