Thirteen and a half months after being placed on paid leave following accusations that she stole a $25 gift card meant for another staffer, the Amagansett School principal, Maria Dorr, returned to work Monday, cleared of all charges and “as passionate as ever about creating a school culture where respect, growth, and achievement flourish,” she said in a statement.
A hearing officer assigned by the New York State Education Department to determine whether disciplinary charges should be brought against Ms. Dorr found her not guilty and ordered the district to reinstate her as principal and expunge the charges from her personnel record. In a decision last Thursday, the officer, Timothy S. Taylor, said that in the seven hearings held on the matter between July 10 and Nov. 20, the district failed to meet its burden of proof establishing Ms. Dorr’s guilt; that one of its key witnesses was “not credible,” and that the former interim superintendent, Richard Loeschner, had “failed to conduct a full and fair investigation.”
“I do not believe this case should have been brought,” said Arthur P. Scheuermann, an attorney who represented Ms. Dorr through her union, the School Administrators Association of New York. “I just thought it was a terrible injustice to charge her.” Ms. Dorr began working at the Amagansett School in 2014, became acting principal in the 2015-16 school year and principal the following year, and was tenured in 2019.
Standing by its decision to pursue the charges, the school board on Friday said in a statement that “while we disagree with the hearing officer’s decision, the board accepts that decision and intends to take steps to promptly restore Ms. Dorr, consistent with the requirements of education law.” At a special meeting that afternoon, the board voted to authorize the school superintendent, Michael Rodgers, to “take the necessary administrative steps for the implementation of this decision.”
“As I return to my role, I do so with renewed commitment — to championing a culture of excellence, to supporting my colleagues, and most importantly, to ensuring that every student receives the quality education they deserve,” Ms. Dorr wrote in her statement, provided to the press on Friday. “Together, we will continue to build a strong foundation for success, both inside and beyond the classroom.”
The decision last week brings to a close a fraught chapter in Amagansett. “Our school community has experienced a great deal of emotional turbulence over this matter,” the board acknowledged in a statement read at its meeting Friday and posted on the district website, saying it “believes that it is time to put this matter behind us and remain focused on the exceptional work that our educators do on behalf of students and families in Amagansett.”
The school district brought the charges against Ms. Dorr on Feb. 6, 2024, alleging that on Dec. 15, 2023, she had taken a red envelope with a $25 Amazon gift card from another staff member’s mailbox and later covered up the alleged theft and lied to Mr. Loeschner as he investigated the missing envelope. She denied the charges, but was placed on paid administrative leave while the district sought to terminate her employment. The hearings were held at Ms. Dorr’s request to determine whether the district had just cause to take disciplinary action against her.
Over the course of seven hearings, the timeline of events on the morning that the gift card went missing was laid out in painstaking detail through the testimony of those who were there, cross-examination of witnesses, and security camera footage that pegged many of the actions in question to the second, with one key exception: There were no security cameras in the mailroom where the theft was said to have taken place.
Lacking that, even those who closely followed the many hours of testimony could be forgiven for being confused about the fate of the red envelope in question, at a time of year when, as the hearing officer wrote, “the number of red envelopes in circulation could potentially be numerous, particularly in an elementary school where parents often give their children’s teachers holiday cards.”
The red envelope that mattered in this case was given to the school receptionist, Cassie Butts, to pass along to Christina McElroy, an occupational therapist. Security footage showed Ms. Butts entering the mailroom with the envelope and leaving without it. A few minutes later, footage showed Ms. Dorr entering the mailroom and leaving with a stack of papers and a red envelope.
Ms. Dorr maintained from the first that the envelope she left the mailroom with had been addressed to her, and that she opened it the next day and found inside an unsigned holiday card and a $50 Shell gift card.
In his investigation, the hearing officer said that Mr. Loeschner, the interim superintendent, had “focused on the incorrect red envelope,” following the one Ms. Dorr carried out of the mailroom rather than the one addressed to Ms. McElroy. “The district fell short of its burden to prove that Dorr took the red envelope in question or, equally as important, that one of the other employees who entered the mailroom during the timeframe in question did not.”
The hearing officer also noted discrepancies in the timeline Ms. Butts laid out in her testimony and that provided by Ms. McElroy. Ms. Butts, he said, had told the principal she was looking for Ms. McElroy’s missing card around 10:08, but security footage showed that Ms. McElroy hadn’t checked her box until about 11:47, and she testified that
it wasn’t until about 12:45 that she told Ms. Butts there was no envelope in it.
“While C. McElroy’s testimony clarified the timeframe for the chain of events crucial to this matter, it also broadened the scope of employees who may have entered the mailroom between 8:24:02 a.m. and 11:47:31 a.m. . . . but were not questioned during Loeschner’s investigation,” Mr. Taylor wrote.
The hearing officer said Ms. Butts had not explained how she knew the card was missing before Ms. McElroy had told her; that she had no way of knowing what the envelope contained, and that she “quickly spread rumors . . . alleging that Dorr had stolen the gift card” before an investigation had occurred and “quickly escalated the incident beyond its true significance. A missing red envelope during the peak holiday season does not justify spreading an unsupported rumor and tarnishing Dorr’s character.”
Ms. Butts retired in February 2024.
Mr. Loeschner learned about the missing card on Dec. 19 from Mr. Rodgers, a physical education teacher at the time, who suggested that he look at Dec. 15 security footage from outside the mailroom from between 8:24 and 8:37 a.m. This raised “significant questions about how and when Rodgers came to learn of the specific times depicted on the security camera footage and, more importantly, whether the footage may have been manipulated,” the hearing officer wrote. Mr. Rodgers, who has since become the school superintendent, did not testify during the hearings.
While the hearing officer cleared Ms. Dorr of all charges last Thursday, he did not agree with her attorneys’ assertion that the charges were frivolous, and therefore denied the request to reimburse attorney fees and expenses and to reimburse Ms. Dorr $2,644.27 “incurred for investigation services and process servers.”
Ms. Dorr was not at a school board meeting on Tuesday, and neither the superintendent nor the board president mentioned her return.
“I’ll say it, since I didn’t hear anything: Congratulations that we have our principal back at the school again,” a parent, Joe Karpinsky, said at the meeting. “Amazing how long 400 days-plus truly is. What an absurd waste of public funds, in my opinion.”
Another parent, Tracey McQuade, took issue with a recent article in The Wall Street Journal that “referred to us as ‘Dramagansett.’ . . . I would like to say that that moniker could not be farther from the truth, that since day one of this school year . . . this board and this superintendent, Michael Rodgers, has worked hard to create and establish a culture of mutual respect, kindness, integrity, honesty, and a place where all students can get support and at times highly individualized support, and all students can be represented.”
“I am deeply grateful that this process has come to an end, allowing me to refocus on what matters most — serving the students and community of Amagansett,” Ms. Dorr said in her statement Friday. “This has been a challenging time for my family and me, but it has only strengthened my dedication to fostering a positive, collaborative, and student-centered environment.”