Bad move.
Betsy Combier
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| Jeffrey Dinowitz |
THE BRONX — State Assemblyman Jeffery Dinowitz tried to block minority students from
enrolling in a popular public elementary school — saying that he didn't want
“outsiders” coming into the kindergarten in the tony area of Riverdale,
according to a lawsuit filed by the school’s assistant principal on Monday.
The state
legislator installed his chief of staff Randi Martos in P.S. 24, located on
West 235th Street, as "part of a politically and racially motivated scheme
to prevent minorities and lower-income children from attending P.S. 24 and
other schools in the area," school administrator Manuele Verdi claimed in
the suit.
Martos was
present during the enrollment process at P.S. 24 on
at least six occasions in March and April of this year — demanding more than
the required proof of residency and violating federal privacy rights of at
least 100 students by having unauthorized access to their personal files, the
assistant principal claimed.
Verdi also
claimed that Dinowitz issued thinly veiled racial threats, saying he could tell
if children were not from Riverdale just by looking at them and “by the way
they walk, talk, and wear their pants.”
Martos
improperly intervened in the registration process, looking over students’
medical and academic records and checking their proofs of address, insisting
parents produce three pieces of identification — which exceeds the two required
under city regulations and runs afoul of the Mckinney-Vento Homeless Assistance
Act, a federal law to ensure immediate enrollment and educational stability for
homeless students, the lawsuit stated.
In
addition, it violates students' protection under HIPAA and Family Education
Rights and Privacy Act laws for non-school personnel to have access to their
records.
Dinowitz
told DNAinfo New York on Monday that Martos did play a role in student
registration but stressed that she was invited to do so by the school. He also
insisted that it was helpful for the school.
"Her
role there was brief and was more as a helper, because they need all the help
they can get, apparently," Dinowitz said.
"The
fact that Manny Verdi may not have had as active a role as he’s had in the past
in signing off on everybody, whether they should have been enrolled or not,
probably annoyed him," Dinowitz continued.
Dinowitz emphatically
denied that issues of race and class had anything to do with his office's
involvement in P.S. 24, characterizing such accusations as wildly
inappropriate.
"All
I can say is that’s really a lot of nonsense," Dinowitz said, "and
with all the racism that goes on in this world, it’s disgusting when somebody
would raise false charges of racism to feather his own nest, so to speak."
The
unusual move to include Martos in the school’s enrollment process occurred
after an annex that had housed P.S. 24’s fifth graders closed, leading to
complaints of overcrowding at the school.
Verdi said
Dinowitz denied that there was an overcrowding problem, adding that there were
too many "outsiders" coming to enroll in the school.
Verdi
argued that his school, and former principal Dr. Donna Connelly, were targeted
by Dinowitz and other politicians as the school became stronger, more diverse
and more progressive in its teaching and learning.
“We were
never much liked by some of the local politicians and accusations and innuendo
commenced soon after we started our tenure at PS 24,” Verdi wrote in a Feb. 13
letter to Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña.
“It was
clear to us, from the beginning that while we and most of the staff have only
the children’s best interest at heart and mind, local political machines had
other agendas,” added Verdi, who believes he should be granted whistleblower
status for shedding light on this enrollment practices.
Verdi
added in his letter to Farina that "Once it became public knowledge that
Dr. Connelly’s boyfriend is African American, as well as one of my children,
Mr. Dinowitz stopped visiting the school."
P.S. 24,
known as the Spuyten Duyvil school, is considered a gem in the area, with a
strong arts program and active parent body. It won a New York State academic
excellence in education award this year.
In terms
of the sheer number of applicants to this neighborhood school, it ranked No. 89
most popular of more than 880 programs, according to a 2014 analysis of
Department of Education kindergarten enrollment data.
It’s also
known for having a diverse student body, with 42 percent white students, 41
percent Hispanic, 8 percent Asian and 7 percent black. Nearly 30 percent of its
students are on free or reduced lunch.
Verdi said
he and Connelly were scapegoated by Dinowitz after the school lost the lease to
the annex. Connelly, who left in October, “chose to retire to avoid future
confrontations with local officials and school administration,” the lawsuit
read.
However,
Dinowitz maintained that Verdi and Connelly were genuinely at fault for the
loss of the lease, as he and other elected officials had told them months
before it was up to push the DOE on getting it renewed after hearing that
negotiations were going poorly.
"They
chose not to do that," Dinowitz said. "They buried their heads in the
sand, basically."
Verdi then
exacerbated the overcrowding situation by allowing students from anywhere to
attend the school despite the lack of space, according to Dinowitz.
"If
there was space, kids should be in the school. If that would help relieve
overcrowding in another school, fine," he said. "But that wasn’t the
situation. They allowed people to come into the school who lived far
away."
Following
Connelly’s departure, Superintendent Melodie Mashel told Verdi that he “cannot
stay at 24” because politicians were “intimidated” by him and that leaving
“might be a good thing,” court papers read.
“I have
been informed by several people of several meetings convened by Superintendent
Mashel where my position as AP was discussed and my removal would be a
condition for anyone wishing to be principal at PS 24,” Verdi wrote in the
letter to Fariña.
Verdi said
he is scheduled to meet with Mashel on May 4, at which point he said he expects
to be fired or disciplined.
The Department of Education referred questions to the New York City Law Department, which confirmed they will "review the complaint."
Bronx School Parents Furious Over Political Fighting and Lack of Leadership
The Department of Education referred questions to the New York City Law Department, which confirmed they will "review the complaint."
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| PS 24 |
THE BRONX — Parents at a popular public school in Riverdale want to cut through the politics and get their school back on track with a new principal, after their former principal resigned under pressure and an assistant principal accused a state legislator of racially profiling applicants.
P.S. 24, located at 660 W. 236th St. in The Bronx, was run by Principal Donna Connelly until she left in October after a series of controversies under her tenure, including the school losing its lease for an annex and reports that she had forced teachers to get rid of their desks and filing cabinets.
The turmoil at the school has continued with Assistant Principal Manuele Verdi's recent lawsuit against the city accusing State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and his office of getting involved with enrollment at the school to block minority students from attending.
However, parents at the school are eager to move beyond such controversies and get a new permanent principal installed.
“This year has been very challenging, but we are fearful about how the delay in appointing a new principal will impact the preparation for our upcoming academic year,” parent Paulina Sanchez said.
“For the first time in our history, we will be dealing with having to house over 1,000 students in a building intended for 610 students," she continued. "The loss [of] our annex space this year was a major blow, and we cannot afford to delay this matter any longer.”
Dinowitz said more than 100 parents attended P.S. 24's Parents Association meeting on Monday night and were extremely upset.
Parents were talking about pulling their children out of the school, and teachers were talking about leaving the school due to its lack of leadership and overcrowding issues, he said.
"The school is in severe crisis right now," Dinowitz said, "and when elected officials fight for the kids in their schools, most people appreciate it."
He said Verdi's lawsuit would put an added burden on the process to find a new principal for P.S. 24 and again emphatically denied that race had anything to do with his office's involvement in the registration process for P.S. 24.
"Just because Manny Verdi thinks that his job was to overpopulate the school doesn’t mean that there were racial motives in those of us who wanted to keep the population of the school at a reasonable level," he said.
The process for finding a new principal at P.S. 24 has been temporarily delayed pending an investigation, and the superintendent will update the school community moving forward, according to DOE officials.
The Parents Association of P.S. 24 expressed strong frustration with this process in a statement, describing it as "totally unacceptable."
"We are outraged that P.S. 24 has been without [a] permanent principal for six months and may not have one for the remainder of this school year," the statement reads. "We should have a principal and two assistant principals. Currently, we only have one acting interim principal and one assistant principal."
The statement goes on to blame incompetence of the DOE regarding the school's overcrowding issues and demands a full explanation into the delay in the principal selection process and the speedy appointment of a new principal and an additional assistant principal.
Parents Association co-president Bob Heisler said that P.S. 24 was dealing with students trying to attend the school from outside of its zone, but the neighborhood had to deal with its changing demographics as well.
“If a school is sought after, people bend the rules in order to get into it,” he said. “But the other problem: we’re not responding to the demographic changes of the neighborhood.”
He said that the sooner the school resolved the issue of not having a leader, the sooner it would be able to deal with its long term capacity issues and that, in the meantime, the building’s cold lunchroom would be converted into four classrooms.
"This is a good school, historically," he said, "and the DOE has not done anything this year but screw it up."
Desk-dumping principal gives herself the heave-ho
The Bronx principal who ordered teachers to dump their desks in the trash earlier this month because she didn’t want them sitting in class has chosen to toss herself out as well.
Donna Connelly, who is principal of PS 24, the Spuyten Duyvil School in Riverdale, has filed her retirement papers effective Nov. 1 after being pressured to leave by superiors who read about her nutty antics in The Post, according to the Riverdale Review.
Sources tell the Bronx newspaper that Connelly’s anti-sitting edict had garnered the animosity of both her staff and the powers-that-be.
To make things even worse, the desk-dumping diehard also was allegedly caught red-handed last weekblatantly refusing to prevent her overcrowded school from losing a lease for extra classroom space.
Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz went on to blast Connelly and her close personal friend and assistant principal Manny Verdi, after the Department of Education admitted at a PTA meeting that they had failed to renew the lease at the nearby Whitehall co-op building.
The building had housed approximately 140 fifth-graders over the last six years — and now officials are being forced to scramble to find space for the students at the school, which is already 200 kids beyond capacity.
Connelly’s retirement makes PS 24 the third school that she has been removed or forced to resign from in the past 23 years, the Riverdale Review reports.
Verdi — who has been disciplined for using his personal American Express card for routine school expenses so he could rack up “points” to fund a lavish trip to Italy — is lobbying to be her replacement, the paper said.
But in order to make the decision on who should replace Connelly, Dinowitz says, officials will hold “an open process to find the best person for a school that deserves, after so many years of turmoil, the best possible leader.”
He added that “the hardworking staff, many of whom have been in our community for decades, deserve this, and certainly, our children deserve nothing less.”
