Martin Daly, President of the New Rochelle teacher’s union, went on the offensive Friday, attacking yet another New Rochelle parent who dared to take criticism of District officials public in two recent blog posts (here and here) on this web site. Robert Cox, one of the founding editors of Talking of the Sound, wrote a scathing criticism of the school board and administrators after attending a recent school board meeting where school officials presented phony data, made blatant misrepresentations of fact and failed to properly calculate even the simplest mathematic operations. Talk of the Sound readers will recall that Daly similarly attacked parents from Trinity School on the Journal News web site for making unrelated criticisms of the District.
In the Journal News article, Inequity Perceived in New Rochelle Schools, Superintendent Richard E. Organisciak portrays the District as an open forum which welcomes criticism:
There’s nothing about this district or this community that people should fear speaking about publicly. This has been an open forum for both pleasant and unpleasant comments.
Since the Trinity parents first came forward with their complaints, they have been publicly attacked by the Superintendent of Schools, the Mayor of New Rochelle, both co-president’s of the PTA, the head of the teacher’s union and various district apologists – none of who have addressed the substance of the inequality claims which making unfounded or false claims about the parents.
In an email Friday, sent to over one hundred school district employees, including teachers, administrators and other staff, Martin Daly accused Cox of “distortions, half truths, twisted logic and unproven accusations”. Daly failed to provide a single example to support his claims and admitted in the same email that he had not read the two articles in question. Talk of the Sound first reported on Martin Daly in early September after his attempt to dispute the “two New Rochelles” issue raised on another TOS blog, New Rochelle Community Pulse, was greeted with a less-than-positive response form teachers.
It was not clear from his email in what capacity Daly was communicating with district employees. Martin Daly is currently listed on the Isaac Young Middle School web site as a teacher, on the New Rochelle Teacher’s Union web site as President and was recently elected Co-President of the New Rochelle PTA Council which does not appear to have a web site.
This is not the first time Martin Daly has been cited for conflict of interest. A former substitute teacher in New Rochelle recently wrote on the Journal News web site:
I can recall Mr Daly actually attending a civic meeting several years earlier when the district budget was presented and actually responded to a question regarding the need to have FUSE members contribute to health and welfair (sic) costs directed at the school board/administration. this would have been a basis for an unfair labor practice in private industry and gave me pause regarding the degree of impartial collective bargaining that takes place in contract talks with the union.
Further confusing matters, Martin Daly has also been known to correspond with union members about highly confidential matters such as grievances and complaints against the district using the school district’s own computers, thereby permitting district administrators and lawyers representing the district in legal disputes with teachers to legally obtain copies of these same confidential emails affording the district a convenient window into what teachers rightly presume to be confidential discussions with their union representatives.
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