By Neil Mattera
For nearly four decades, I was a faculty member at New Rochelle’s alternative high school, a specially designed program for at-risk students who struggled to matriculate at the district’s main campus. I believe that institution, recently dubbed Huguenot Academy, saved lives. But now, it is imperiled by the incompetence and inattention of the City School District of New Rochelle.
My colleagues and I understood that we had a special responsibility to educate our students, who were referred to us for various reasons, causing them to be unsuccessful at the main Campus. Whatever their path, we made sure to give them focused attention. As educators, we firmly believed that our intervention could steer young people away from the negative circumstances in their lives and other pitfalls that wreak havoc in our communities.
But over the past two years, the City School District of New Rochelle has abandoned those students, installed an inexperienced and overwhelmed administrator as their director, and worse, has kicked the program out of its longtime home, St. Gabriel’s School, without finding a permanent replacement. Instead, students have shuffled between three different locations, none of which are appropriate settings for an education – a high school basement, a public library, and a Boys & Girls Club clubhouse.
Each of these stopovers have glaring faults.
The high school basement was ill-suited to meet the unique needs of the alternative program. Our students, after all, came to us because they struggled on the main campus. But the district thought returning them there – as long as they were segregated below ground – was somehow appropriate. No wonder our students sensed that they were being treated like second-class citizens and referred to their new home as “Cell Block D.”
When the basement flooded during Hurricane Ida, the alternative program was relocated to the New Rochelle Public Library. The building has none of the basic features conducive to learning, like classrooms, and served as little more than a warming shelter.
When the district finally got around to realizing that the library was unacceptable, they moved the program to the Mascaro Clubhouse of the Boys & Girls Club of New Rochelle without authorization from the City of New Rochelle which owns the building. The clubhouse lacks the educational infrastructure typical in most schools and does not meet the standards required under the New York State Education Department Building Code.
The program remains there today, the faculty gamely trying to serve their students in a setting that heightens their already considerable challenges. Multiple classes are taught in a gymnasium, an arrangement that encourages distraction and disengagement. Students meet with advisors in a kitchen area surrounded by garbage cans, bags and boxes.
Incredibly, this traveling circus would have had two more stops if the district had its way. The alternative program was initially slated to be relocated to Bethesda Baptist Church, a move championed by then New Rochelle Superintendent Laura Feijoo and then-Board President Amy Moselhi. The Family Life Center at Bethesda Baptist, with no gym and no grounds, was a baffling choice that was clearly motivated by Feijoo’s desire to curry favor with the church’s leadership, who had vociferously criticized her until she decided to steer the alternative program – and its rent payments – toward the cash-strapped parish. The cynical self-dealing evident in this arrangement was so obvious, that the New Rochelle community pushed back and the plan was jettisoned.
The district announced last October that the alternative program was moving “soon” to Monroe College’s New Rochelle campus. New superintendent Johnathan Raymond called it an “outstanding educational facility.” Teachers were allowed to begin setting up in the space. Parents were notified that their children would move in on November 5.
There was never any chance of that happening as the announcement preceded negotiations with GHP, the building owner, and Monroe College, the GHP tenant on a two-year sublease. The facility required extensive renovations necessitating approvals from the New Rochelle Building Department and the New York State Education Facilities Department based on site plans drawn up by architects.
Monroe agreed to pay the $291,000 estimated cost of renovations. That figure fits neatly into the $21,000 in monthly rent the district has paid so far for the vacant space since last fall (5 months x $21,000 is $105,000) plus agreeing to a rent about $10,000 a month more than the cost of St. Gabes (19 months x $10,000 is $190,000) in what appears to be a backdoor way for the district to fund the renovations by overpaying $295,000 on a 2-year lease for an unoccupied space; otherwise illegal given that the lease is less than the required 10 years to amortize the renovations as required under state law.
The process to ready 140 Huguenot as a home for the Huguenot Academy had already dragged on for six months before Monroe College obtained construction permits on March 2, 2021. Work began in mid-March but Monroe College has still not obtained and posted required plumbing and electrical permits.
The most optimistic estimate from district officials was, barring any unforeseen issues like supply chain issues or finding asbestos at the site, the construction schedule would run 8 weeks. Over the past week school officials have said variously the construction work will completed by mid-April, end-of-April, and early-May.
Eight weeks would be mid-May.
GHP has made no commitment to the district beyond the remaining 19 months on the 2-year lease. 140 Huguenot is a commercial office building and GHP will rent space to the highest bidder. Anticipating this, New Rochelle Schools Superintendent Jonathan P. Raymond has already had a site visit to Holy Name of Jesus School (previously rejected as a home for the Huguenot Academy due to its small size and lack of parking) and floated the idea to Huguenot Academy staff and students of moving back to New Rochelle High School, this time on the third floor (students and staff soundly rejected returning to the high school main campus).
The district’s years-long failure to find a permanent home for the alternative program is particularly vexing because the facility we used for nearly thirty years, St. Gabriel’s, is far superior to the alternatives. First and foremost, it is an actual school building with classrooms, a gymnasium, an auditorium, office space, adequate bathrooms, and a parking lot. Over the years, it has been upgraded with new technology and key educational amenities, like a dedicated music room.
The alternative program was forced out of St. Gabriel’s supposedly because the district decided several repairs it needed – including upgrades to make it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act – were too expensive and could not be amortized over 10 years. The archdiocese says it was never asked by the district to make renovations or sign a ten year lease but would have agreed to both.
In July 2020, Feijoo said it would cost $2.4 million to properly renovate the building, a figure she claimed was unaffordable. Feijoo’s credibility is undermined by her role in the Bethesda Church scandal. She was looking for a pretext to curry favor with Amy Moselhi and her self-described mentor, David Peters, and church leadership and did not care about the cost.
Her subsequent successors’ refusal to fight for investment in St. Gabriel’s is head-scratching. If the program’s budget is such a concern, why would the district approve a move to Monroe College, where renovations were also needed, where the rent is twice as high as what was paid to St. Gabriel’s, and there is a real possibility the Huguenot Academy will be evicted by the end of 2023?
I spent my entire professional career at the alternative program. It is equal parts maddening and heart-breaking to watch it become mismanaged into oblivion. The lack of leadership and administrative failures that upended the program’s stability and effectiveness must be examined. The toxic stew of stubbornness, favor-trading, and lack of transparency is intolerable because it disadvantages our most vulnerable students and exacerbates ripple-effect problems like student dropout rates, crime and joblessness.
The first step toward making things right is to stop shoe-horning students into any random facility. Operations at the Boys & Girls Club clubhouse should cease, and students presently enrolled in the alternative program should be reintegrated into the district’s primary high school classes. Special resources should be committed to these students as they adjust to their new surroundings, including dedicated guidance counselors and extra tutoring from teachers. While this arrangement is far from ideal, it would give the alternative program’s students a stable home while the district arrives at a workable long-term solution.
Real estate developers have flocked to New Rochelle in recent years, committing billions of dollars, incentivized by tax breaks and special zoning concessions. The New Rochelle City Manager, who acts as co-chair of the District-Wide Healthy and Safety Committee, has offered to include providing a home for the Huguenot Academy as a qualification for any willing developer to get those tax breaks and special zoning concessions.
The Board of Education should work with the New Rochelle Development Department and the New Rochelle IDA (a board member is always a member of NRIDA) to seek a development partner willing to include the Huguenot Academy in their building plans or go back to the Archdiocese to discuss renovations and a long-term lease for St. Gabriels.
A move back to St. Gabe’s will have to wait until the completion of the new Remington Clubhouse of the Boys & Girls Club of New Rochelle because, ironically, Remington leased St. Gabe’s as a temporary home while their new facility is being built.
As a teacher with nearly 40 years of experience, I know plans on paper never work out the way they should. The district will likely encounter unforeseen obstacles regardless of the path they pursue. Unfortunately, their track record over the past several years doesn’t inspire confidence. That’s why it’s crucial for them to seek help from the people who built the alternative program. Joel Fridovich, the program’s long-time Director, retired several years ago. But he remains active in the New Rochelle community and the district would be wise to pursue his council. I watched Joel keep the alternative program together for decades. He could help it thrive for decades to come.
The alternative program is relatively small. In recent years, somewhere between seventy-five and eighty-five students were enrolled annually. I fear that the district – and by extension, New Rochelle voters – don’t think it’s worth investing in these students.
I spent nearly 40 years with them. I promise you; they are worth the time, effort and money!
Neil Mattera was a teacher at the Alternative School of New Rochelle High School from 1981 to 2021.
RELATED:
A History of New Rochelle Alternative High School 1970 to 2020
New Rochelle High School Alternative Campus Facilities Specifications: The Huguenot Academy
The perfunctory move out of St. Gabriel’s was a terrible, tainted decision that should be reversed. As Mr. Mattera stated, there was nothing seriously wrong, and so very much right, about that facility and location. As a next-door neighbor in the Relig Catholic Youth Community, I witnessed his and Mr. Fridovich’s and their staff’s solid work with their students. They all deserve much better.
How on earth are children in a successful program churned into capital to appease Bethesda under one moronic superintendent and her wormy accomplice Amy Mosheli? Only to be further used by Raymond who back door sealed with Monroe, who by all accounts is LEAVING New Rochelle? This is not only an egregiously immoral miscarriage of public trust, it is also child abuse, and illegal.
Jonathan Raymond is a professional snake oil salesman, he is better suited to play Professor Harold Hill than he is to lead a district.