Public School Prodigals

From the New York Times, we get a couple of more reasons why home schooling is growing in popularity, although the editors there doubtless do not look at it that way.

First there is the case of Diane Cherchio West of Bayonne, New Jersey. “Many in this gray, insular city are at a loss to explain why Diane Cherchio West was allowed to continue working in the public school system for two decades after she was caught in 1980 kissing and groping a 13-year-old student at an eighth-grade dance,” David Kocieniewski writes. “Why, after her promotion to guidance counselor at Bayonne High School, no one alerted social services, school officials or the police when she became pregnant by an 11th grader she supervised, Steven West, and married him upon his graduation in 1985.”

“Or why, when that baby, Steven Jr., grew to be a teenager, no one balked as his 15-year-old friend moved in with Ms. West, who then seduced the friend with Scooby-Doo boxer shorts and evening jaunts to sports bars and used her school authority to rearrange his classes around their secret trysts.”

And how did school administrators respond? They gave her a party.

“It was not until 2001, when relatives of the boy, Christopher Castlegrande, filed a complaint with the police of statutory rape against Ms. West, that she left her $74,000-a-year job and lost her unfettered access to Bayonne High School’s students,” Kocieniewski wrote in the Times on October 10th. “After Ms. West was arrested, school officials insisted for more than a year that the allegation was the only accusation of misconduct in a sterling 24-year career.”

“They allowed her to take an early retirement package that fattened her pension, and gave her a farewell party with cake and ice cream.” In so doing, her bosses gave her more time for childhood pursuits than she would concede to some of her students.

“When Ms. West pleaded guilty in 2005 to sexual assault charges, glowing references from co-workers, supervisors and friends helped persuade a judge to sentence her only to probation,” Kocnieniewski reports. “She was also spared the ordeal of having to register as a sex offender.”

Speaking of ordeals, a public school administrator in Long Island really took taxpayers to the cleaners. “Frank A. Tassone, the once-adored superintendent of the Roslyn school district, was sentenced on Tuesday to 4 to 12 years in prison for his role in an $11.2 million larceny scandal that has deeply shaken one of Long Island’s best school systems,” Paul Vitello reported in the New York Times on October 11th. “Dr. Tassone wore a jail-issued orange jumpsuit, handcuffs and a chain around his waist at his sentencing here.”

“The jail garb and shackles were the result of his arrest for repeatedly failing to appear here for sentencing.” Vitello had reported last spring that “Stephen Signorelli, the domestic partner of superintendent Frank A. Tassone, received a no-bid contract and passed money from that deal on to Tassone,” according to prosecutors.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.