Karen Heitner disciplinary case: Plainview-Old Bethpage school board seeks to overturn hearing officer's decision

The Plainview-Old Bethpage school board is asking a Nassau judge to vacate a hearing officer’s decision allowing a suspended principal found guilty of touching a staffer's buttocks to return to work, according to the district’s petition.

The district had filed disciplinary charges against Karen Heitner, a tenured principal at Pasadena Elementary School in Plainview, and sought to fire her. State-appointed hearing officer James Brown found the principal guilty of five charges and imposed a penalty of a one-month unpaid suspension, beginning May 6.

The school board's petition, filed Friday in state Supreme Court, seeks a court order to throw out Brown’s decision, which the school district’s attorney, Christopher Mestecky, wrote was “arbitrary, capricious and irrational.”

The board also is asking that Heitner’s employment be terminated or a new disciplinary hearing be granted.

“This failure to address the serious nature of the misconduct coupled with the lenient penalty imposed, demonstrates that Brown did not give the District's recommendation ‘serious consideration,’ ” or any consideration as required by state law, Mestecky wrote in the petition.

Heitner’s attorney, Arthur Scheuermann with the School Administrators Association of New York State, said Monday he and his co-counsel will “vigorously defend” Heitner.

“Although we don’t necessarily agree with all the findings and penalty, we respect it,” Scheuermann said. “And we will enforce her right to return to an elementary principalship.”

Superintendent Mary O'Meara said in a previous statement that Heitner would not return to Pasadena Elementary and instead would be “administratively reassigned to the administration office.”

Heitner declined to comment through Scheuermann.

Brown did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

Mestecky, managing partner of Guercio and Guercio, also declined to comment.

The school board’s petition is highly unusual, as a 2023 Newsday investigation found no Long Island district in the prior decade had gone to court to overturn a hearing officer’s decision.

More recently, the Manhasset school board in 2024 sought a court order to overturn a hearing officer's decision in the case of a high school theater teacher found to have “inappropriate physical contact” with a student. A Nassau judge sided with the board in a ruling issued a year later, sending the case back to the same hearing officer to determine a new penalty, Newsday previously reported. That teacher has appealed.

Hearing officer decision

The disciplinary hearing against Heitner spanned eight months, during which nearly two dozen witnesses testified over 20 daylong sessions last year.

In his May 5 decision, Brown found Heitner touched an occupational therapist’s buttocks at a PTA luncheon in June 2024 but cleared her of a similar allegation made by a second female employee at the same event.

Brown wrote Heitner “should never have intentionally touched [the occupational therapist’s] buttocks in a joking or any other manner." He noted, “Invading the physical and personal space of another employee by touching their buttocks, as Respondent did, can never be condoned.”

Brown also found Heitner guilty of making sexual remarks to the same two staffers on separate occasions and concluded that she was insensitive to a teacher who said she did not want to be set up on a date with a friend of the principal.

Brown noted Heitner’s “insensitivity and unwillingness to serve as a proper role model” but credited her “highly effective” performance reviews and her years of service without any record of formal discipline as mitigating factors.

Brown dismissed most of the charges the district filed against Heitner, which were based on complaints from employees alleging the principal created a hostile work environment or pressured staffers to retire.

Heitner was suspended with pay in August 2024, and the district had recommended termination.