Lakeview person of the year: Sherwyn Besson

Lakeview’s leader of men mobilizes community

Copyright LIHerald.com Suit Our Sons was one of the Save Our Sons Network’s most successful programs. Besson taught his son, Isiah, how to knot a tie.

Copyright LIHerald.com
Suit Our Sons was one of the Save Our Sons Network’s most successful programs. Besson taught his son, Isiah, how to knot a tie.

By Lee Landor

[Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on December 30, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is last in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous article.

In the dozen years he’s live in Lakeview and the seven he’s taught at Malverne High School, Sherwyn Besson has witnessed what he describes as the deterioration of his community.

Nights in Lakeview had brought gambling, drinking, drug use and fighting. Some parents stopped paying attention to their children’s education, as Besson sees it, and, as a result, students were content with performing below average. People became detached and passive.

“I saw the degradation of Lakeview taking place,” said Besson, 43. “It was slow. It was subtle, so you really couldn’t pinpoint it. Why wasn’t this community rising above crime? Why wasn’t it rising above all the challenges it was facing, from cleanliness to the nuisances? It just became dire: I saw our kids dying in this very, very acceptable way, and that wasn’t acceptable to me.”

With the help of several community leaders, Besson, a native of Trinidad who came to New York in 1988, formed the Save Our Sons Network, an organization devoted to helping boys become strong men. He held the group’s first meeting in March, and in the nine months since, he has successfully mobilized members of the community — particularly men — and started a movement uniting people in a quest to accomplish one overarching goal: instilling in the youth a sense of value and virtue.

“There has definitely been [an awakening] in consciousness in the community, where we’re starting to see a lot of men step forward and become leaders,” said Besson, a part-time business teacher at the high school. “Although we’ve seen changes in the boys’ behavior, we still have a long way to go. I look at my community’s youth as my children, and I want my children to aspire to more.”

Besson has been inspired by his own son, 11-year-old Isiah, to develop programs for Save Our Sons, or SOS, which is now a state-recognized nonprofit organization. Those programs cover everything from sexting and respecting women to dressing for success, and Besson carries them out with help from neighbor and friend Brian Meacham, Lakeview NAACP President Bea Bayley and several other local parents.

“We realized that we have to work with other civic organizations to make improvements; we just couldn’t do it by ourselves,” Besson said. “For young black boys, the pathology is really dangerous, and very few organizations are working to change that pathology of from-the-cradle-to-the-jail or to-the-grave kind of pipeline. We want to shut that down and put our boys in schools where they can become really productive … citizens who can be doctors, who can be lawyers and more than just your run-of-the-mill young urban person. … It’s possible, but the community has to be a partner with these young boys.”

The only way to really make that happen, Besson added, is to give the children role models — male role models, something Lakeview was lacking. That absence weighed heavily on Besson’s mind, and when he discussed it with Bayley, the idea of the SOS Network was born.

“Someone had to take the initiative and set an example and actually educate people as to what’s the right thing to do and how to go about it,” Bayley said. “On face value, it’s easy to say, ‘Men need to do this or do that,’ but do they have the skills and the tools to do it? I believe [Besson has] encouraged some other men who may not have realized the deficit. Seeing women work in the community, and women forming groups, and women always out there in the forefront, I guess they didn’t realize what impact it was having until somebody actually put it in their faces.”

The SOS Network has not only awakened men in the community, it has also provided significant help to women. According to Besson, 33 percent of Lakeview households are headed by single mothers, and many of them have attended the group’s events, seeking advice on how to motivate their boys to become more civic-minded and academically involved. Besson, a widower who remarried last year, and fellow SOS leader Meacham, a father of four, give those women credit for their efforts, but call on men to step up to the plate. “I believe fathers are the most important thing that society has to offer,” Meacham said. “… I put a lot of responsibility on fathers, and I put a lot of blame on fathers.”

In order for the SOS Network to reach its goal of raising socially, emotionally and intellectually developed boys, it must teach their fathers to be responsible men, according to Besson, who was raised in a family full of coaches and teachers who inspired him to become an educator.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1993, Besson, who has two stepdaughters with his wife, Ulisha, went on to earn two master’s degrees, one in business and information management from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in Brooklyn and the other in education from the College of Saint Rose in Albany. He taught in New York City schools until his first wife died in the late 1990s.

Then, he said, “I found the Malverne opportunity and I grabbed it, and I’ve been there since.”

Copyright LIHerald.com Lakeview resident Sherwyn Besson is the Malverne-West Hempstead Herald's Person of the Year.

Copyright LIHerald.com
Lakeview resident Sherwyn Besson is the Malverne-West Hempstead Herald’s Person of the Year.

Loving his new home and community, Besson was unwilling to watch crime and apathy destroy it. “We want to keep the history of Lakeview, which was, essentially, a really strong black, middle-class community with values and a very strong sense of community,” he said. “We want to maintain that and improve upon what we have.”

Bayley hailed Besson’s determination as not only inspirational, but contagious. “He’s a gem in our community,” she said. “He has his whole heart in it, and he’s trying whatever he can. He’s not going to quit. He’s not a quitter; he’s not just about his own children. He’s doing it for everybody, for the good of everyone.”

There was never any doubt, according to Meacham, that progress and success would follow his friend throughout his endeavor. “Sherwyn is the star behind this,” he said of SOS. “A lot of the young people know Sherwyn from school. They know his character, they know his heart. His desire is for the good of these kids, whether it’s outside of the school or in academics. So I believe Sherwyn’s relationship with the young people … drives them to come to us and seek our help. He’s a man of character, that’s one thing for sure.”

Humble and focused only on teaching the boys and men of his community to be positive and productive, Besson attributes his dedication to his idealism. “I am a prisoner of hope, like most people who believe that man is virtuous,” he said. “I’m going to stick with it because I live here and I don’t want to be a victim of crime or any other ill in the community because no one stepped up. So I do what we need to do to change the direction of the community.”

Editor’s note: On Dec. 7, Sherwyn Besson filed suit against the Malverne school district alleging employment discrimination. The Herald made its Person of the Year selection before learning of that suit. We based our selection solely on his outstanding work in the community. Whatever its outcome, his dispute with the school district in no way diminishes his impact on the young men of our community and it is for that work that we recognize him.

Read the previous article in the series: ‘Malverne school district racial discrimination suit causes rift’

Malverne school district racial discrimination suit causes rift

 Some fight to keep the focus on the students

Copyright LIHerald.com The racial discrimination lawsuit brought against the Malverne school district by three black employees is causing a rift in the community.

Copyright LIHerald.com
The racial discrimination lawsuit brought against the Malverne school district by three black employees is causing a rift in the community.

By Lee Landor

Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on December 21, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is eighth in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous and next articles.

Divisiveness tends to rear its ugly head in the Malverne school community, but some people are refusing to allow it.

The racial discrimination lawsuit that three black employees recently brought against the Malverne Union Free School District will undoubtedly have a polarizing effect, according to Bea Bayley, president of the NAACP Lakeview chapter. Bayley is among many who, believing bigotry has run rampant in the district, were not surprised to learn of the suit, which was filed in federal court in Central Islip earlier this month.

In fact, the allegations of discrimination — which include threats, retaliation and the use of slurs — have already created a rift between those in the Bayley camp and others who consider the charges, true or not, to be isolated and not representative of the district.

There is, however, one thing about which people on both sides of the argument can agree, and it is that having to focus on racial tensions instead of the business of education is shameful.

“A person who does a good job should be able to go to work free from all of that,” Bayley said. “The children should be allowed to have teachers who don’t have to think about that, and the parents should be reassured that they’re going to a school where people care about people.”

Joyce Berry, president of the Howard T. Herber Middle School PTA, said she does not want people, within or outside the Malverne school district, to forever associate it with its grievous racial history. “We need to move forward,” she told the Herald. “I’m tired of hearing about the racial thing. Let’s worry about the education of our children.”

The school community should also consider its children’s incidental education, Berry said, noting that kids are perceptive, particularly when it comes to things they have no business knowing. Berry learned about the lawsuit from her 11-year-old son, who attends sixth grade at Herber. “My son came home from school and said, ‘Ma, did you hear we’re being sued?’” she said. And I said, ‘Sued? What are you talking about?’ The kids knew what was going on. … That’s pretty sad.”

But Malverne’s racial tensions are not easily hidden — at least not at the high school, where students have been vocal about what they believe is inequality in the district’s hiring policies. In April, about a dozen current and former students attended a Board of Education meeting to express their opposition to the administration’s decision to lay off a beloved teacher.

Telia Waldo, a senior at the time, started a petition to show student support for Betsy Benedith, who was an assistant principal at the high school and is now one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Waldo, 18, said that the petition, which had more than 250 signatures, accomplished nothing.

“I’m happy about the lawsuit,” said Waldo, who graduated in June and now studies music at Five Towns College. “I feel like … Malverne as a district is getting what it deserves because there’s too many undercover racists in this district and it’s time to get rid of them.”

That is what Janet Morgan, a retired Malverne teacher who sued the district for racial discrimination in 1992, has been saying for more than two decades. “Malverne has continued to be what it has always been: racist,” Morgan, who now lives in Georgia, told the Herald. “It’s a hopeless situation.”

The district suspended Morgan in 1988 after she assigned her eighth-grade social studies class an essay about the dismissal of a football commentator from his job after he made racial comments about black athletes, and failed to turn over her grade book when ordered. She sued the district, which eventually settled and allowed her to return in a different position. Morgan wrote and published a book, titled “At the End of the Bus Ride: A Teacher’s Tale,” about her experiences at Malverne and other school districts where she had taught.

Bayley has also said that racist beliefs have “permeated the school system” for too long and that it was only a matter of time before someone spoke up. “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” she told the Herald. “Somebody was going to be tired enough of the nonsense to stand up, and that’s what happened. … These three took matters into their own hands and said, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Bayley, Morgan and Waldo insist that discrimination has been present and tangible, but, according to Berry, they should concede that it is neither representative of the district nor indicative of widespread discontent among parents, teachers or students. “It’s the same people that are pulling the racial card,” she said. “Sometimes they get carried away with the racial thing.”

Assertions that racism exists in the district are in and of themselves the problem, according to several people who shared comments on the Herald’s online story about the lawsuit. “This is EXACTLY the reason that a large number of white parents in the district would prefer to send their children to private schools,” wrote one. “The racial garbage that the Lakeview community brings to the schools interferes with providing children with a good, solid, learning environment.”

Another commenter wrote that “reverse discrimination” is the reason more than 700 Malverne children, particularly of high school age, attend private schools. She went on to say that Benedith and her fellow plaintiffs, Sherwyn Besson and Kenneth Smith, “are just playing victim to make a quick buck off the taxpayer’s back.”

Instead of bickering over whose racism is worse, people should let the issue alone altogether, according to Berry, who said that she and many others in the district work hard to highlight the achievements of students and the progress of the district. Still, those things are often overshadowed by controversy and criticism.
“I think about 180 kids made high honor roll and honor roll at the middle school. That’s amazing,” Berry said. “But we don’t see that. These kids are working so hard to get where they want to get, but we don’t hear about that.”

Malverne schools Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund, who was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, along with the district itself, high school Principal James Brown and two other administrators, said the suit is “without merit,” but would not comment further.

The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Steven Morelli, said his clients want to send a message to the district and have their case tried before a jury.

“I don’t care,” Berry said. “I don’t need to hear it. My kids don’t need to hear it. … Let’s remember the good things that Malverne does. Why do we always have to hear the negative?”

Read the previous article in the series: ‘Malverne school district sued for discrimination’
Read the next article in the series:

Malverne school district sued for racial discrimination

By Lee Landor

Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on December 12, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is seventh in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous and next articles.

“It is not hard to figure out that you are being discriminated against when your supervisor calls you a nigger and routinely reminds you that you are a black woman.” So opens the statement in a lawsuit brought against the Malverne Union Free School District by three black employees alleging racial discrimination.

Betsy Benedith, a former Malverne High School assistant principal whom the district let go in June despite student protests, has accused Principal James Brown, who is African American, of treating white employees more favorably in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety that favoring blacks might create.

Copyright LIHerald.com The suit claims Malverne High School Principal James Brown favored white teachers and discriminated against former Assistant Principal Betsy Benedith.

Copyright LIHerald.com
The suit claims Malverne High School Principal James Brown favored white teachers and discriminated against former Assistant Principal Betsy Benedith.

Sherwyn Besson, formerly a full-time business teacher at the high school, claims he was subjected to increasing discrimination, resulting in the loss of his position and its replacement with a part-time position. Besson further alleged that his two children were subjected to retaliation for his complaints of discrimination.

Kenneth Smith, who taught math at the high school for five years, claims the district discriminated against him in his course assignments and access to professional development, classroom equipment and economic opportunities. The final act of discrimination, he said, was his transfer from the high school to the Howard T. Herber Middle School.

On Monday, the Herald broke the story after acquiring a copy of the 38-page civil action suit, filed Dec. 7, which details the favoritism, inequity and acts of retaliation the three colleagues claim to have suffered throughout their careers in the school district.

“We think that we have a meritorious claim,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Steven Morelli, told the Herald on Monday. “We feel that these individuals have been singled out based upon their race in an adverse way. It’s a situation where there seems to be something going on in Malverne when it comes to minority teachers.”

The suit names as defendants the school district, Brown, Superintendent James Hunderfund, who is white, and two white high school administrators, Assistant Principal Vincent Romano and math department Chairwoman Rosalinda Ricca. It lists alleged disparities in Brown’s treatment of his assistant principals, giving more responsibility and opportunity to Romano while excluding Benedith from memos and, thus, important decisions.

It describes alleged retaliation for Besson’s vocal criticisms of Hunderfund, including threats to shut down the entire business department, and recounts Ricca’s alleged preferential treatment of white teachers over Smith and the “discriminatory and retaliatory efforts of the administration”

Copyright LIHerald.com Superintendent James Hunderfund and the Malverne school district are being sued for alleged racial discrimination. Teacher Sherwyn Besson, right, is one of the plaintiffs.

Copyright LIHerald.com
Superintendent James Hunderfund and the Malverne school district are being sued for alleged racial discrimination. Teacher Sherwyn Besson, right, is one of the plaintiffs.

to remove him from the high school. According to the complaint, administrators transferred Smith to the middle school because of his students’ poor performance on one Regents exam question.

The defendants “created a hostile work environment, subjected [the plaintiffs] to an atmosphere for adverse acts and treated them disparately because of their race and good-faith opposition to discriminatory practices,” the suit reads.

“Though we have not yet been served with the suit, and were therefore unaware of it, we believe the claim is without merit,” Hunderfund said in a statement. “As this is a pending legal matter, we can provide no additional comment.”

Morelli said that the district might not have been served with the suit yet, but that it would be sometime this week.

“I know it’s been going on for a long time,” Morelli said, referring to the district’s turbulent racial history, which began with its forcible integration in 1965. “Based upon what I’ve heard, there’s a past. This should bring it to a head, we hope.”

Benedith, Besson and Smith are seeking compensatory emotional, physical and punitive damages. But what they really want, they say, is justice. “We hope to send a message,” Morelli said. “We hope that the school district will take notice and do something about this.”

Read the previous article in the series: ‘Forum furor’
Read the next article in the series:

Forum furor: Morellos meet residents miffed by charter proposal

Copyright LIHerald.com Dino Delaney spoke about the Malverne school district’s turbulent racial history at a community forum where area residents discussed a potential Lakeview charter school.

By Lee Landor

Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on September 7, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is sixth in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous and next articles.

Malvernite Jodi Morello said she, her husband, Matt, and several colleagues are just a group of teachers trying to help improve the quality of education available to local children. She tried to explain this to about two dozen people at a forum she and Matt held last week at the Lakeview Public Library, where they discussed their proposal to bring a charter school to Lakeview.

Jodi may as well have been talking to the walls. Many of those in attendance said they refused to believe that the Morellos’ sole motive for making the proposal was to provide an alternative for Malverne and Lakeview parents who send their children to Malverne public schools or to private and parochial schools. Several people accused the Morellos of wanting to secure jobs for themselves by opening their own charter school. Others called them racists.

“We were met by an audience packed primarily with school board politicians and special-interest groups protecting either their voting constituency or their perceived community power and influence,” Matt wrote in an email to the Herald. “If these individuals were truly interested in helping students instead of each other, they wouldn’t fight to restrict education choices. Money and power exist in maintaining the status quo. I’m starting to think that educating children is the last thing on their collective agenda.”

The discussion at the Aug. 30 forum often strayed from the subject of education, as a few audience members went off on historical, racial and geographic tangents. Many claimed that the Morellos must understand the history of Lakeview, particularly as it relates to the Malverne school district, before they can introduce the idea of a charter school.

After giving them a brief history lesson, West Hempstead resident Dino Delaney, who was born and raised in Lakeview and attended Malverne schools, told the couple that they can’t expect to bring a proposal such as this into the community and be welcomed with open arms. “Scars [run] deep in the community,” he said. “Everybody wants to be part of change, but people are suspicious.”

Delaney went on to say that the Morellos’ proposal smacks of an “agenda to privatize and take resources away from the public school.”

Several times, Matt Morello explained the financial structure of a charter school to the audience, saying it would have little effect on the public schools’ resources. Each student who leaves a public school to attend a charter takes about 75 percent of his tuition with him. The number varies for special needs-children. Charters receive state and federal funding, but rely primarily on private donations: The burden to generate start-up and other funds lies primarily on the charter itself, Matt said.

Hazel “Scottie” Gourdine-Coads, a local activist who was awarded the New York state NAACP’s highest award last year, said that taking children out of Malverne schools would be “a detriment,” ruining the public schools and lowering property values. She acknowledged that problems exist in the school district — both social and educational — saying there is still “a long way to go,” but added that a charter school simply isn’t the answer.

Lifelong Malverne resident Hope Orfano said the district has come a long way since the turbulence of the 1960s. People have worked hard to improve the schools and quality of education, she said, and bringing a charter into the mix will be the “breaking apart” of the district. Orfano praised the school district, which both she and her husband attended all the way through high school and where her two young children are now enrolled.

“’To know someone is saying ‘you’re broken’ is insulting,” Orfano said.

Lakeview resident Phyllis Wright, who served as a principal in the Malverne school district and on the Malverne Board of Education, made several suggestions to the Morellos for how to go about handling their proposal. She told them to attend board meetings and make known their feelings about the quality of education in the district. Wright also spoke to the Morellos’ assertion that it is an “indictment” of the school district that a large percentage of Malverne residents send their children to private schools. If the problem is in Malverne, she said, that’s where the Morellos should take their proposal; bringing it to Lakeview makes little sense.

Orfano also asked that the Morellos bring their ideas for improvement to the district before going off and creating a different school. Bringing a charter in instead of fixing a problematic school district is like building a new house instead of fixing a broken washing machine, Orfano said. In response, Matt Morello said that you can’t continue to fix a broken washing machine for 40 years. At some point, you buy a new machine.

As to the idea of attending board meetings, Matt said he doesn’t believe progressive ideas will be taken seriously. “Unfortunately, school boards are often platforms for greater political ambitions,” he said, “and not venues for serious exchanges about education.”

The forum also failed to produce the meaningful exchange about education that they had hoped for, Matt said. “As far as I’m concerned, an actual discussion about starting a charter school never actually happened,” he said, adding that he hears every day from parents who say they are interested in discussing the idea of a charter school. “I have a core of avid supporters who only want to better the education in a great community.”

As for the Morellos’ next steps in proposing the charter, Matt said, “Stay tuned.”

Read the previous article in the series: ‘Charter school proposal sparks heated debate’
Read the next article in the series: ‘Malverne school district sued for racial discrimination’

Charter school proposal sparks heated debate

Copyright Associated Press Hundreds of Lakeview residents came out to listen to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who visited the hamlet on May 12, 1965, to show his support for the state’s integration efforts.

Copyright Associated Press
Hundreds of Lakeview residents came out to listen to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who visited the hamlet on May 12, 1965, to show his support for the state’s integration efforts.

By Lee Landor

Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on August 31, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is fifth in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous and next articles.
David DeSilva has lived in Lakeview for more than half a century. He was not yet 7 years old when his parents moved into the community in 1958. His father immediately joined black community activists in fighting to desegregate the Malverne school district. As a second-grader in what was then the “colored” Woodfield Road School, DeSilva knew nothing of the heated debates and demonstrations black Lakeview residents held in the name of equality for their children.

By the time he was a senior at Malverne High School in 1969, DeSilva joined fellow students — black and white — to protest unfair practices in the district, which had been forcibly integrated in 1965, two years after the Supreme Court handed down an integration order. The district was integrated, but it was not unified. According to DeSilva, black students were not allowed to participate in school plays and other activities, and some white teachers were prejudiced. Several guidance counselors had advised black students like DeSilva, who had excelled in his studies, to enlist in the military instead of enrolling in college.

Eventually, he joined 136 other students for a sit-in in the lobby of Malverne High School. All of the participants were arrested for trespassing. Seeing the turmoil in a district with a growing black student population, some Malverne parents began demanding that a separate high school be built for black students in Lakeview, according to DeSilva. Others, he noted, pulled their children out of the district schools.

Opening another school is ‘ridiculous’

Having experienced that history firsthand, DeSilva was shaken to the core when he read in the Herald about a proposal to open a charter school in Lakeview (“New view from across the Ocean,” Aug. 25-31). “It’s like I’m reading something from 50 years ago,” he said. “Trying to have another school in Lakeview, separate from Malverne [schools] is ridiculous. … You’re not going to get anything from this. It was proposed back then — a separate school in Lakeview — and it was shot down.”

Malvernites Jodi and Matt Morello last month proposed opening a charter school in Lakeview, their primary motivation being to give district students an alternative. The Morellos assert that bureaucracy is destroying the Malverne school district, which they claim pushes students through without properly preparing them for college or the working world. Low state exam scores and complaints from district residents about the quality of the schools prompted them to make the proposal, they said.

Despite the Morellos’ stated reasons, some residents questioned their motives and took offense at their suggestion to open the school in Lakeview, as opposed to Malverne. A handful of those residents took to Facebook to air complaints, and others commented on the Herald’s website.

Jeanne D’Esposito said she thinks the Morellos are “mostly interested in giving themselves a job.” Asked why she thought so, D’Esposito said, “Because I’m cynical. Because they have no other dog in this fight. Because in their interview they distort things that are occurring in this district and many, many others as a result of the bad economy, and try to turn it into a singular failing of our district.”

Yanking students out of the Malverne school district and taking hundreds of thousands of dollars along with them will do nothing for the community as whole, D’Esposito added.

In response to her comments, the Morellos said that their motive is simple: to see that education is improved. “This is not, and will never be, as some accuse, an act of ‘taking away,’” they wrote in an email to the Herald. “This is a sincere attempt to give back and we are saddened to see our good intentions questioned.”

They went on to say that they are already gainfully employed, and that opening the school would actually be a risk for them. “To suggest avarice (in the face of such risk) is illogical,” they wrote, noting that opening the school is an opportunity to create jobs where there were none — “no easy feat in this economic morass.”

A touchy subject

Although he admitted to knowing little about the problems in the school district, DeSilva said his issue was primarily with the idea that a charter school would resegregate the district and undo all of the progress made thus far. “You have to understand, this is really touchy for me,” he said. “This has gone on and on and on, and then you have a couple wanting to do exactly what the Supreme Court turned down in the ’60s — segregating Malverne, putting black students in one area. You’re not going to have white students coming into Lakeview to go to a charter school. … We all know that. So this is going to be an all-black school.”

To be clear, DeSilva said, he is not divisive and has no problems with Malverne residents. “I love everybody in Malverne,” he said. “I’m just talking about the school system.” To make his point, he cited the school incident in June, when a black student was named salutatorian instead of valedictorian, despite having a higher grade point average than the white student who was named valedictorian. The situation became racially charged shortly after the district decided to name both students co-valedictorians, and eventually forced administrators to name the black student, Aalique Grahame, valedictorian, and his white classmate, Sarah St. John, salutatorian.

Additionally, DeSilva said, the Morellos cite low test scores and other educational inadequacies as reasons for their proposal, when in fact those are widespread problems that result from the state of the economy, financial issues and, perhaps, an administration that is lacking. “You try and improve the school district,” DeSilva said. “You don’t try and segregate a portion of the school and leave them in Lakeview. This has been the cry since the ’50s to keep the students in Lakeview over here. This is another veiled attempt to do it.”

The Morellos denied DeSilva’s accusation, calling it “polemical political posturing at its worst and a complete misunderstanding of our objectives.” They reiterated their goal: to provide neighborhood children a choice where teachers have more dominion over the learning process than administrators. “Suggesting that the ugly specter of segregation is part of our secret hand of cards not only wrongly imputes us, but reveals how low on the fantasy scale of perceived racial tension the opposition is willing to sink to,” the Morellos wrote. “It is one thing to express doubts about a new charter school. It is however, a suspicious other to cast aspersions as a first response.”

That first response, DeSilva said, is a result of his passion, which comes from having lived through the civil rights movement. He remembered standing at the corner of Pinebrook Avenue and Woodfield Road on May 12, 1965, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. passed by in his car, waving to residents. He remembered the motivational and heartfelt speech King gave later that day before a large crowd, and the warm handshake he shared with the inspirational leader. “It was just unbelievable,” DeSilva said. “Woodfield Road was full of people.”

Taking up a fight

Although he claims to be “just a regular guy” and not an activist of any kind, DeSilva said that the matter is close to his heart, and he simply could not stay silent after reading about the charter school proposal. “I feel like my father, who died in 2006 — that I’m taking up a fight that he spent so much time doing when we first moved out here,” he said.

The Morellos feel as if they, too, are taking up a fight — for the children and members of the Lakeview and Malverne communities who have a history of criticizing the educational and staffing practices of the school district. They doubt the district will improve itself, as its superintendent, Dr. James Hunderfund, and others have suggested.

“Malverne has maintained it is good enough, so why admit the need to improve if their methods have not already let this community down?” the Morellos wrote. “And how, precisely, will Malverne schools improve? Their ostensible supporters offer no rabbit and no hat, merely a scoff that ‘a charter school won’t help.’ This is presumptuous and erroneous. A charter school will help to fill the gaps irrevocably left open by the limits of a two-school community.”

The Morellos discussed the matter with community residents on Aug. 30 at an open forum on the proposed charter school. Check the Herald next week for an update on the forum.

Read the previous article in the series: ‘View from across the Ocean’
Read the next article in the series: ‘Forum furor’

 

View from ‘across the Ocean’: Malverne couple proposes charter school in Lakeview

Copyright LIHerald.com Seeing the need for an alternative to public education in Malverne, residents Matt and Jodi Morello have proposed opening a charter school in Lakeview.

Copyright LIHerald.com
Seeing the need for an alternative to public education in Malverne, residents Matt and Jodi Morello have proposed opening a charter school in Lakeview.

By Lee Landor

[Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on August 24, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is the fourth in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous or next articles.

Bureaucracy is destroying Malverne public schools. That is the sentiment that has driven a Malverne couple to propose opening a charter school in neighboring Lakeview, “across the Ocean,” in local parlance, divided as the two communities are by Ocean Avenue.

Matt and Jodi Morello are both teachers. They don’t have any children, and neither attended Malverne public schools. But they are passionate about education and the futures of their nieces and nephews, godchildren and the children of friends and neighbors. The Morellos are concerned about low state-exam scores, reduced art and music instruction, and students who they say are being pushed through the Malverne school system only to end up ill-prepared for college and the working world.

“Seventy-five percent of Malverne residents send their children to private schools,” Matt Morello, 44, told the Herald. “If that’s not an indictment of the [public] schools, I don’t know what is.”

Some Malvernites attribute the private-school trend to the district’s turbulent history. It was forcefully integrated in 1965, after two years of protests, demonstrations, boycotts and delays. Many outraged white parents refused to send their children to the Woodfield Road School, which had been the “colored” school. Angry black parents who lived in Lakeview boycotted the schools. Some parents opened secret schools in their homes, and others staged blockades. Eventually the district was fully integrated, but mostly white Malverne and mostly black Lakeview were never unified.

“You have one school serving two communities, and neither community is happy,” Morello said. “This calls for an alternative.”

The Morellos have explored the idea of a charter school for four years, and recently decided to bring it before the entire school community. According to Jodi, 49, who has taught fine arts at a number of schools, children who attend charter schools perform better than public-school students because charters, which are run by teachers and controlled by the state, have smaller class sizes and are more autonomous than public schools. In many public schools, Matt added, teachers are pressured to push students through by administrators who are under pressure from the state to have high graduation rates.

“Teachers know how to get kids to read and write and do math,” said Matt, who teaches high school English in Queens. “At a charter school, they’re not entrenched with top-down bureaucratic curriculum. … Schools have gotten very political. Money is involved, high salaries — the administration has lost sight of what’s needed.”

The Morellos say they have found that student performance at a number of public schools improved significantly after charter schools were opened in their communities. “It’s competition,” said Jodi. “[The public schools] have something to prove.”

For that reason alone, opening a charter school in the area would be a “win-win,” Matt said.

But Malverne schools Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund said he doesn’t see how a charter school would affect the quality of education in the district. “I don’t believe that this would have a material effect on the public schools,” he said. “We offer a comprehensive program in terms of academic and co-curricular activities that most charter schools cannot match and don’t have. As far as competing, we really are in our own dimension.”

‘A cry for help’
The Morellos believe the time is ripe for their idea: In recent months, they have seen the district’s problems reach a boiling point. Racial tensions exploded at several Board of Education meetings in April and May. Students protested personnel cuts. Teachers protested stagnant contract negotiations. Parents lashed out at board trustees and school administrators for making what they considered unfair budget cuts — namely to art, music and library instruction — to accommodate a “teaching-to-the-test” curriculum.

“It’s a cry for help,” Matt said.

“And people, parents are receptive to listening,” Jodi added.

Charter schools are publicly funded elementary or secondary schools governed by nonprofit boards of trustees, which often include educators, community members and leaders from the private sectors. According to the New York State Education Department, charters have the freedom to establish their own policies, design their own educational programs and manage their human and financial resources. They are held accountable for high student achievement through the terms of a five-year performance contract.

Public-school districts are mandated by the state to pay the tuition of district students who attend charter schools. As they do for children who attend private schools, the districts also provide transportation and textbooks for charter school students.

For the 2011-12 school year, the Malverne school district will spend more than $295,000 to send 15 students to charter schools. According to Business Administrator Tom McDaid, the district pays about $19,000 per student.

If a charter school were to open in Lakeview, “it could be a burden to the district,” McDaid said. “Let’s just say we have an additional 10 students that go [to charter schools], I’m going to have to find another $190,000 in this budget. … If 10 students go, one from each grade, I’m still going to have the same number of teachers, I’m still going to have the same number of everything else. My cost to run the district won’t change, won’t go down, because I lose 10 kids.”

Aside from tuition costs, charter schools rely heavily on private donations and federal and state grants. Because they are run by a principal and overseen by a board of trustees, they “cut out many levels of bureaucracy,” Matt Morello said, and therefore have more money to spend on equipment, materials and teacher salaries. He noted that the Malverne district has several highly paid administrators — including Hunderfund, whose salary is more than $234,000 — but is struggling to maintain programs and hold on to staff in a weak economy.

‘Us versus them’
Before the state gives the go-ahead to open a charter school, it must have documented proof that a prospective host community wants it there. The Morellos have scheduled a meeting at the Lakeview Public Library on Aug. 30, when they hope Malverne and Lakeview residents will gather to discuss the possibility of bringing such a school to the community. They are fully aware, they say, that not everyone will be happy with the proposal.

“We don’t want to make it an ‘us versus them’ situation,” Matt said.

“We live in the community,” his wife added. “We don’t want to divide it, we want to bring it together.”

Already, however, some people are split on the idea. Laura Avvinti, a PTA mom with children in the elementary schools, takes issue with the notion that Malverne schools aren’t performing well. “It saddens me that people feel that the school district is not doing as well as they [want],” she said. “We do have really great teachers, and I’m very happy with the quality of the schools and education that my kids are getting. … Probably it will provide a lot of competition, and if a lot of the children decide to go the charter school, there will be less children in our school, which may or may not be a good thing.”

Malverne Board of Education Trustee Gina Genti said there is simply no need for a charter school. “I understand some of the community’s frustrations with the direction we’re heading in,” she said, “but I don’t think bringing a charter school — which is a long-term solution to what is probably a short-term problem — is the answer.”

Five years ago, Genti said, the district was on an upward trajectory: test scores were up, more people were enrolling their children in the public schools and the community supported the district. “That’s changed,” she said, noting that residents are frustrated with the quality of education in the district, the test scores and the exaggerated emphasis on testing. But, Genti added, those are all issues that can be corrected or improved.

Lakeview activist Rener Reed — former president of the Lakeview NAACP and mother of three adult children who went through Malverne schools — has long been vocal about problems in the school district. Reed, who grew up in Mississippi and attended Richton Colored High School there in the late 1950s, has spoken out about racial tensions in the district and her discontent with its administrators. For decades she has worked with other community activists and parents to improve the schools, sometimes succeeding, other times not. Still, she said, she doesn’t believe a charter school will resolve anything.

“I don’t think opening up a charter school is going to bring [Malverne and Lakeview] together,” Reed said. She questioned the Morellos’ motives, and why they are so interested in school district matters when they don’t have children in the school system. She also asked why a Malverne couple would want to open a school in Lakeview.

“I’m not opposed to charter schools,” Reed said, “but I am curious as to why certain people want to get into this kind of situation. … I would first say, let’s give Malverne a chance. Let’s get up there the things that are not done right, let’s see if we can’t help to make them right by putting all this on the table.”

Like Reed, Lakeview NAACP President Bea Bayley is more concerned about the people proposing a charter school than the proposal itself. “A charter school would be welcomed in Lakeview, provided that it come from the Lakeview community and reflect cultural diversity in staffing,” Bayley said. “Any outside group that would come in trying to prosper from our demographics would not be welcomed.”

The NAACP has battled with the school district over its hiring and retention practices, claiming that the makeup of the staff does not reflect the student population, which is largely black. Bayley said that there are not enough black role models in the schools, but a charter school that hires teachers from within the community could provide several.

“We need schools that focus on the needs of the children and encourage them to push beyond all perceived limitations of their surroundings,” Bayley said. “Lakeview residents need an alternative to the current system of education, which is plagued with high-paid administrators and low expectations.”

Hunderfund agreed with Genti and Reed that the district should be given a chance to correct its problems. “We would certainly want to attempt to serve the needs of every child and every parent; it’s just that sometimes people don’t express to us what it is that they don’t have that we would like to provide for them,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a matter of communication and working together to get the end result that you want. But I do believe that Malverne public schools [offer] a high quality education.”

‘Enough is enough’
If all goes well and they receive the community support they seek, the Morellos hope to see a charter school open somewhere in Lakeview — possibly at the Lakeview library, which was once the Woodfield Road school — by September 2013. In its first year of operation, it would have only two grades, sixth and ninth, and a total of 60 students. They are still not sure how many teachers the school would have.

After the first year, seventh- and 10th-grade classes would be added for the graduating sixth- and ninth-graders, while new classes of sixth- and ninth-graders would begin. That process would continue until the charter school was operating as a grades 6-through-12 school.

Although the Morellos are well aware of the controversy their proposal has sparked, they expect people to warm to the idea after they learn more about the potential benefits of a charter school at the Aug. 30 discussion.

“Enough is enough,” Matt said. “There’s a need, there’s a problem, and our charter school can fix it.”

Read the previous article in the series: ‘Race to the top’
Read the next article in the series: ‘Charter school proposal sparks heated debate’

Race to the top: Malverne valedictorian debate takes on racial overtones

By Lee Landor

[Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on June 15, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is the third in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous or next articles.

Malverne High School will have only one valedictorian after all.

In response to demands from Malverne and Lakeview residents, the Board of Education reversed a district decision last week to name the high school’s top two students co-valedictorians and name a third student salutatorian.

Copyright LIHerald.com Aalique Grahame was named Malverne High School's valedictorian following a ranking mix-up that had placed him as second in his class.

Copyright LIHerald.com
Aalique Grahame was named Malverne High School’s valedictorian following a ranking mix-up that had placed him as second in his class.

Instead, Aalique Grahame, who is black, will be this year’s sole valedictorian, and Sarah St. John, who is white, will be the salutatorian. The third-ranking student, Xavier Bernard, will be honored as such and will also speak at graduation.

The board met in emergency executive session on June 16 after residents complained about the district’s decision a day earlier to name Grahame and St. John co-valedictorians — a decision made by Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund and high school Principal James Brown in response to a calculation error that ranked the top two students incorrectly. The district had initially identified Grahame as the salutatorian, when in fact his 95.42 grade point average is higher than St. John’s, who had been named valedictorian. Instead of switching their titles, Hunderfund and Brown named them co-valedictorians.

That led to widespread anger and racial tension in the community, with residents demanding that the district name Grahame the top student. District officials stood by their decision at first, but it soon became clear that everyone involved — including St. John — believed Grahame should be named valedictorian.

“In light of a highly regrettable mistake, the district exercised what it believed was a compassionate, understanding decision by naming two valedictorians and a new salutatorian …,” Hunderfund said in a statement last Thursday. “But subsequent reaction from the students and families involved in this matter, along with community sentiment relayed to the Board of Education, has compelled the board to change this decision and identify Aalique Grahame as the sole valedictorian.”

Grahame, who said he did not want to share the title, was pleased with the decision. “I thought that they did the right thing because now everyone got what they worked for,” he said. “And I thought they did a good thing by allowing my friend, Xavier, to speak at graduation, since they brought him into the whole situation.”
St. John, 18, whose feelings Hunderfund and Brown had intended to spare, said she was happy that the decision was reversed. “It’s what I wanted from before all this commotion came about,” she said. “It’s based on numbers, and we can’t change numbers. … I felt like I didn’t deserve it, so I didn’t want it.”

Bernard said he was also glad that the district reversed its decision, even if it leaves him without an official title. “The way it is now, they rectified the situation to the best of their ability,” he said. “Everybody got what they wanted, including me. I just wanted fairness.”

Although he wasn’t quite sure yet what he would say during graduation, Bernard was excited to get a speaking part. “Whatever I do talk about, it’s going to be heartwarming,” he said.

Grahame’s aunt and guardian, Dorolyn Montgomery, who was the first to recognize the district’s ranking error, approved of the corrective action. “I’m very pleased that the district decided to do the right thing,” Montgomery said. “It shouldn’t have gotten to this point. They should have checks in place to be checking all this stuff to make sure it’s correct before they put it out there. And I hope they learned something from this.”

Grahame, 17, and Montgomery had their doubts about the district’s ranking system even before it was announced that Grahame was second in the class. “We both had an inkling since last year’s awards ceremony because I got most of the awards — that was for 11th grade,” he said. “And in the beginning of this year, they told me I was number two, so I was a little iffy about it. And at the last awards ceremony — the senior award ceremony — again, I received most of the awards.”

That, Montgomery said, was the “icing on the cake.” She brought the matter to the attention of the Board of Education and district administrators at the board’s June 7 meeting. If she hadn’t, she said, the mistake may never have been discovered.

“I don’t know how an error like this could have been made in the first place,” Montgomery said, “and it was totally going unknown until I recognized it.”

Hunderfund conceded that the error would not have been recognized had it not been for Montgomery’s inquiry. After school officials confirmed the error, they asked for a “recomputation” and then had the district’s accounting firm validate the new numbers.

While the error irked some residents, the administrators’ initial corrective action infuriated others: As with many things in the Malverne school district, the mix-up took on a racial tinge. Many took to Facebook — primarily the page “I Love Malverne But Want More From Our Schools!” — to express their outrage.

“This is a race issue. If it weren’t and it were solely numerical, then Aalique Grahame would have been valedictorian,” wrote Deidra Ramsey McIntyre. “The numbers say he is valedictorian, so, why after the numbers were corrected before graduation, is he being told — not asked — to be co-valedictorian? That smacks of racism alone.”

A number of people disagreed with that claim, saying the district was just trying to be fair and race played no role in the matter. “The problem is that people focus too much on race,” wrote Allison Lyons. “If both were white or black, would we even question human error then? No! They felt bad for already naming the valedictorian so they named both of them.”

Responding to Lyons’s comment, Michael Alexander wrote that attention turns to race “based on the repeated, ongoing slights against a particular group of people.” At the end of the day, he wrote, “Here in this school district, there has and continues to be a continuous oppressive nature towards people of color. How else can you explain the issues?”

One woman explained it as an act of sympathy. “Is Jim Brown a racist because of a compassionate decision to not humiliate a student by yanking the award away after she was told months ago that she was valedictorian?” wrote Jeanne D’Esposito. “You can disagree with the ‘solution’ of co-valedictorians (which is not uncommon, by the way) and Aalique and his family are fully within their rights to argue that he should have the title alone … But saying the decision is racist has no basis in fact, and it is divisive and destructive.”

The Facebook debate continued long after the board had reversed the rankings. While he said he is paying no mind to the continuing back-and-forth, Grahame did request that the district recalculate the rankings for the entire graduating class. “If my grades were messed up, then most likely the entire class’s grades were messed up,” he said. “So you have to be fair to everyone.”

Hunderfund said the district is considering the request, but, so close to graduation, there is not much point in revisiting the matter.

While Grahame awaits a response, he is focused on writing his graduation speech, which will not mention the controversy. “I’m trying to speak about continuing to work hard, never giving up and continuing to prove yourself,” he said.

Read the previous article in the series: ‘It’s always been a black-and-white issue”
Read the following article in the series: ‘View from across the Ocean’

Lakeview in need of a few good men

Lakeview-a-few-good-men-700

By Lee Landor

[Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on March 30, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is the first in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the next article.

It’s time to act. This was the message Sherwyn Besson and Gary Preston delivered last Friday night at the first of what they hope to be many “Men of Lakeview” community meetings.

Sitting in a small room at the Harold A. Walker Memorial Park in Lakeview last week, the two men spoke about the spike in crime in their 1.2-square-mile community. They discussed the lack of mentorship for young black men in Lakeview, the inadequate education they receive in the Malverne school district and how, together, these problems create “homegrown” criminals and “mediocre” adults.

Besson and Preston called the meeting — with the help of NAACP Lakeview President Bea Bayley — to bring the matter to light and to develop a plan of action with community members. “We never had crime,” Bayley said at the start of meeting, “and all of a sudden we’re having an epidemic.”

She stood beside a poster board covered in newspaper clippings reporting crimes committed in Lakeview or by Lakeview men and boys. There were some 13 reports of crimes since January alone.

“[The problem is] growing,” Besson said, “and we want to head it off before it gets a whole lot worse and this becomes just another black impoverished community.”

The education situation
Besson, a 12-year resident of Lakeview, is a business teacher at Malverne High School. He said he has a firsthand view of the development of boys in the district, and it alarms him. “I am not confident,” he told meeting attendees. “I cannot sell you on the education our boys are receiving.”

In the school district, boys from Lakeview have the highest rates of suspension and expulsion and some of the lowest scores on standardized tests, Besson said. They are being pushed through each year, he added, and are not prepared for the grades they are in. Part of the problem, according to Besson, is that they have no role models in the district, no mentors, no one to whom they can relate — no one who looks like them.
They see more black men sweeping the floors than teaching them,” said Besson, the only black male teacher at the high school. “We need teachers who are culturally sensitive, sensitive to black male pathology.”

Schools Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund expressed disappointment when he heard about the sentiments expressed at the meeting. “The academics are up,” he said. “I measure it by how children do every day and … the grades are up, the honor rolls are up, they keep continuing to rise. We have a lot of celebrations of excellence.”

Hunderfund said that the district lowered suspension rates for all students by nearly 50 percent last year, and that more students in secondary grades are making honor roll and high honor roll. There is virtually no disruption in the classroom and fighting is almost “nonexistent,” according to the superintendent. The district graduates 99 percent of its students, he added, and sends 90 percent of them to college.

As for hiring practices, Hunderfund said there is recruitment for minority staff members. “We do the best possible recruitment and screening that we can,” he said, “and hire as many as we can when we have openings and when we have qualified candidates.”

But the district can only hire teachers who have been recommended by a committee made up of parents, staff members and administrators, he said. Each school building has its own hiring committee, which interviews potential teachers and conducts teaching observations.

A community changed

Aside from teachers, Besson said, the district’s “insensitive” Board of Education plays a role in the problem, and that the Village of Malverne has two-thirds of the voting power when it comes time to vote on the school budget and other matters, which leaves Lakeview residents with little opportunity to make an impact.
Besson also called on men to be parents. “Men, stand up and be men in the community,” he said, adding that he formed the Men of Lakeview group to encourage men to get involved.

Preston said he was eager to get involved when Besson approached him with the idea for the group. The 25-year-old business analyst grew up in Lakeview. His mother raised him and his two brothers alone after their father was killed in street violence in South Jamaica, Queens. She moved the family to Lakeview, and for Preston it was a safe haven. Years later, seeing the community declining pains him.

“It hurts to have to walk these streets and be worried,” Preston said. “It hurts to see that they’re criminals.” (“They,” he explained, are the teens and young men who, as children, watched Preston and his friends play basketball and begged to join them.)

Preston compared Lakeview to Atlantic City, where nightfall brings drinking, drug use and fighting. “It turns into the devil’s playground at night,” he said. The community, he added, can no longer turn a blind eye: “One crime is one too many.”

“When you live in a 1.2-square-mile community, crime anywhere is a problem,” Besson added.

The solutions

Lakeview’s children need to develop values at home first, according to Preston, which is why mentorship is critical. But they also need guidance at school.

“We left [high school] ill-prepared,” said Preston, who graduated from Malverne High in 2004. “We had a false sense of reality.”

This created obstacles for him after graduation. “It’s like running a race and everyone’s in a different lane,” he said, “and in my lane there are hurdles.”

Preston made it over those hurdles and found success. He credited his mother for her indefatigable support, and his own desire to get ahead. Now, he said, it is time to help Lakeview boys generate that desire to learn and improve. “I think we need to start taking the steps to turn our boys into men,” he said.

Besson presented several first-step suggestions to the attendees of the meeting, among them nine men and two boys. More men have to begin attending Board of Education meetings, he said. They have to work together to build a men’s network to mentor boys and create opportunities for them to express themselves. Boys need more than sports, Besson said — they need positive activity, like community service and jobs. He added that parents need to start demanding more of their children because they have become comfortable with mediocrity.

“What kind of adults are we expecting to create when the bar is set this low?” Besson said. “Our children are being set up for lives of mediocrity and destitution.”

Besson plans to hold another Men of Lakeview meeting next month.

Read the next article in the series: ‘It’s always been a black-and-white issue’

‘It’s always been a black-and-white issue’

The recurring theme of diversity sparks a spirited back-and-forth at board meeting

Copyright LIHerald.com These Malverne High School students were among a dozen who attended the Malverne Board of Education meeting to ask for more culturally diverse staff.

Copyright LIHerald.com
These Malverne High School students were among a dozen who attended the Malverne Board of Education meeting to ask for more culturally diverse staff.

By Lee Landor

[Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on April 20, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is second in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous and next articles.

“The only black person up there is your secretary,” said a tall woman, slapping her papers on the desk for emphasis.

The comment was directed at members of the Malverne Board of Education, who were berated at their April 12 meeting by a number of residents who claimed that cultural diversity is absent from Malverne Union Free District schools.

To an outsider, the residents’ shouting would seem out of place in what is usually a sedate setting. But to board trustees and district administrators, it’s familiar. “It’s always been a black-and-white issue,” said Trustee Danielle Hopkins, the board’s only African-American. “It’s always been a Malverne-Lakeview issue. It’s always been like this — I’ve lived here all my life.”

Hopkins, a Lakeview resident who was elected to the board in 2005, did not attend the meeting, but she wasn’t surprised to hear about what took place there. According to her and to schools Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund, similar eruptions occur every few months, despite repeated attempts to address the issue.

“I keep hearing the same thing from when Jim Tully was superintendent in the ’70s here,” Hunderfund said. “It was the same issue, over and over, that the district doesn’t do anything or doesn’t do enough, and the truth is that everybody is doing everything we say. Nobody wants to hear it or believe it, but we are doing it.”

What these residents — primarily black residents who live in Lakeview — claim the district fails to do or doesn’t do enough is diversify its staff. Bea Bayley, president of the Lakeview NAACP, is among those who question the district’s equity in hiring.

“The fact that the district has made little to no effort to hire and retain teachers and administrators that more closely resemble the cultural demographic of the student population is troubling to most [concerned] observers of the district,” Bayley wrote in an email to the Herald. “This is extremely noticeable in the middle school, where there are no minorities in leadership positions and clearly the children are finding it hard to identify.”

But Hunderfund and Board President Dr. Patrick Coonan, along with other administrators and trustees, insist they have repeatedly explained and detailed their recruitment and hiring practices. “We have made a concerted effort to recruit minority teachers,” Coonan said after the meeting. “We’ve offered them more money, we’ve even tried to steal them from other districts.”

Diversifying district staff

According to Hunderfund, the problem is multifarious. To start with, the pool of qualified and available minority teachers is small: Only 9 percent of qualified teaching graduates on Long Island are black. Because the Malverne district is relatively small and among the lower-paying districts in Nassau County, administrators say it is often difficult to snag quality teachers.

“It has to do with the marketplace and what people can get elsewhere,” Hunderfund said. And even when the district manages to bring in minority candidates for interviews, he added, they don’t always pan out. On several occasions, Hunderfund said, the district offered positions to minority teachers who either rejected them or accepted only to later resign to take higher-paying positions elsewhere. Residents are always encouraged to make recommendations, Hunderfund added.

At present there are 35 minority teachers and administrators in the district, comprising 17.1 percent of its certificated staff.

Copyright LIHerald.com

Copyright LIHerald.com

About three-quarters of those teachers are black. Meanwhile, more than half of the district’s students are black.

Malverne High School student body President Francina Smith, who spoke at the meeting, said those numbers don’t make sense. She was joined by about a dozen other students, some of whom held up signs that read, “I need a mentor that I identify with,” “Wanted: Diversity in my mentors” and “Where are the African American educators?”

“You’re choosing who is in our lives,” Smith, a senior, told trustees and administrators. “If we just stand around, as students, as taxpayers, as a community, and watch things occur … we’re not victims anymore — we’re participants.”

Smith and her classmates presented the board with a petition requesting that the district reconsider laying off an administrator with whom students say they have made a connection. “We need somebody we can relate to,” said senior Telia Waldo, who, without naming the administrator, described her as one of the school’s only black, female, Spanish-speaking faculty members.

“We feel she can communicate with every student,” Waldo said. “She has talked with the young women of our school and we appreciate that. It helps us out a lot. And she has motivated a lot of students — kids who never really cared about going to class now go to class because of talks with her.”

Waldo said that many students want more overall diversity, not necessarily just black or Hispanic teachers and administrators.
“I understand they need African-American teachers to relate to,” Hopkins said when asked to respond. “I fully understand that, and we do try as a board.”

According to Hunderfund, administrators understand, too, but he believes there’s more to “relatability” than race. “I don’t buy this argument that people only relate to the person who looks like [them],” he said, and then mentioned the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “If we go back to King — let’s judge people by their character, not by the color of their skin — the truth is, it’s got to go both ways. Let’s judge our teachers by how good they teach and how well they integrate and bring children to a successful outcome, not by the fact that they’re either a certain color or dimension or come from a certain heritage.”

Coonan said the board would review the students’ petition and that no final layoff determinations had been made. He also explained that the district is bound by state law to the “last in, first out” concept, though he disagrees with it. He urged the students to contact their state representatives and speak out about the subject. “The only way to change it is by public action,” Coonan said.

The issue in context

No matter how hard the district works to diversify its staff and respond to community concerns, “people will say it’s not enough,” Hunderfund said. “I don’t know what enough is.”

At the root of the problem is the school district’s turbulent history. It was forcibly integrated in 1965, after two years of protests, demonstrations, boycotts and delays. Many outraged white parents refused to send their children to the Woodfield Road School, which had been the “colored” school. Angry black parents who lived in Lakeview boycotted the schools. Some parents opened secret schools in their homes, and others staged blockades.

Eventually the district was fully integrated, but mostly white Malverne and mostly black Lakeview were never unified. Trustee Gina Genti said, however, that it doesn’t matter that Malverne is 90 percent white or that Lakeview is 82 percent black. “We have very similar value systems,” Genti said. “We all want what’s best for the kids. The biggest difference between the two of us is the color of our skin.”

Lakeview NAACP President Bayley disagreed. “Racism still rears its ugly head at every [school board] election,” she said. “It is not the children that have the problem, but the adults who let their racist beliefs permeate the school system. Everyone needs to be honest about what is really going on in order to stop it. Too many people choose to remain silent on the issue of race, but their silence is acceptance.”

Genti said that the district has tried to work with residents who want more diversity in the schools — even inviting several of them, including Bayley, to minority recruitment seminars — but there is a fundamental disagreement that makes the issue difficult to resolve. “We’re going to be at odds about this,” she said. “I don’t think that color of the skin of anybody teaching our kids matters. They don’t see it that way.”

The problem, Genti added, “is that there’s a history in Malverne that some of the elders refuse to let go of. … And if we can’t move past our past, then we’re not going to be able to move forward.”

Attempts to address the issue by way of dialogue among administrators, board members and Lakeview residents seem to have accomplished little thus far. “After a while, you get beaten to death on this,” Hunderfund said. Still, he added, he has not given up hope that continued discussions will generate some change. “I’m up for dialogue anytime, any place with anybody,” he said. “There might be a mechanism down the road that we can [use to] get more trust and understanding. Right now, I believe … that sometimes people put up a wall and don’t want to deal with the facts.”

Hopkins said she would discuss with her fellow trustees the possibility of holding some sort of community forum in the coming months focusing on the issue. Instead of coming up at a board meeting every few months, she said, it needs to be discussed openly and frankly.
“We’re looking at 2011-2012 [and] we’re still in the same place that we were years ago, which is kind of sad,” Hopkins said. “We need to move on and be more about educating our kids and getting them into college. Black or white, purple, green, if you’re going to educate the child, it should be about the child, not always about the skin color.”

Read the previous article in the series: ‘Lakeview in need of a few good men’
Read the next article in the series: ‘Race to the top’