Teachers' Association votes no confidence in school board president

The Rockville Centre Teachers’ Association announced last week that it had a vote of no confidence in current school board President John O’Shea.

In a letter from the RVCTA cabinet and executive council, its members outlined several reasons for their decision, including the dispute over the board not renewing South Side High School’s county-championship-winning varsity soccer coaches, the subsequent legal fees and perceived unfair treatment and embarrassment of teachers, among others.

The vote of no confidence comes just a month before the May 17 school budget and school board votes, with O’Shea running for re-election onto the board.

“We had an issue starting in the summer with very talented soccer coaches who were not re-hired — the Newsday Coach of the Year with no record or blemish wasn’t re-hired — and we had protests in the summer,” RVCTA president Frank Van Zant said. “How are we to feel when we are watching valued colleagues get attacked over what we regard as personal agendas?”

Van Zant also said that he and the RVCTA felt that their administrative colleagues have been constantly “dragged before a tribunal” to ask questions over things like Red and Blue and fundraising.

“It’s uncomfortable to watch and it makes these people seem supposedly less knowledgeable about their work in education than the board and the opposite is true,” Van Zant said.

O’Shea sent the Herald a statement in response Monday, citing his frustration with the RVCTA and Van Zant’s comments. To the dispute over the soccer coaches, O’Shea noted that state law prohibits members of boards of education from commenting on personnel matters.

“The law does not similarly restrict the union from making false claims and providing bits and pieces that distort the actual facts of the issues,” O’Shea wrote.

In response to the Teachers’ Association’s complaint about bringing teachers and administrators in front of the board at meetings, O’Shea said the board is trying to be more transparent for the benefit of the public.

“Asking a director questions about their procedures and the way they do the business of their department, in my eyes, it is not an attack on that person, it’s just bringing everything to light,” O’Shea wrote. “That’s what the public has been asking from us.”

O’Shea said that the RVCTA has not contacted him personally, though Van Zant often speaks on issues the union has with the board at regular Board of Education meetings. The school board president added that he has interpreted the recent backlash as a “political move to unseat” him.