Allege Cover-Up Over Housing Report
Last week’s Amagansett School Board meeting took a contentious turn when it came time for public comment, after a resident alleged that the school district had improperly denied a Freedom of Information Law request.
Rona Klopman said she had asked the board to provide the full text of Paul Seversky’s February 2016 report on affordable housing. The district had responded, she said, with a heavily redacted version of the report, which is the basis for school officials’ opposition to a proposed affordable housing complex at 531 Montauk Highway. School officials have said the project would overwhelm the district’s financial resources and available space.
According to a letter sent to District Superintendent Eleanor Tritt by Jonathan Wallace, an attorney hired by Ms. Klopman, the district is withholding the full report as “intra-agency communications,” which is one of the few exceptions to the state’s Freedom of Information Law. “Clearly, the material in question does not fit within this exception,” Mr. Wallace wrote.
Ms. Klopman was not alone in her allegation. Catherine Casey, executive director of the East Hampton Housing Authority, said this week that she had requested the same information, and that it was improperly denied. The Housing Authority eventually appealed and received more of the report than it had at first, she said, but the report’s conclusion remained redacted.
The authority has also not received information on the district’s reserve fund balances that it had requested, Ms. Casey said. “I believe the district is withholding the Seversky report because the report is saying the district can absorb the students, no problem,” she said.
The school district has asserted that there may be as many as 72 students in the proposed 40-unit housing complex. The Housing Authority disputes that figure, saying a more accurate number is 37 students, some of whom may already be living in Amagansett. The school district has also said it may have to raise from $650,000 to $1.5 million more in taxes to educate those children, a figure the Housing Authority also disputes.
The school district paid $19,600 for the study, which, Ms. Tritt said in an email, was designed for “exclusive internal use for planning. That study is still under review by the board. . . . These redactions were made because those recommendations and analyses represent non-final agency determinations by the board, and [were] properly redacted.”
Also during the meeting, it was announced that an Amagansett School Board member had resigned. Steve Graboski, who beat out a longtime board member, Mary Lownes, for the seat in May 2015, notified the board by letter that he was resigning.
The letter, which was apparently unexpected, was “very brief. He wished us the best of luck and said he enjoyed the time,” Victoria Handy, the board president, said. “He did not give a reason. I don’t think he has to. It was kind of abrupt, but it’s a volunteer position and that’s his prerogative.”
Mr. Graboski, who has a daughter employed as a teacher at the school, did not return a call for comment.
The board, which could have held a special election to fill the vacant seat, instead took immediate steps to replace him, voting in Dawn Brophy, a real estate agent with Brown Harris Stevens who has been involved in the Amagansett School PTA as a member, officer, and event organizer for many years and has served on the shared-decision-making team at East Hampton Middle School and on the board of the East Hampton Little League.
Mr. Graboski’s resignation means that as of July 1, heading into the 2016-17 school year, a majority of the board will be new. Ms. Handy and Phelan Wolf did not seek re-election this year, and Hank Muchnic and Kristen Peterson ran unopposed for the two open seats on the five-member board.
Also during the June 14 meeting, the board promoted Maria Dorr, acting school principal, to the position of principal. She had taken a one-year leave of absence last summer from her previous post as pupil personnel services director to serve as acting principal, the school’s third principal in as many years.