Fired Riley teacher defends rep after knife incident
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?”
