Tenafly High School teacher accuses district of misrepresenting attendance numbers
A Tenafly High School science teacher is suing the Board of Education, board members, the district superintendent and the high school's principal and vice principal, accusing them of failing to take proper attendance at the school.
Andy Policastro, a teacher in the district for 24 years, filed a lawsuit in state Superior Court on June 30, saying Tenafly incorrectly reported attendance and failed to provide substitute or alternative teachers to cover classes for absent colleagues for the 2021-2022 school year.
Terry Corallo, the district's public relations coordinator, said it doesn't comment on pending litigation. Board of Education attorney Stephen Fogarty moved to have the suit dismissed.
In his lawsuit, Policastro says there were over 45,000 unsupervised students for classes at Tenafly High School between September 2021 and December 2021 and on June 17, 2022, due to teacher absences. The math claimed by Policastro is eight teachers per day (classes not covered) times about 80 days, times four classes per teacher with 20 students per class. There are roughly 1,200 students at Tenafly High School.
"This is only 40% of that school year's data," Policastro says in the suit. "The actual school year's numbers are, logically and embarrassingly, much higher."
According to Policastro, the false attendance reporting raises the high school's ranking "at the expense of other New Jersey high schools," which could "mislead present and future homeowners in Tenafly."
"These [ranking] reports are based on student attendance, and they mark students present while they're out at Burger King on a free period," Policastro said.
U.S. News & World Report ranked Tenafly High School 24th in New Jersey and 496th in the nation.
Policastro said teachers could be called to cover absent teachers' classes but the district failed to do so, leaving students marked present but unattended. He said the district emails students whose teachers are absent and whose classes aren't covered. He said some students have multiple classes canceled.
Emails provided to The Record and NorthJersey.com showed the number of teachers absent from September 2021 through December 2021 and for one day in June. The email for June 17 showed over 20 teachers absent, some for part of the day but most for the whole day.
In a letter brief to the assigned judge, Fogarty said Policastro failed to file a notice of claims to the defendants, which should have been done by Sept. 28, 2022. Fogarty said the failure to file the claim doesn't allow the Board of Education to review, investigate and correct the issues Policastro brought up in the suit. Policastro filed a notice of claims on Aug. 14.
In his letter brief, Fogarty said the district determined that students should not lose course credit for absences during the pandemic as long as they completed all the academic requirements.
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"In addition, guidance and policies released by the United States Department of Education, the New Jersey Department of Education and the State of New Jersey necessitated the temporary relaxation in school districts' attendance policies," Fogarty's letter said.
The letter said that in May 2021, Policastro disagreed with the modification and the high school administration confirmed that all absences are "counted and recorded but that the principal has the final decision on student attendance in light of the inherent challenges between in-person and remote schooling."
The suit says Policastro "pleaded" to speak with the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum monitors when they were in the district in April 2023 but was denied by the interim superintendent in February, denied by the Board of Education in March and denied by the Department of Education in March.
The science teacher said he was left with no choice but to file the lawsuit since he tried to speak to a number of people about it multiple times.
Fogarty's letter to the court said Policastro filed a written complaint and an amended complaint, charging the administrators with inefficiency because of failure to take attendance. Fogarty said Policastro was told that it was because of the relaxation in the attendance policy.
In November 2021, Policastro submitted a petition of appeal regarding the board's decision with the commissioner of education and the board filed for a summary decision, which is still undecided, Fogarty said in the letter.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Tenafly NJ teacher files lawsuit against district over attendance
