NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Board Vice President Amy Moselhi said manipulation of high school graduation data was OK by her when presented outside of New Rochelle but drew the line when misleading data was presented to the school board. Moselhi’s unusual remarks came as part of a public dressing down of Interim New Rochelle High School Principal Joseph Starvaggi at a recent board meeting.
“Maybe we do this as a presentation outward when we are presenting about New Rochelle outwardly but when we are presenting inwardly to the community and to the board I want the data clear and obvious,” she said.
Moselhi did not expand on why misrepresenting graduation data was acceptable “outside” New Rochelle.
On December 4th, members of the New Rochelle Board of Education piled on after Moselhi’ remarks as Starvaggi was pilloried with accusations of deliberate deception in presenting 2017 high school graduation data and a failure to present an “effective” intervention plan to turn around declining graduation rates.
At issue was a reported decline in graduation rates from 2014 to 2018. The June overall graduation rate declined from 81% in 2014 to 78.6% in 2017, a decline of 3.0% over 4 years and the August overall graduation rate declined from 84.3% to 80.8% in 2017, a decline of 4.2% over 4 years.
Board Vice President Amy Moselhi chastised Starvaggi after he completed his presentation, saying “some level of discomfort is warranted”, that she was “uncomfortable with the presentation”.
Moselhi pointed to slides in the presentation that inverted data in an effort to hide a decline in graduation rates in a way that was “misleading”. She described the presentation as “playing with data” and criticized Starvaggi’s failure to present data in a consistent manner.
“That is not by accident,” said Moselhi. “I don’t things like this should happen in a presentation.”
“I commend whoever thought this up because it’s kind of smart but it doesn’t help,” said Moselhi sarcastically. “Whoever put this presentation together, ‘bravo’”.
“Until we are OK not being OK and very very uncomfortable we’re not going to go anywhere,” said Moselhi. “Progress is not going to come when we manipulate data to make it better than it is.”
Former Board President Rachel Relkin, who was in the top spot when the 2017 graduation took place, said Starvaggi’s ideas on intervention looked like “throwing darts” at the problem. She said she found it “very frustrating” that Starvaggi’s intervention strategy was not “connected” and there was no plan to monitor whether interventions were working. Board Member Julia Muggia Ochs and Board President Jeffrey Hastie concurred with Relkin’s concern that Starvaggi’s plan looked like “throwing darts” at the problem, “hoping something will stick”.
“It is not an effective use of staff,” said Muggia Ochs. “We don’t know if interventions are working.”
“There is no overall strategy to create a culture of high achievement and learning at the high school,” Relkin agreed.
Muggia Ochs said “glossing over” bad news in the graduation data will not allow school officials to fix the problem.
Chris Daniello said he found the presentation confusing.
“Just to caveat off of what Ms. Moselhi said…I was looking at it and I was also a little…this is not making sense,” he said.
Paul Warhit applauded his colleagues for their “direct questions and honest critique.”
Starvaggi said he was not happy to hear the criticism.