Time to move on

Editorial: March 24, 2022

Cooperstown Junior/Senior High School Principal Karl O’Leary’s March 18 dismissal seems abrupt. New York’s voluminous education law and its attendant rules and regulations, however, abide no impetuous action when it comes to personnel matters. Save for a handful of egregious situations, the Cooperstown Central School Board of Education and its sibling boards across the state are bound by strict legal procedure that demands any allegation of misconduct or malfeasance be addressed with the greatest of care, detail, and discretion. This takes time; a frustrating amount of time.

This newspaper has reported and editorialized for the past few months on concerns students and parents raised to the CCS Board with regard to someone they called “a member of the administration” – a person they could not name in accordance with some of those procedural rules of engagement. We heard but did not report plenty of off-the-record stories — some corroborated, others dismissed – so there’s no doubt school district parents, teachers, and students have been abuzz for months.

The public’s natural curiosity notwithstanding, Mr. O’Leary’s seemingly sudden dismissal will do nothing to end conjecture or lift salient fact out from underneath the weight of legal limitation. It will, however, take decisive and highly visible steps forward in a process that can have only one goal: the quality of education in Cooperstown Central School.

Speaking to The Freeman’s Journal / Hometown Oneonta after Mr. O’Leary’s dismissal, Superintendent of Schools Sarah Spross called the district’s seven-member, all-volunteer Board of Education “uniquely committed to its focus on quality education.” Quality education can’t happen in an atmosphere rife with tension and rumor.

The district, then, had to follow – and will continue to follow – a process that for many can be painstakingly slow and difficult to measure. We recognize the difficulty and commend the board and administration for taking the difficult steps that seem to have been necessary in the case at hand.

The only direction is forward. We think it pointless to look back if it’s for the sole purpose in second-guessing decisions that this Board or others before it had rendered in a hiring process. Hindsight works only when it helps restore broken relationships or heal any damage that might’ve been done along the way.

We are confident the Superintendent and her administrative team – along with the Board of Education – have a clear picture of what has been. They’ve heard from eloquent and passionate students about their concerns with “a member of the administration.” They’ve heard from parents concerned about the atmosphere in the school.

We are confident, too, those creating, collaborating on, and implementing school policy have a positive and sustainable roadmap for the district’s future and a focus on quality education. We are encouraged by the anti-bullying and anti-discrimination presentations about which we reported two weeks ago – cheered even more so by the student and faculty response to those sessions. We are encouraged by last week’s decision.

All of this is a burst of activity in a short period of time that sends an important signal to students, teachers, and parents that their voices have been heard and those responsible for questionable behavior will be brought to account – be they student, teacher, or administrator.

These steps don’t erase the past, but they help clear the path to move forward.