Ex-Board of Ed member speaks out about resignation

Angela DeVito, who resigned her position on the Riverhead school board June 30, says she made the decision to quit because she could no longer keep silent about  her misgivings over board operations, in particular the board’s flagrant violation of the state open meetings law.

“There’s supposed to be open discourse,” DeVito said in an interview Tuesday. “The Riverhead Board of Education has a lot of its discussions behind closed doors,” DeVito said. “There’s very little open discussion and no room for dissent. The mantra is ‘Don’t show any disagreement, present a united front.’

“And the public gets cheated,” DeVito said.

“I played by the rules,” DeVito said. “I didn’t break ranks. I left the board because I couldn’t do that any more. I have to speak out,” she said, “and now that I’m off the board I can do so.”

Board president Ann Cotten-DeGrasse said today the Riverhead Board of Education operates no differently than any other of board of education, and its procedures during her tenure as president this past year were no different than during the tenures of any of her predecessors — including the board’s immediate past president, DeVito.

Cotten-DeGrasse was elected to the board in 2008 and re-elected to a second three-year term in May.

“As long as I have been on the board and I’m sure long before me, there was always an opportunity in executive session for board members to ask questions and get clarifications,” Cotten-DeGrasse said.

“We do that so we don’t go out there in public and look like a bunch of bumbling idiots,” Cotten-DeGrasse said in an interview. “I don’t think you’ll find a board of ed anywhere that doesn’t do that,” she said.

That may be, but it’s still illegal, said Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government.

“The Open Meetings Law is short and it is easy to understand,” Freeman said in a telephone interview today. “There are eight grounds for entering into executive session under the law,” he said. “Discomfort is not one of them,” Freeman said. . “Embarrassment is not one of them.”

Freeman, who has headed up the state agency charged with interpreting and applying New York’s Open Meetings and Freedom of Information laws since their inception, said he has little patience for excuses offered by officials for disregarding these laws.

“The law has been in effect now for nearly 35 years,” Freeman said. “Case law is absolutely clear. There is no excuse in 2011 for a board wanting to hold closed meetings because of their fear of appearing unprepared, ignorant or unknowledgeable.”

DeVito said there are many things that get dscussed behind closed doors that should should be part of the public discussion, which she says is practically nonexistent.

“This year it’s gotten worse and worse,” DeVito said.

The former board member faults the current president, a Riverhead teacher and former faculty union president, for favoring teachers over students and taxpayers.

“She thinks if you provide everything the faculty believes they need,  the children will be taken care of and the taxpayers will be taken care of,” DeVito said.

“Instead what we have is a culture of mediocrity. What we strive for in Riverhead is mediocrity and protecting mediocrity. It’s a culture that says mediocrity is the best we can do,” DeVito said. “The proof is in the grades, in the achievements and where we are as a district,” she said.

“We’re failing these kids overall as a school district,” DeVito said.

“We have sterling examples of teachers who are spectacular, who go over and above,” DeVito said. “But it’s not the norm.”

To the contrary, Cotten-DeGrasse said, teachers are the “backbone” of the district. “Teachers are what make it work,” she said.

DeVito said the current bond proposal is a “maintenance bond” and sells the district short. Among other things, she said, it should be providing for things like special ed classrooms in every elementary school, something the president of the newly formed special education parents-teachers organization asked the board about last month.

She won’t get a public answer, DeVito said, because that’s how the board operates.

“Why are we contemplating a $4.5 million second gym, but we don’t have adequate special education classrooms? Why are we telling the district’s children we don’t have $17,000 to pay for field trips, but we can find $20,000 to pay [former acting superintendent for finance] Joe Singleton to help transition the new finance guy?”

These issues, DeVito said, will never see the light of day.

DeVito said she feels she is “a failure as an elected official.” She said she is angry with herself about that.

“I failed the people who put me in office,” DeVito said.

Cotten-DeGrasse said her colleague’s perceived ostracism was self-inflicted.

“I have made numerous attempts to work with Angela,” Cotten-DeGrasse said. “I’ve had many many discussions with her. She’s a very, very, very smart woman,” the board president said. “But I have not been successful in bringing her into the fold.”

Cotten-DeGrasse said she is “sorry Angela feels the way she feels” but, she said, “I can’t account for it. I attempted to understand where she was coming from and I absolutely understood she was not a happy camper,” Cotten-DeGrasse said. “But she really didn’t need to leave.”

DeVito had another year left in her second, three-year term on the board. She served as its president for one year, immediately before Cotten-DeGrasse was appointed to that position by board members last year.

DeVito’s announcement June 21 that she would tender her resignation effective June 30 took her colleagues by surprise.

“I had thought about it for a very long time,” DeVito said.