Board Disorganization Night

by Stewart Lilker

District Clerk, Mary Bediako, disrespected newly elected Board Member Sunday Coward by not forwarding to her the evening's agenda or the proposed appointments of the Board. When questioned by your reporter about the intentional oversight, Bediako claimed, "I didn't have to do it, because Coward wasn't sworn in." Former Board member Lisi resigned from the Board at the end of June. Education law would have allowed Coward to file her Oath of Office on July 1st if she would have been advised by Bediako that Lisi had resigned. As Bediako gave her explanation, the rest of the Board members, as if struck by lightning, sat mute.

In their first item of business, the Board elected renegade Board member Ron Ellerbe to the position of President of the Board. This was in spite of the fact that Ellerbe had been caught red-handed violating the Federal Election Laws during the last school election. Both a high school student and the candidate, Sunday Coward, caught School Board member Ellerbe tampering with campaign material by removing Coward's campaign literature from the cars at the Freeport train station on election eve. This fact was dutifully covered up by LI Newsday, even though Newsday was faxed the information right after it happened.

In their next item of business, the Board nominated John Muscara as Vice President. In 1997, during the Board election of that year, Muscara apparently conspired with Dorothy Fox, and possibly other members of the Board, to file a fraudulent nominating petition. This serious offense has lead to Judges being removed from the bench. The matter was turned over the Nassau County District Attorney, Dennis Dillon. Even though there was a sworn affidavit, which clearly showed Fox’s petition was fraudulent, Dillon's investigators stated that they didn’t even question Muscara. The ADA on the case claimed that sometimes people don’t tell the truth in affidavits. When, during a brief conversation, the ADA was reminded that the affiant understood the penalties of perjury, the ADA hung up the phone. The NYS Education Department, as usual, even though they were sent the affidavit, also refused to take any investigative action, returning the affidavit instead.

When Muscara was voted in as Board VP it was impossible to hear the vote. When Ellerbe was asked to repeat it, he ignored the request.

The next part of the meeting was open to the public for questions on the remaining agenda items. Buried in the staff resignations and barely intelligible to the human eye, was the announcement of Superintendent Moffett's resignation for "personal reasons." Moffett's name is on the Agenda. (Go to Agenda).

When Ellerbe moved the resolution to accept Moffett's resignation, Board VP Muscara voted "no" and said he wanted to discuss it. Board President Ellerbe refused to acknowledge VP Muscara’s request to speak. It seemed unclear whether or not Ellerbe even heard Muscara. Coward also voted not to accept Moffett’s resignation.

When Ellerbe continued on the next item of business, your reporter pointed out that Muscara said he wanted to discuss Moffett’s resignation. Ellerbe said to no one in particular that they should make note that your reporter was out of order. Ellerbe seemed not to be aware that last year the Board changed their policy to keep complete and accurate minutes. With Freeport being one of the only districts on LI not to keep minutes of the public’s comments, no one took note of what Ellerbe said.

Finally, the Board was then asked about Grover’s prior decision to disallow the long time practice of public questioning of the Board at the end of Board meetings. Ellerbe was asked when the Board was going to address this issue. He answered, "We will be discussing this on the phone with each other."