Open Letter to the Mineola School District Community
Dear Residents,
Now that a clearer version of events leading to Board of Education Vice President Terence Hale’s resignation has been reported to the community at large, the issue of withdrawing my petition to the state Department of Education has been raised supposedly to save the district the cost of defending Mr. Hale and the district.
I will explain now why I will not withdraw my petition.
Mr. Hale sent those e-mails and implicated me in all of them. He either implied or directly stated that I and others were liars. He stated many other things that I will not repeat but which were improper for a school board member to state.
Mr. Hale claims that he apologized to the entire board for sending the e-mails in question.
However, the apology e-mail he sent me was addressed to me alone.
Moreover, his apology did not specifically address the egregious transgressions he made against others in the school district community.
Finally, he completely negated the effects of the private apology he gave to me by his actions and words at the meeting in which he resigned.
At that meeting he announced he was resigning solely to save the school district money and that the charges I had raised with the board and subsequently with the Commissioner of Education were frivolous.
Although he admitted to sending these egregious e-mails and admitted that they were inappropriate in private, at the meeting he accused me of taking political advantage of his unprofessionalism by seeking his removal from the board. He also completely negated any culpability he had in sending those e-mails by saying they were private and sent to adults only, also implying that because of that, it was somehow okay for him to make the statements he made.
He publicly attacked me for holding him publicly accountable for his egregious, unprofessional behavior.
Had he admitted his wrongdoing and apologized to the district, its residents, and me publicly at that meeting, or even read aloud the private apology he sent me, I would be more inclined to let this matter pass.
But I feel his statements at the meeting were disingenuous and contrary to the private apology he sent me.
In my opinion, he resigned because (a) he did not want to be exposed for having committed serious transgressions against myself, my children, and others; (b) because he wanted to avoid the humiliation of those transgressions being made public and being reviewed by the state Department of Education; (c) he did not want to be removed by the state Department of Education commissioner; and (d) because his friends on the board told him to in the hope that their support of his attacks against me and others in the school district community could be contained and be attached only to him.
As part of his public announcement, he also solicited a variety of other individuals who have supported him politically in the past to provide supportive statements for him and to make statements attacking me.
These statements were made for the purpose of showing the community he continued to enjoy the political support of members of the school district community. Their statements were also designed to negate the effect of his apology and to call into question my motives in holding him accountable for his egregious actions.
Additionally, his and their statements were designed to allow him to return to the board next year in a run for his former seat. Indeed, he has already publicly stated that he would again run for the board and planned to remain active in the school district’s affairs.
So what is the benefit of his resignation now but to squash my complaint and not have it reviewed?
All of these actions and statements by Mr. Hale and his supporters were designed, in my opinion, not only to negate his culpability in sending these e-mails and of his apology to me, they are also designed to send a message to the rest of the school district community: “If any of you do this to one of us this is what we will do to you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
By publicly claiming that the charges are frivolous and thereby negating his culpability in sending those e-mails as well as his previous private apology to me, and because of the chilling effect of the post petition campaign against me by Mr. Hale and his supporters, they left me no choice but to maintain my petition seeking his removal from the board.
Let’s also not ignore the board’s culpability in failing to act to reprimand Mr. Hale or to demand that Mr. Hale resign effective immediately.
The board, in my opinion, should have done this once my intent to pursue charges was made known to both Mr. Hale and the board well before any of this had become public. The issue of these transgressions and my objection to them was made known to Mr. Hale and the board when I sent a letter to [Mineola board] President Hornberger.
Mr. Hale had the opportunity to resign at that point and chose not to do so. The board also failed to take any action despite at least one member, Christine Napolitano’s, alleged objection to the e-mails Mr. Hale sent me; this was made known to me in a phone call from her a week after the last e-mail had been sent.
Curiously, Ms. Napolitano now also publicly supports Mr. Hale despite the objections to his egregious conduct she communicated to me in her phone call.
It’s also curious that when asked about our phone call she avoids discussing it with the press with a “no comment.”
Yet she questions why I would publicize the petition. I hope it is clear now to the school district community why it needed to be publicized. Ms. Napolitano and others seemingly would like this swiftly swept under the rug. The district and its residents must ask themselves whether they want a board that is run in this manner.
In that vein, I also want to let the community know that I am also not withdrawing my petition because of public comments made by Mr. Hale and one of his supporters, at the June workshop meeting of the board which contained veiled threats against myself and my family.
Mr. Hale also sent another inappropriate e-mail to me after his public announcement. At the board meeting, Mr. Hale, invoking his grandfather, stated “What goes around comes around.”
He invoked his grandmother implying that people like me will “get it in the neck…” His supporter issued a threat against my children and myself in her public statement at that meeting stating that I should not want them “bogged down with this baggage” implying that if I did not withdraw my petition that both my children and I may suffer because we will be school district residents for a long time.
This particular supporter is a district employee and works in the building where one of my children attends school. While I may seek separate legal relief on the basis of Mr. Hale’s and her statements, I expected at least one board member to state how inappropriate these comments were, but they all remained silent.
The district and board have also ignored a letter from my legal counsel asking for action to be taken against the veiled threats made against my children.
Once again the board is culpable. Neither Mr. Hale or the others who publicly attacked me at that meeting were cautioned to be civil, a caution Mr. Hale took to extremes during the public meeting where the board took up the issue of renting the Cross Street School, when he was president.
Neither Mr. Hornberger, as president, or any other member of the board moved to contain the outrageous statements made by Hale and others. I may hold the board collectively and individually responsible for the travesty that was the board’s June workshop meeting. It was the epitome of an out-of-control, unprofessional board.
Collectively Mr. Hale and his supporters, both on and off the board of education, believe they are unaccountable for their actions. They feel they can attack me, insult residents, and threaten my children with impunity.
That is why I will not withdraw my petition and why further legal action against them and the school district may be necessary.
Certainly I do this to vindicate my rights and to seek relief for the damages they have caused me. However, I also do this in the name of the people of the district who should not have to cower in fear for their public statements or for holding public officials accountable for their own stupidity, will result in their being socially ostracized or other more serious and harmful damages.
I am confident that the more light that is shed on how this board operates and has operated, the more people will understand why I am continuing with my petition. I will persevere.
Irene Parrino
Trustee, A Member of the
Mineola Board of Education
