A Bronx school superintendent at the center of an alleged effort to keep black and Hispanic kids out of a Riverdale elementary school has resigned, the Daily News has learned.
Melodie Mashel, the superintendent of District 10, has resigned and will retire on Oct. 1, officials confirmed Thursday.
She is being sued by Public School 24 Assistant Principal Manny Verdi, who claims she tried to drive him out after he complained that a staffer for state Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz was allowed to screen kindergarten applications in the spring. Verdi says the screening was to keep minority and low-income students out of the upscale neighborhood’s school.
School officials said Thursday an investigation determined that Mashel allowed non-school personnel inside the school during student registration. She was not disciplined for the infraction. Officials wouldn’t say whether the investigation was related to Verdi’s suit.
Verdi claims Mashel — at Dinowitz’s bidding — tried to get him fired earlier this year after he complained about the lawmaker’s chief of staff handling private info about applications.
Verdi is suing the city Education Department for $14.2 million and plans to sue Dinowitz for $5 million.
“This is the person who should have been out from the beginning,” Ezra Glaser, Verdi’s attorney, said of Mashel. “It’s highly suspicious she would resign when she is part of a lawsuit in federal court.”
Mashel could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to the lawsuit, she was “on a quest” to remove Verdi from the school “based on the insistence of certain local elected officials, including Assemblyman Dinowitz himself.”
Verdi pointed to a 2009 conversation in which Dinowitz allegedly said he knew many students at P.S. 24 were not from Riverdale “by the way they walk, talk and wear their pants.”
Verdi complained that Dinowitz’s chief of staff was in the school in March and April reviewing kindergarten applications in an effort to weed-out “outsiders” — violating laws protecting the privacy of students’ medical and other records.
Dinowitz dismissed the lawsuit as “frivolous” and said Verdi’s claims were “not true.”
“People file lawsuits for many different reasons — to get publicity, to get a windfall,” Dinowitz told The News on Thursday. “I can’t speculate on why this particular lawsuit was filed.”
