‘Kids want Doc and Ms. Custer’: Parents of Riverhead Latinists protest new hire

Riverhead parents of Latin students are upset by plans to hire a part-time teacher to handle the district’s increased demand for Latin classes.

The district’s award-winning Latin program, which offers classes in middle school and high school, has enjoyed burgeoning popularity that parents say is directly related to the district’s two Latin teachers. The parents said they’d like to see the current teachers — not a new recruit — teach any new classes.

Sarah Bowe, of Riverhead, the mother of three students, delivered a petition containing more than 100 signatures to the school board last night, objecting to the plan to hire a new Latin teacher and asking the trustees and administration to instead “expand the program from within.”

Bowe read the text of the petition, posted at Change.org aloud at the podium. The petition states that the Latin program’s “success and popularity…are directly related to the success and popularity of the existing teachers,” the husband-and-wife Latin team of Dr. Jeff Greenberger, who teaches high school Latin, and Lorene Custer, who teaches Latin in middle school.

“Many students enroll in Latin with the specific intention of being taught by Ms. Custer and Dr. Greenberger, and they all deserve that opportunity,” the petition states. See full text of petition at Change.org.

About a dozen parents attended the board meeting in a show of support for the Latin program and the petition’s request.

Board president Ann Cotten-DeGrasse, presiding over her last meeting of the board, told the parents that transitions are necessary and unavoidable.

“If I’ve learned one thing in my tenure in Riverhead it’s that one monkey doesn’t stop the show,” Cotten-DeGrasse said. “I found that out as a classroom teacher, as a teachers union president and I’m sure I’m going to find that out as a board member,” she said.

Cotten-DeGrasse noted that Greenberger and Custer are not the district’s first Latin instructors — and not the first Latin teachers who were much beloved by their students.

“We’ve gone through like four different transitions to arrive at where we are,” Cotten-DeGrasse said. She said she hopes the district can bring in another Latin teacher who will someday be held in as high regard as Custer and Greenberger.

“I’m sure that if the district has to hire an additional teacher, it will do that with the greatest care and dedication to the children of this district and I hope that you will trust them to do that,” Cotten-DeGrasse said.

Parent Molly O’Connor, who also has three children in the district, asked if the decision to hire a new teacher was made “in collaboration” with Greenberger and Custer and whether they were given the opportunity to teach any additional classes made necessary by the program’s expanding enrollment. She also asked if Greenberger and Custer are participating in the hiring process.

“A committee was formed to do that and the existing teachers serve on that committee,” the board president said. Having Greenberger and Custer pick up additional classes, Cotten-DeGrasse said, is “a contractual matter” and “not something the school board decides.”

Assistant superintendent David Wicks said both Latin teachers were involved in the interview held today with one candidate for the new position.

“My kids didn’t want to take Latin because of the subject. They wanted to take Latin because they wanted to have Doc and Ms. Custer as teachers,” O’Connor said after the meeting.

Both O’Connor and Bowe said they were concerned that the decision to hire a part-time Latin teacher wasn’t made with a long-term transition plan in mind. Thinking about a succession plan for the program, taught by two veterans, is not in itself a bad thing, they said. But creating a part-time position is the not best way to get the best candidate for the job, they said.

They also both said they were concerned that Greenberger and Custer were not fully involved in the process.

Reached for comment last night, Custer said she and her husband “are always very thankful for the parental, administrative and community support of the longstanding Riverhead Latin program. We are also ever humbled to work in the shadows of so many wonderful Latin teachers before us.”