Fired Riley teacher defends rep after knife incident
As Baiting Hollow parent Terri Nirrengarten stood at the podium during the May 13 Riverhead school board meeting, she became frustrated by the responses to her questions.
She wanted to know why parents hadn’t been notified when a second-grader brought a knife to school in November. She also asked that the board hold off on firing the student’s teacher, Jutta Mariotti, who claims she had been told in July, before the incident, that she would not receive tenure at the end of the current school year.
The knife incident happened Nov. 11 at Riley Avenue Elementary School in Calverton, where two boys had allegedly planned an attack on a classmate. Like Ms. Nirrengarten, many parents had been asking why they hadn’t been notified of the incident and, in some cases, had only learned about it from a Feb. 27 News-Review cover story. Parents of children in Ms. Mariotti’s class also asked why her employment was being terminated.
“We cannot discuss personnel matters” was the response school board president Ann Cotten-DeGrasse gave Ms. Nirrengarten as she addressed the board. Undeterred, Ms. Nirrengarten returned to the podium that evening and asked questions again.
This time, Superintendent Nancy Carney responded.
“Whenever an incident occurs, we deal with the people involved in the incident,” she said. “If we notified parents every single time an incident occurred, that’s all we would be doing.”
As Ms. Nirrengarten continued to express her disgust over the way the district had handled the situation, she was joined at the podium by Vonda Trent, mother of the student allegedly targeted in the plot, who also said she was upset by the district’s decision not to inform parents about the incident.
During the May 13 meeting, the school board approved Ms. Carney’s recommendation to deny Ms. Mariotti tenure. A few days later, the second grade teacher agreed to the News-Review’s request for an interview.
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Ms. Mariotti, a German immigrant who’s worked in the district since 2006, said although she’s hurt by the way the administration has treated her, she doesn’t blame anyone and isn’t looking for revenge.
“I’m 57. I will never go back into a classroom again,” she said. “I want people to know the story.”
Before she could even settle into her classroom at Riley last July, Ms. Mariotti claims the school’s administration had told her this would be her last year teaching in the district. They said she wouldn’t receive tenure.
The reason?
Ms. Mariotti said she was told the “best” teachers were available, since many laid off during the recession were still looking for work.
But Ms. Mariotti — who, when she moved to the U.S. with her husband in 1990 had only a high school degree and didn’t speak English — vowed to herself that she would work extra hard this school year and “prove them wrong” about deciding not to grant her tenure.
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“They were looking to get rid of me,” she said. “This is my passion and everybody knows that. To me, the kids were first — always.”
As to her work history in the district, Ms. Mariotti had earned a master’s degree in literacy and started working as a substitute teacher in 2006. In 2007 she was hired as a second-grade teacher at Riley. One year later, her position, along with several others, was excessed, though she continued to work in the district as a leave replacement for other teachers. That was until last year, when her position was reinstated.
Here’s Ms. Mariotti’s version of the how the knife incident unfolded:
She and her students were in a hallway Nov. 11, heading to their classroom when she honed in on some chatter among the students. She overheard that one of them had a weapon. As the class settled in the room, Ms. Mariotti said, she pulled that student aside.
After the child initially denied having a knife, she got him to admit to it, and he turned the weapon over.
She instructed the student to return to his seat and she called security.
“You need to take this student, and I have something to give you,” she recalled telling the guard while slipping him the knife.
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Ms. Mariotti said she initially thought the student wanted to show off the weapon to classmates during recess and was relieved the student didn’t injure himself or others. A couple of days later, she said, she learned an attack had been “planned.”
When asked by the News-Review if she had noticed any issues among the students prior to the incident, Ms. Mariotti said she hadn’t.
“I was shocked,” she said.
After the incident, the intended victim was moved to a different class, and Ms. Mariotti welcomed the two accused boys back into her classroom when their suspensions ended in February.
“I said ‘I’m good with kids with needs. It will be fine,’ ” she recalled. “I got an aide and then we started.”
But Ms. Mariotti described her job as stressful at the time, mainly because district officials instructed her not to talk about the knife incident, so she had no way to offer guidance to concerned parents and students.
She had no help dealing with the “elephant in the classroom” — students not wanting to be near the two boys who had planned the attack.
“The kids I had were scared and were like, ‘Do they have it again?’ ” she said.
She disagrees with the administration’s decision not to notify parents about what had happened and feels there’s a public perception that she did something wrong. The district has remained virtually silent about the incident.
Ms. Carney said in an interview earlier this year that the district had met only with the parents of the three students involved.
While parents are notified about issues like sex offenders or bomb threats, Ms. Carney said it’s the building principal’s decision to notify them about other types of situations on a case-by-case basis.
When asked if she believed notifying class parents could have helped stifle rumors, Ms. Carney said the principal did think about informing parents but decided not to because it could have “reignited” the situation.
“The boys are fine,” she said of all three students. “They’re happy. They’re fine.”
Ms. Mariotti said the district’s failure to address the issue led to further tensions within a group of kids living in fear and being unable to focus.
Teaching became more and more of a challenge, she said.
Happening just four months after she was told she wouldn’t receive tenure, Ms. Mariotti said, the knife incident seemed like it was more fuel used toward her termination. On March 24, Ms. Mariotti said, she received a letter explaining that Ms. Carney was recommending to the school board that her probationary appointment be terminated.
Heartbroken, Ms. Mariotti didn’t come to work the next day. While she was out, she said, there was “another incident” involving the same student who had brought the knife to school. This time he was removed from class after acting inappropriately. He hasn’t returned since and his enrollment status could not be determined by a reporter.
Ms. Mariotti said she believes that, had she been in school that day, she could have helped prevent the situation, because she would have sensed when the student was becoming upset and intervened before he acted out.
“I feel bad,” she said. “I feel it could have been prevented.”
Ms. Mariotti believes she was set up to fail even before the knife incident, noting that she had not been assigned a mentor and hadn’t received the supplies she requested from the district at the start of the school year.
She provided the News-Review with write-ups of her classroom evaluations dating back to 2007. The documents show scores of “effective” and “highly effective” — the top two levels in the four-level rating system — up to this school year, when she received lower scores. She believes this year’s lower ratings stemmed in part from the administration’s taking aim at her German accent. For the first time, she said, it was indicated that she needs to improve her “communication skills.”
“They suggested a literacy coach, which I set up immediately,” she said.
Ms. Mariotti said she doesn’t know for sure if the knife incident had anything to do with her firing and doesn’t understand why the district fired her the way they did. Her termination goes into effect June 30.
“Several years as a leave replacement, they could have gotten rid of me then,” she said. “I don’t know their agenda. I lost respect for the district. Not the children. Not the teachers.”
Riverhead Central Faculty Association president Lisa Goulding said in an email this week that she’s limited in what she can say about a personnel issue, and she provided a statement.
“During [Ms. Mariotti’s] time with the district, she has shown that she is a hard worker who truly cares about her students,” the statement reads. “We spent a great deal of time working on the issue and making sure her rights were enforced, which they were. Regrettably, the district acted as it did.”
Ms. Goulding declined to elaborate further.
Ms. Carney declined to discuss why Ms. Mariotti had been fired, citing the fact that it is a personnel matter.
Ms. Cotten-DeGrasse and school board members Christopher Dorr, Susan Koukounas and Kimberly Ligon voted in favor of terminating Ms. Mariotti’s employment at the May 13 meeting.
School board vice president Greg Meyer abstained, citing “personal reasons” after the vote. School board members Amelia Lantz and Tom Carson were absent from the meeting.
When asked by the News-Review how they would have voted if they had been there, both declined comment and said they could not talk about personnel issues.
Ms. Nirrengarten, who has submitted letters to the school board outlining how Ms. Mariotti gave her daughter extra help with classwork and helped her build confidence, described the termination as “unwarranted.”
“She’s the same teacher that had a knife incident in her class and she should be commended,” Ms. Nirrengarten said during the public comment portion of the meeting before the vote. “I just feel the board handled this incident horrifically.”
When asked if she had thought about resigning before the termination was finalized, Ms. Mariotti said she had but decided against it.
“They will not take my pride away because I know I’m not bad,” she said. “I’m not a quitter. Why would I resign when I didn’t do anything wrong?”