Bellport's Joe Cipp Jr. won't step down despite accusations
Joe Cipp Jr., superintendent of the South County Central School District, addresses the crowd during a board meeting. (Dec. 7, 2011) Credit: Thomas A. Ferrara
The superintendent of South Country Central School District, accused by the former principal of Bellport High School of pressuring underlings to boost the grades of a star football player, said during a contentious school board meeting Wednesday night that he would not step down.
"I categorically deny the allegations," said Joe Cipp Jr., the superintendent and former Bellport football coach, in a statement he read at the start of the meeting.
The board later voted to hire an outside agency to investigate the alleged grade fixing, as Cipp had requested.
Members of the football team and their families clapped for the former coach while the majority of the audience of about 300 sat in silence when they learned he planned to stay on.
The head of the teachers union, Wayne White, noted during the public comment portion of the meeting that teachers have been moved to other parts of the district as retribution for speaking out, a theme that arose throughout the evening.
Antoinette Huffine, a principal in the district until 1998, said the superintendent must step down. Huffine was a member of the board until she was forced out in 2009.
She agreed with White that the board has silenced critics within the district by moving them to other locations -- particularly South Haven.
But Kevin Wilson Sr., whose son is on the football team, said Cipp is a man of integrity who helped his child transform from a boy to a man.
"He started helping around the house, not breaking curfew, and being respectful to his parents," Wilson said of his son, 17.
The accusations come from fired Bellport High School principal Kevin O'Connell, who said he was let go last school year after he failed to force a math teacher to change Ryan Sloan's marks in order to satisfy academic requirements set forth by the NCAA and Syracuse University.
O'Connell is now an administrator at the Roosevelt Union Free School District and is asking South Country to pay him $51,000 in lost wages; he said they've turned him down, saying his firing was legitimate. He is not pursuing the case in court.
Sloan, a freshman on the Syracuse football team, graduated from high school in June. He has said he improved his grades by staying after school for extra help, a position shared by his guardians. His mother died in 2003 and he never knew his father.
He has said he spoke with Cipp on Monday and the former football coach told him "don't worry. Don't let it bother you. We both know the truth."
Edward Carson, one of Sloan's guardians, who said he's also spoken with Cipp since the allegations surfaced, called the superintendent "distraught."
"Everybody has their failings," Carson said. "But I've never seen this man do anything wrong as far as the school and the program."
With Jim Baumbach
and Kimberley A. Martin
