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Only right step is to step down from district

Joye Brown

August 8, 2006

Richard Hawkins ought to rethink his decision not to step down as superintendent of the William Floyd school district. And he ought to take some school board members with him.

Together, they have presided, blithely, over one of the biggest school district scandals in Long Island's history.

Hawkins, much respected in the district where he has worked for 30 years, wasn't saying much yesterday after the state comptroller released an audit that should have had residents outraged and storming the district's administrative offices.

Maybe Hawkins is counting on his popularity to see him through.

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It shouldn't.

He may be a nice guy, a smart guy and maybe even one of the most talented school administrators in Suffolk County. But he's also head of a district that's dissed taxpayers and done them wrong.

So far, five district administrators have been charged, and four of them pleaded guilty, in the last two years, in connection with the scandal.

And it doesn't take much to read between the lines of Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota's careful remarks during yesterday's news conference, to conclude that more indictments may be forthcoming.

But Hawkins and school board veterans shouldn't step down because of the criminality of subordinates. The district's leadership ought to step down for a more fundamental reason: It looks incompetent, and sneaky.

According to an audit by Comptroller Alan Hevesi's office, Hawkins for years essentially gave himself raises.

But, hey, that must have been the rage in William Floyd, because contracts and salary increases for six other administrators weren't approved by the school board in advance either, the audit said.

And the school board?

For years, the board met - or, at least, school board members now say it met - in secret to approve matters that, by law, should have gone before district taxpayers. There appear to be no minutes of those meetings.

Were officials so incompetent that they didn't know the law? Or so contemptuous of residents, that they didn't bother to operate within its boundaries? Either way, it stinks.

The district, in a response to Hevesi's audit, launched an unusually aggressive 42-page defense of itself. The first eight pages alone slam Hevesi's office 21 times for not concentrating on current district procedures.

"We are ... left wondering how the public can continue to place its faith in your office when it behaves in what does not appear to be a fair manner ... " the district wrote. "Our taxpayers are left without an impartial review of our current practices."

The response makes for interesting theater. It reads like a magician feverishly flourishing a red scarf in one hand, while hiding his real work in the other.

As to culpability, the district spoke, not with a shout but a whisper. " ... the board acknowledges that things in the past should have been done differently," the district wrote.

Our acceptance of responsibility is not hollow - we backed it up by serious, concrete and structural changes."

OK, but it still begs the obvious question:

Can leadership that ran things so poorly for so long, really clean itself up?

joye.brown@newsday.com