Organisicak Comes Clean on Fast ForWord Program; Shows Quinn Lied to Journal News

In April, Ernie Garcia ran a story in the Journal News in which he found that the New Rochelle School Board was spending six times more money than the Yonkers School Board.

Garcia reported:

Members of New Rochelle’s Board of Education racked up $28,312.24 in expenses in the period from July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2008, compared with Yonkers’ Board of Education expenses of $4,804.71.

When asked to explain why the New Rochelle school board spends so much more than other districts, New Rochelle Assistant Superintendent John Quinn told Garcia the expenses were “predominantly related to travel and conference attendance” which Quinn claimed were “critical to school districts because board members receive training and bring back useful ideas”.

Here is the money quote:

“It’s very important to have an informed board and a cohesive board,” Quinn said. “They’ve brought back substantive ideas, such as the fast-forward method of training students who have learning disabilities.”

This is flat-out lie.

It is a lie just like when Quinn admitted that overtime payments went up last year — not down as he had said they would be. The amount of overtime paid was over $800,000. The amount of snow fall last year was well below average — there were only two snow days last year. Now, look at Quinn’s answer:

[Quinn] said the reason maintenance workers and tradesmen receive more overtime than others is because the school district uses staff for work such as plowing snow rather than hiring outside contractors.

Why would overtime go up when it is paid out for snow removal when there was far less snow than usual? And why did some workers get the exact same amount — to the penny — of overtime as the year before. Obviously, the amount of OT is pre-arranged and had nothing to do with snow fall or not hiring outside contractors.

The district did not learn about the “fast-forward method” because board members traveled to some conference. Quinn is again lying.

It is also a stupid lie because it so obviously ignores common sense — the school district already pays for an entire team of speech and language specialists and a director of speech and language and a director of special education, all of whom would be readily familiar with the Fast ForWord program had he or any board members bothered to ask.

The program he is referencing has been discussed many, many times by Quinn and Organisciak and other members of the school board at public board meetings. I was there. It was discussed several times during the budget meetings (by Quinn). He seems to have this program on the brain [note: the program is actually called Fast ForWord, a computer software program from a company called Scientific Learning, based in Oakland, California].

The Fast ForWord program was first introduced in the New Rochelle schools about ten years ago by Gloria Strauss, the former head of speech and language for the New Rochelle school system. Her boss, Director of Special Education Yvette Goorevitch, is quite familiar with Fast ForWord as she is the person who had to approve the software purchase in her budget. Strauss is readily available to the district as a resource because after she retired she was brought back on a part-time basis (yet another 211 waiver for someone to get paid by the district and collect a pension!).

Sources informed Talk of the Sound that Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak was also familiar with the Fast ForWord program because it was used in schools where Organisciak worked prior to accepting the position of New Rochelle Superintendent. However, when I sought to confirm this information at the next school board meeting Organisciak was evasive.

At a board meeting in early May, I asked Organisciak whether, prior to coming to work in New Rochelle, he was familiar with the Fast ForWord program. His answer? He said that he was not prepared for that question and would need to look into and get back to me. Think about that folks. The Fast ForWord program has been repeatedly discussed for weeks at board meetings in front of Organisciak. Organisciak is endorsing the program and approving of expenditures to license the software and implement the programs. The board is discussing expanding the use of Fast ForWord in the schools. But Organisciak is “not prepared” to say whether or not had heard of the program before coming to work in New Rochelle 2 1/2 years earlier. He needs to “look into it” because he was “not prepared” for the question. Gee, I did not realize that he would need to “prepare” to answer whether or not he had past experience with a program he was now endorsing to the school board.

Quinn is lying to the Journal News about why the school board spends six times more than the Yonkers board. Organisciak is lying about whether he had heard of Fast ForWord. Yet, they expect to be taken at face value when they talk on topics like how school funds are being spent or what sort of tax increase will be needed to support their budget. Rest assured, if they are lying about the expenditure of $28,000 by the school board they are certainly not telling you the truth about how they are spending $229 million.

Over the past four months, at meeting after meeting, I continued to raise this question and each time Organisciak gave evasive answers or simply refused to reply. I raised it again at the board meeting last week and once again Organisciak gave an evasive answer.

This time, however, there was new leadership on the board and a newly feisty member (Lacher) so I pressed the point. In response to my asking yet again whether or not he was familiar with the Fast ForWord program prior to taking this current position Organisciak rambled on for several minutes about an upcoming meeting where Fast ForWord was going to be discussed. He assured me that I would “certainly” get all of my questions answered at that meeting. Except that I only had one question and the only person who could answer it was sitting right in front of me purposely avoiding an answer to my question.

I pointed out to members of the school board that once again Mr. Organisciak had failed to answer my rather simple question. Dead silence. A dirty look from Organisciak. More silence. Finally, and with great reluctance, Organisciak took a deep breath and admitted what had become obvious.

“Sure, I was familiar with Fast ForWard”, he said.

I tell this story mostly because I want residents of New Rochelle to realize what they are dealing with in Richard Organisciak. The man is a compulsive, serial liar. If he was eating an apple and you asked him what he was eating he would answer “An orange.” This is a man who lies just to hear himself lie.

But beyond showing what sort of a man we have running our school system, this behavior also shows something perhaps more important, that the man responsible for managing the school district’s money cannot be trusted either. Quinn could have cited any number of programs and claimed that they were brought to the district by board members on one of their junkets; unfortunately, he picked one that could so readily be shown to be a complete fabrication. The Fast ForWord program has been in use in New Rochelle since the 1990s. Many speech and language specialists in the district already know about it. The head of speech and language for New Rochelle when it was first used ten years ago still works for the district as does her boss who approved the funding for the program. And now the Superintendent has finally admitted that he too knew all about it long before arriving on the scene in New Rochelle. In fact, the only person who seems NOT to have known about Fast ForWord is the guy lying about it — John Quinn.

And underneath all of this deceit remains the question posed to Quinn by Ernie Garcia: why is the New Rochelle School Board spending so much more money on expenses that other school boards in the area?

We are still waiting for an honest answer to that question.