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| Jeffrey Dinowitz |
PS 24 AP Manny Verdi Sued Melodie Mashel, Superintendent of District 10; Mashel Quits
State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz Is Accused of Blocking Minority Students From Enrolling at PS 24 in Riverdale
Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials
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| PS 24 |
So far, the turmoil at a public school in the Bronx has cost two
principals and a district superintendent their jobs, has sparked a lawsuit and
has a local assemblyman defending himself against claims that he is trying to
keep minority children out of the school. And it’s not over yet.
At the heart of the dispute
at Public School 24, the Spuyten Duyvil School, are assertions by Assemblyman
Jeffrey Dinowitz and others that administrators — specifically a former
principal, Donna Connelly, and the current assistant principal, Manuele Verdi —
have allowed hundreds of students who live outside the school’s zone to enroll,
causing overcrowding.
Last spring, Mr. Dinowitz
sent his chief of staff to participate in the kindergarten registration process
at the school and to scrutinize parents’ proofs of residence, in an effort to
block out-of-zone students from enrolling. After an investigation, the city’s
Education Department found fault with the superintendent, Melodie Mashel, and
the then interim principal, Andrea Feldman, for letting the assemblyman’s chief
of staff take part in the process and review parents’ and students’ personal
information. In recent weeks, Ms. Mashel resigned, and Ms. Feldman was demoted
and removed from the school. Their departures were previously reported by The Daily News.
In the meantime, Mr.
Verdi, the assistant principal, has filed a complaint in federal court against
the Education Department, claiming that Mr. Dinowitz’s real purpose was to
prevent minorities and low-income children from enrolling in the school. P.S.
24 serves the Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil neighborhoods, which are whiter and
wealthier than the immediately adjoining Kingsbridge and Marble Hill
neighborhoods.
The complaint does not
present evidence that anyone who lives in the school zone has been prevented
from enrolling, but it portrays Mr. Dinowitz’s focus on enrollment as tinged
with bias.
It cites a meeting in November
2009 between Mr. Dinowitz, Mr. Verdi and Dr. Connelly, the former principal,
who had recently arrived at the school. According to the complaint, Mr.
Dinowitz said that people were misrepresenting their addresses to get into P.S.
24 and that he could tell which children were not from Riverdale “by the way
they walk, talk and wear their pants.”
In an interview on
Tuesday, Mr. Dinowitz said he “never said anything like that,” and he
characterized Mr. Verdi’s complaint as “lie after lie.”
“This is about overcrowding,
period,” he said. “That’s it. That’s what this is all about.”
Dr. Connelly, however,
said that she recalled Mr. Dinowitz using those words.
“He was referring to kids
who were not from the community and kids that were black or Hispanic,” she said.
P.S. 24 enrolls children
from kindergarten through fifth grade. The school’s population is 42 percent
white, 41 percent Hispanic, 8 percent Asian and 7 percent black. Twenty-seven
percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunch. On the most recent
round of state tests, 57 percent of third through fifth graders were proficient
in reading, while 62 percent were proficient in math, compared with 38 percent
and 36 percent citywide.
The elementary schools in
nearby Kingsbridge are all largely Hispanic, and the vast percentage of their
students receive free or reduced-price lunch. One, P.S. 207, which serves
prekindergarten through second grade, is on the state’s list of persistently dangerous schools. While one of
the schools, the Milton Fein School, also does well on annual state tests, the
other school with children of test-taking age lags.
P.S. 24’s enrollment has
increased dramatically in the past decade, rising to 1,030 students this year
from 715 students in 2006-7. The department said the building was now at 122
percent capacity.
Dr. Connelly said that
the increase, which began before she arrived, was caused by population growth,
not a rise in the number of non-zoned students being enrolled.
According to the
Education Department, the percentage of non-zoned children enrolled in
kindergarten at P.S. 24 fell to about 10 percent in 2015-16 from 13 percent in
2010-11 (not counting the gifted
and talented program), while the number of zoned students in
kindergarten has grown by 36 percent.
Dr. Connelly said that
some non-zoned students were assigned to P.S. 24 by the department. In other
cases a parent might come into the school around November, hoping to transfer a
child from a low-performing school. If there were seats available in the
student’s grade, Dr. Connelly said, she would sometimes let the student in.
She said that accounted
for only a small number of children.
“But it was still looked
upon as some kind of a threat that I was letting children into the school that
don’t belong at P.S. 24,” she said.
Mr. Dinowitz disagreed
that population growth could account for the increase in enrollment.
“There has not been a
population boom in the neighborhood,” he said.
Mr. Dinowitz’s own two
children attended P.S. 24 in the 1990s, even though he lived outside the school
zone.
Asked about that, he said
it was irrelevant to the present situation, because the school was underused at
the time.
“If the school had empty
seats, fine, but the school doesn’t have empty seats,” he said.
In the 2015-16 school
year, the debate over P.S. 24’s enrollment increase reached a crisis when the
school lost its lease on an annex that housed fifth graders. Amid
finger-pointing and a dispute about whether Dr. Connelly
threw out teachers’ desks, she abruptly announced that she was retiring in October last
year.
After her departure, Mr.
Dinowitz and others, including the district superintendent, Ms. Mashel, and Ms.
Feldman, the interim principal, met at the school in January this year,
according to Mr. Verdi’s complaint and a report from the Education Department’s
Office of Special Investigations. Mr. Dinowitz again complained about
out-of-zone students.
It was then suggested
that someone from Mr. Dinowitz’s office could go to the school during the
registration process in late March and early April.
Randi Martos, Mr.
Dinowitz’s chief of staff, ended up taking part and reviewed families’
documents. Department policy requires parents to provide two documents showing
proof of residence, but parents were told they needed three, according to Mr.
Verdi’s lawsuit and the Education Department’s investigative report. There is
no evidence any zoned families were turned away.
The department’s
investigation determined that Ms. Mashel had shown poor judgment and that Ms.
Feldman had failed to supervise the registration process and allowed Ms. Martos
to review parents’ and students’ personal information. Neither woman responded
to a phone call requesting comment.
Despite his concerns
about overcrowding, Mr. Dinowitz has opposed calls to build an addition to the
school. In the interview, he said the overcrowding problem could be solved
simply by enforcing enrollment policies.
The battles have left
parents frustrated. Bob Heisler, a former president of the parent association,
said he did not believe Mr. Verdi’s charges of racial bias, but he criticized
Mr. Dinowitz and other local politicians for showing “no leadership over the
years” in dealing with the increased demand for school seats.
“I personally feel that
some of the local politicians want to keep Riverdale as they have seen it — the
way they remember it from their own childhood — and they’re not open to the
changes in the demographics that are going on in that community,” he said.
