The last five years in the Greenburgh Central School District (GCSD) have been extremely tumultuous under the failed leadership of Superintendent Tahira Chase. She was hired to replace her boss, Superintendent Ronald O Ross, after charges of racism, harassment and abuse forced his termination. It appears that Trustee Terry Williams intervened to help Superintendent Chase be recommended to the professional search firm hired by the Board. There may have been others participating as well. Superintendent Chase then pulled her ex-mentor out of retirement and hired him as our as Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction. All this set the stage for five years of “lipstick on a pig” programs and numerous sideshows, such as the Mansion “emergency” evacuation in August of 2019. Meanwhile, our buildings continued to crumble and our kids’ performance on standardized tests continued to be sub-standard.
Let us not forget that it was this Superintendent who also led a failed Consolidation Bond effort. The “Roadshow” to sell $200 million of debt to build new school buildings was publicly spearheaded by Superintendent Chase, Assistant Superintendent for Business Mary O’Neill, and Trustee Terry Williams. The resounding 2-to-1 defeat of the Consolidation Bond in 2019 awakened the stakeholder sleeping giant to send three very clear messages. First, running our school buildings into the ground and then asking for the largest bond in the history of Westchester County to build new ones is unacceptable. Second, student achievement should take precedence over new buildings and is a condition for stakeholder bond approvals. Third, the residents of GCSD are not interested in developing a brand or legacy for the Superintendent and a few long-serving Trustees!
The Board of Education election in 2019 brought two newcomers to the Board, Ashley Pineda and Tanya Dragic, finally ousting Lloyd Newman after 18 years on the Board. We are still “served” by Terry Williams who is in his 15th year, and David Warner who is in his 13th year on the Board. So much for term limits! However, it seems that the new faces were enough to bring about some change. The current Board President, Antoinette Darden-Cintron, recently sent out a message from the District stating, “The Superintendent's contract expires on June 30, 2021. The Board has determined not to extend that agreement or negotiate a successor agreement and we have begun the process of seeking a new Superintendent of Schools.” (See below document for the entire text). We applaud the Board for taking this action. We also applaud the Board’s hiring of Dr. Corey Reynolds as the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum earlier this year. We believe that a new, professional and dedicated leadership is a first step to helping our kids learn.
HIGHLIGHTS OF SUPERINTENDENT CHASE’S PERFORMANCE:
The 2020/21 school budget:
The development of the 2020-2021 budget demonstrated that Superintendent Chase, supported by Terry Williams, remained deaf to the needs of the community, while trying to please a small group of supporters, such as the Friends of Greenburgh (FOG). The first draft of that budget started with an increase of over 4% from the previous year! Repeated pleas to curb the budget due to the economic devastation of COVID19 were ignored until a few days before the Board of Education had to vote to accept a budget. It was the behind-the-scenes intervention of certain community members with the Administration that brought the increase down to 1.3%. When asked about her personal salary increase in the budget, Superintendent Chase responded that it was “contractual”. Same for the Assistant Superintendent for Business. Teachers, however, were asked to forego their contractual increases in order to save money for the district. What hypocrisy!
Wasteful Spending
In August of 2019, Superintendent Chase blindsided the Board at the beginning of their summer retreat by saying that the Mansion was unsafe and required immediate evacuation. The Board was not given ample time to react properly to this announcement. The Early Childhood Program (ECP) was promptly relocated to the Lee F Jackson school. The staff however, remained there for another month until the Superintendent’s new office suite was constructed in Woodlands MHS. The cost to move the administration from the mansion was over $250,000. Almost a year later, we learned from the condition report a month later that the mansion did not need a complete evacuation. Now the superintendent is trying again to manipulate a condemnation of this building by playing up the findings of an essentially benign air-quality report. Her shenanigans are a slap in the Board’s face and an affront to taxpayers.
Where are the COVID 19 savings?
Everyone knows that the school year was truncated in March because of the COVID19 pandemic. What happened to unutilized funds for student transportation, after school programs, summer school and special programs from mid-March through August? Some transportation money, but not all, went for food distribution for eligible, needy students. In addition, the district spent money for technology to support on-line instruction and for cleaning and disinfection, but where is the accounting for the money that was spent as well as the savings?
What about academic programs?
Multiple educational programs, such as iReady, Eureka Math, Science Fusion and Naviance have been purchased and then abandoned, wasting taxpayer dollars. Students did not have access to an advanced Physics Program during the 2019-2020 school year, and our very first cohort of IB kids was instructed to retake Chemistry! This glaring deficiency makes a mockery of our calling GCSD, “a world class school district” and undermines the alleged excellence conferred by participation in the International Baccalaureate program.
Public allegations were anonymously raised in Fall 2019 regarding attendance problems and falsified grades of high school students. Results of the subsequent investigation have been withheld from the community. The excuse we're always told is, "This is a personnel issue and cannot be discussed publicly." Perhaps, but an outside agency was contracted to do this investigation for nearly $100,000 of our money. The taxpayers footing the bill have a right to know the results of an investigation that they paid for!
What about behavioral problems?
Are the schools, especially Woodlands MHS, a safe learning environment? Concerns have been raised by the community and parents about the lack of student discipline in the high school, including videotaped fights and violence against teachers. Questions have been raised about the accuracy of DASA reporting (Dignity for All Students) to the NYS Dept. of Education by the aforementioned anonymous allegations. There is no evidence that these concerns have been investigated and addressed.
Teacher hiring, retention and morale
During 2018/19, concerns were raised about the Early Childhood Program being a hostile work environment but the Director of that program remains in her position to this day. Highly qualified teachers are resigning from the district rather than enduring a hostile work environment. A large number of teaching staff have been mysteriously placed on “home assignment”, generating both staffing and supervision issues and fiscal concerns.
What’s our future?
The Board of Education must change! Those Trustees who have been in their positions for years are a big part of the problem. School Board elections will be coming around soon. It's time to clean house and elect more new blood, bringing in fresh thinking and fresh ideas to the Board. That’s how we'll get A Better Greenburgh School District.
GCSD Announcement:
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