West Hempstead School Board Takes Issue With 'Conflict of Interest' Claim

The West Hempstead school board wants to set the record straight.

At the Jan. 17 meeting of the board of education, past president and trustee Pamela Lotito addressed an article published in the Jan. 4 edition of the West Hempstead Herald that she called “misleading.”

The article, "W.H. Resident to Challenge School Board Trustees," focused on to run for the board of education this spring, and stated that "[Signorile] takes issue with three board members — Pamela Lotito, James Mariano and Carole Rilling — who worked as educators or have close relatives who work as educators, calling it a conflict of interest."

“The West Hempstead school board would like to make it clear that it’s not a legal conflict of interest for a board member to have a member of the family in [the] education [field],” Lotito said during the Board Privilege of the Floor portion of the meeting.

She presented her fellow board members with a statement she drafted in response to the article, seeking their approval to send it to the editors of the local newspaper. Lotito argued that the board had a responsibility to address the “misinformation,” because it could deter other community members who have a relative in the education field from running for a position on the school board because of the “conflict of interest” concern.

“False information should be corrected so the public knows the truth of the matter,” Lotito said, adding that in the past, the district has reached out to the press to correct factual errors.

According to the article, “district administrators and a number of school board members were unavailable for comment as of press time,” and the paper “was unable to verify Mariano’s and Rilling’s relationships with educators” before publication. However, Lotito, as well as Mariano and Rilling, allege that the paper did not make any phone calls to them, despite the fact that their numbers are listed inside the district’s calendar.

“I was home the whole time,” Rilling said. “Nobody called to ask me any questions about it.”

Mariano added, “Nobody called me either and I have an answering machine.”

Both Mariano and Rilling are up for re-election this May. (Residents will also elect someone to serve out the remainder of Tony Brita's term, a seat which is currently occupied by Vincent Trocchia, in September to serve until the election.)

“I was taken back by that whole statement,” Mariano said. “What better thing to have on the board than members with a background in education. I’m proud of the fact that every single person in my family is an educator. I get plenty of feedback from them…it makes my decisions on the board that must stronger.”

Rilling said that obviously the residents of West Hempstead appreciate having a full-time Garden City teacher on the board, referring to her history of being re-elected time after time.

“I don’t know if this is attacking the whole board or particular individuals,” Trustee Cynthia DiMiceli said. “If you felt it wasn’t fair why didn’t you call the editor directly and speak for yourself… rather than feel it needs to be clarified by the whole board?”

DiMiceli also said she didn’t like the way Lotito’s statement was written, adding, “I don’t think we need to make enemies with the press either because we also look to the press to get information out for us.”

The discussion among the board members was interrupted by their attorney, who pointed out that they were having a debate regarding an item that had not been formally placed on their agenda. Board Privilege of the Floor items cannot be immediately converted to action items, he explained.

With that they decided to revisit the topic at a special business meeting this Thursday, Jan. 26. Meanwhile, the man who was the focus of the article in question, Bill Signorile, was sitting in the audience as this dialogue played out.

“I wasn’t misquoted,” he later told Patch. “I might have left out one important word though: ‘moral.’” He said while the educational backgrounds of Rilling, Lotito and Mariano do not present a legal issue, he stills sees a “moral conflict of interest,” adding that under their leadership the district‘s budget has ballooned due to increases in salaries and benefits for teachers that they approved. 

”When senior members of the board spend almost 18-22 minutes arguing or debating how they are going to respond to this in a public forum, it leads me to believe they are either flustered or incapable of dealing with the real problems at hand," he added.