A Hempstead school district timeline
A sign for Hempstead schools outside the district office in Hempstead on Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. Credit: Barry Sloan
Shifting leadership and political wrangling, often driven by changes in school board control, have been a constant in the Hempstead school district.
The district is Nassau County’s largest K-12 system in terms of enrollment, with about 8,000 students. It has consistently been flagged by the state Education Department for low academic performance.
Here is a timeline of significant events in recent years:
2012
Nov. 2: Patricia Garcia, schools chief since 2009 and the district’s first Latino superintendent, resigns. She gets a payout of nearly $320,000 under a separation agreement. In the seventh change of superintendents in eight years, the board chooses Susan Johnson, a two-time former Hempstead schools chief who unsuccessfully sued the district over her firing in 2005.
2013
May 23: The five-member school board unanimously approves Johnson’s contract, retroactive to November and extending through June 30, 2016. Her base salary is $250,000, to increase to $265,000 over the contract’s term, with additional benefits such as health and dental insurance and a district vehicle.
June 28: Newsday reports the Hempstead district has systematically changed some students’ failing final course grades into passing grades, spurring investigation. A district deputy superintendent says the grade-changing was a long-term policy designed to prevent confrontations between teachers, parents and students and to better students’ chances of getting into college.
Aug. 22: The state Education Department places Hempstead High School on its “priority” list, the lowest academic rung, meaning it ranks among the lowest 5 percent of schools statewide.
2014
May 20: Board president and power broker Betty Cross wins re-election narrowly over challenger Maribel Touré, a local activist. The result is challenged based on disputed absentee ballots and allegations of voter coercion, and an appeal is filed with the state education commissioner.
July 1: The school board elects trustee LaMont Johnson as president, ousting Cross from the position. Johnson, a former officer with the NYPD and Hempstead Village police, is elected to the board in May 2013. (He is not related to Susan Johnson.)
July 18: Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. orders Cross to step down from the board while he investigates allegations of voter fraud and misuse of absentee ballots in the May election. The next month, King nullifies the May vote and orders a special election in October.
Oct. 16: King, in a highly unusual action, orders immediate investigation of the district’s enrollment procedures, two days after community members’ allegations that the district had turned away more than 30 Latino students from school for weeks. The order centers on children who are recent immigrants and who in some cases entered the country illegally as unaccompanied minors.
Hempstead school board member Betty Cross counts votes as they are read aloud during a special meeting at Alverta B. Gray Schultz Middle School in Hempstead on May 21, 2014, to publicly count 31 absentee ballots, which gave Cross victory over Maribel Touré. That election result later was vacated. Credit: Jeremy Bales
Dec. 7: The board rejects a proposal — 3-2, under the new majority — to hold a February referendum on a $46.8 million bond issue aimed at ending overcrowding and the use of aging portable classrooms. The new majority votes against the plan, which includes rebuilding the district’s long-shuttered Marguerite G. Rhodes School.
