New salvos fired in battle over PS 24

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Opposing sides in a dispute around the beleaguered Spuyten Duyvil School (P.S. 24) have both claimed advances in their causes, after an Education Department official resigned last week and a local politician saw claims against him withdrawn, at least temporarily, on the same day. 

The official, Melodie Mashel, stepped down as District 10 superintendent on Sept. 14 and will retire on Oct. 1, education department officials said. She is a target in a multi-pronged lawsuit by P.S. 24 assistant principal Manny Verdi, whose lawyer cheered Ms. Mashel’s resignation as a validation of his claims. 

Another target in the lawsuit is Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz. But the lawsuit against him has been withdrawn from federal court, Mr. Verdi’s lawyer Ezra Glaser told The Press last week, although he insisted it would be re-filed in state court. 

The lawsuits accused Mr. Dinowitz of a variety of transgressions, from defamation, to allegedly violating students’ right to privacy by dispatching an aide to monitor the admission process in the severely overcrowded school, to colluding with Ms. Mashel and other officials to interfere with the assistant principal’s work. Mr. Verdi is also suing Ms. Mashel, the city and the Education Department. 

Mr. Dinowitz, who denounces the lawsuit as “frivolous” and has asked the court for “sanctions,” has cheered its withdrawal, He says his opponents are retreating in the face of possible penalties and their actions are a concession that the “baseless litigation” would not stand up in court. 

Mr. Glaser denies the interpretation and described the withdrawal of the suit from federal court as “only a legal strategic move” in an interview with The Press. 

The plan is to “keep the claims against the Department of Education separate from the claims against Dinowitz” in order to make a “more focused” case, although the cases “may end up the in the same courtroom anyway,” Mr. Glaser said. The lawsuit “is going to be refiled” in state court “over the next few days,” the lawyer said on Sept. 16. By press time on Tuesday evening the suit had not been refiled.

Councilman Andrew Cohen — who, along with Mr. Dinowitz, has criticized the school’s overcrowding and Mr. Verdi’s handling of it — scoffed at the lawyer’s claim. 

“It’s a strategic move to avoid dismissal,” he said. 

Mr. Verdi’s lawsuit was “about to get thrown out of federal court,” Mr. Cohen told The Press on Sept. 19. “So, he is withdrawing. Ultimately, he’s going to get thrown out of state court. Why is he withdrawing from federal court? Because the claims are no good.” 

Mr. Glaser said a re-filed lawsuit against Mr. Dinowitz would drop the claim accusing him of “civil rights violations.” The lawsuit would retain Mr. Verdi’s other claims, he said. 

Mr. Glaser notified the court and Mr. Dinowitz’s office about withdrawing the suit on Sept. 14, according to the assemblyman. That was the same day Ms. Mashel resigned as superintendent, although Mr. Dinowitz shrugged off any significance of the timing. 

“It could be coincidental,” he told The Press. Ms. Mashel’s planned retirement on Oct. 1 comes four years after she joined New York City’s Education Department as superintendent in October, 2012, according to her online profile on the professional networking website LinkedIn. 

The job has now gone to the Education Department’s former District 9 superintendent and official in charge of superintendents’ professional development, Dolores Esposito, who will take over as acting temporary superintendent of District 10. Ms. Mashel will be helping her replacement with the transition in the couple of weeks before her retirement, according to the Education Department. 

Officials at the department said an investigation determined that Ms. Mashel allowed non-school personnel to be present during the student registration process at P.S. 24. The Education Department did not specify whether the issue prompted her resignation. 

Earlier this year,  P.S. 24 principal Andrea Feldman invited Mr. Dinowitz’s chief-of-staff Randi Martos to observe the registration process at P.S. 24, according to accounts by both Mr. Dinowitz and Mr. Cohen, who attended the meeting, and to a statement by P.S. 24 parents association. 

The invitation, if that was what Ms. Feldman offered, came amid complaints about the school’s severe overcrowding and amid allegations that Mr. Verdi was granting admission to students who live beyond the area served by the school. 

Mr. Verdi’s lawsuit claims that Mr. Dinowitz and Ms. Martos, “as politicians,” had no right to “insert themselves into the school registration process.” The text of the lawsuit emphasizes the word “politicians” in bold, italicized script.  

But according to an argument advanced by Mr. Cohen, Ms. Martos seems to have been invited not as a politician, but as the parent of a former P.S. 24 student and as a long-time activist in local parents associations. 

Still, the Education Department apparently decided that some rules may have been bent, judging by its statement on Ms. Mashel’s resignation and the investigation into “non-school personnel.” The term “non-school personnel” was also brought up repeatedly by Mr. Glaser, the lawyer, when he spoke to The Press about Ms. Mashel’s resignation last week. The term does not seem to appear in lawsuits filed earlier. 

In the political and legal battle that has simmered for months around P.S. 24, Ms. Mashel appears to be the first casualty. And “frivolous,” as Mr. Dinowitz describes it, or not, the dispute has left the Education Department to postpone hiring a new permanent principal, pending investigation. 

The school has “real problems that we would like to try to solve, and instead, we are frozen, the DOE is frozen, out of fear of this lawsuit,” Mr. Cohen said. 

“Manny Verdi, I believe, is fundamentally hurting the school by this lawsuit preventing us from getting a permanent principal,” Mr. Cohen said. “I believe the superintendent resigned as a result of this lawsuit. It’s just been highly destructive.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Glaser made little effort to conceal his glee at Ms. Mashel’s resignation. 

“She got bitten by the process that she started,” he said. “She went after my client’s job, she started a process where because he was standing up to the political interests, she… [was] asking for his resignation. Guess what? Guess who is gone now?”

Mr. Glaser is no stranger to political rough and tumble. He ran against Mr. Dinowitz in an election for the state Assembly in 1994. The assemblyman describes Mr. Glaser as an “old —defeated — political opponent,” and adds that “sometimes” lawsuits are filed out of “vengeance.” 

Mr. Glaser dismisses the suggestion and maintains he has long left the old political rivalry behind. 

The lawsuit also accused Mr. Dinowitz, Ms. Mashel and other unidentified politicians and education officials of “scapegoating” Mr. Verdi and former principal Donna Connelly for the overcrowding, and of pursuing a “politically and racially-motivated scheme to prevent minorities and lower-income children from attending P.S. 24 and other schools in the area.”

In the six years Ms. Connelly, the former principal and an ally of Mr. Verdi, headed the school, the number of students went up from around 700 to more than 1,000, according to figures cited by Mr. Cohen. 

“That is not natural growth in Riverdale. Riverdale did not suddenly explode with new children,” he said. “They were obviously letting in kids from outside the zone.” 

Mr. Dinowitz, for his part, bemoans the overcrowding, which has contributed to declining academic performance at P.S. 24 — a school that had once been among the top 10 in the city, he said. 

According to the latest Education Department data for the 2014-2015 academic year, less than half of P.S. 24 students, or 46 percent, meet state standards on the state English test, and a little more than half, or 56 percent, meet state standards on the state math test. 

This is above the city’s average of 30 percent and 39 percent, respectively, but below the rates of 53 percent and 60 percent, respectively, among the school’s “comparison group” — students from other neighborhoods in New York City with backgrounds that are the most similar to those of students at P.S. 24, based on their incoming test scores, economic need and other factors, according to the Education Department. 

Jeffrey Dinowitz, Randi Martos, Andrew Cohen, Ezra Glaser, Manny Verdi, Melodie Mashel, Donna Connelly, PS 24, Anna Dolgov

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