After a Fire, a Tension Between Two Schools

On Monday, the site was still emitting a faint sickly smell of burned rubber.

It has been more than two weeks since six students who do not attend P.S. 29 — including two 16-year-old students from the nearby Saint Ann’s School — set fire to a playground slide during a stunt intended, fire marshals said, for a YouTube video.

The students fled the scene, and within an hour the blaze, which occurred at 12:51 a.m. on May 8, was put out by firefighters. But the community ire has not abated.

Tensions remain between some private- and public-school parents over a perception of privilege, after some families whose children were accused of damaging the playground contributed $50,000 to repair it.

Other parents from both schools — considered two of the best in Brooklyn and separated by 14 blocks — see the criminal act as less about class and more about “teenagers being teenagers.” But everyone at P.S. 29 and Saint Ann’s agrees: the fire has generated a powerful lesson in responsibility.

“The community is still hurting and the children are still hurting, and that’s my primary concern,” said Melanie Woods, the principal at P.S. 29. “The kids who did this were clearly misguided. An apology is necessary.”

The two 16-year-old boys from Saint Ann’s, Bairn Sweeney and Max Layton, surrendered to fire marshals and are being tried as adults, and four more students were arrested, said James Long, a Fire Department spokesman. Because they are minors, their names were not released, but at least two are also believed to be students at Saint Ann’s, people with knowledge of the investigation said.

Mr. Layton and Mr. Sweeney have been charged with criminal mischief, arson and reckless endangerment and face a maximum sentence of seven years, according to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. Both students, whose next scheduled court date is June 13, pleaded not guilty and were released on bail.

Mr. Layton is the son of Charles Layton, the president of the Canadian company Alliance Films, which distributed the Oscar-winning movie “The King’s Speech.”

Saint Ann’s is considered one of the city’s most prestigious private schools, with tuition of about $28,000 a year for high school. P.S. 29 draws students from families with a range of incomes, including upper-middle-class parents in the neighborhood.

“People here seek community service, some degree of standing up and taking the blame, rather than setting up some $50,000 fund,” said Gary Dovey, 50, of Cobble Hill, who was collecting his twins from prekindergarten at P.S. 29 on Monday.

Mr. Dovey added: “I think it’s a good start, but this really isn’t an issue of money in the end. It’s about the process of law, and it not being brushed under the carpet and a plea deal.”

Mr. Layton’s lawyer, Samuel Gregory, put together the $50,000 fund, the amount estimated to replace the damaged equipment, which he said would be sent to Out2Play, the nonprofit organization that installed the playground in November.

Mr. Gregory said that he did not think the $50,000 would have any influence on the criminal case, and that “it wasn’t done for that purpose.” It was done, he said, because parents took responsibility for their children’s actions.

“People can scream and yell and they won’t have their playground,” he said. “This is the quickest way to get their playground back.”

Mr. Long of the Fire Department said that the students had intended to slide through a ring of fire, but that the rubbing alcohol they used ignited the synthetic material.

“The amount of damage and level of danger and what could have happened is not a prank,” Mr. Long said. “It could have extended to the building. It got out of their control, and luckily nobody was hurt.”

Some students at P.S. 29 took the incident personally. “I think the people who did it are really mean,” said Asa Khalid, a first grader. Her brother, Saadiq, who is in the third grade, was upset he could not climb on the monkey bars.

Asa and Saadiq’s mother, Risa McFarlane-West, said, “When I first heard about it, I thought it was a parent of a family who had a disgruntlement with P.S. 29 — that their kid didn’t get in to the school or something.”

The fire has been the subject of recent news reports. After learning that it involved students who attended Saint Ann’s, and that their parents had paid $50,000, Ms. McFarlane-West said, “Unfortunately, if you raise your kids to do things like that, that’s the price you pay.”

Saint Ann’s school officials would not say if disciplinary action had been taken against the students involved.

“I was dismayed at the incident as a member of the Brooklyn community, and I can easily understand why parents at the school and the children were upset by it,” the school’s headmaster, Vincent Tompkins, said. “I have called the principal at P.S. 29 to express that.”

One Saint Ann’s parent, Neil Okeson, 55, of Ditmas Park, whose daughter is in the sixth grade, said, “Yes, there are going to be class judgments,” but added that any school is “going to have problems.”

Mr. Tompkins said he was dismayed by suggestions that the Saint Ann’s families were trying to buy their children out of trouble.

“We’re a school about opening minds, about celebrating the arts, about teaching young people,” he said. “And I think it’s unfortunate in a moment like this that there are those who would prefer to play off of long-held stereotypes about Saint Ann’s and other private schools.”