An elderly school official gets the boot from the Riverside Church school for revealing personal information about certain students and their problems to others which caused problems for incoming students and their parents. Morningside Heights With a Familiar Face Absent, a Preschool Grows Grim
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By EMILY BRADY Published: April 1, 2007 DURING her four years as director of Riverside Church Weekday School, a preschool in Morningside Heights, Linda Herman has built a reputation for being full of energy and enthusiasm and wearing a constant smile. Middle-aged with short, auburn hair, she has roamed hallways and classrooms, greeting the 146 students by name, remembering the little things, like one boy’s obsession with macaroni. Even when Ms. Herman dealt with cancer a few years ago, her presence at the school barely faltered. So it came as a great surprise to parents when on March 7, Ms. Herman suddenly disappeared from the school, which accepts children ages 2 to 6 and has an annual tuition of up to $16,900. That afternoon, parents and baby sitters arrived at the school, on the sixth and seventh floors of the renowned progressive church, and found notices taped to the children’s cubbyholes saying that Ms. Herman had taken a two-week leave of absence for unspecified reasons. Over the next week, parents would learn that the church had suspended Ms. Herman over allegations that she overstepped privacy boundaries in discussing students. Yet many parents complain that the matter was handled too secretly and criticize the timing – during the kindergarten admissions process, when some parents are applying to private kindergartens and need Ms. Herman’s recommendations. “Everyone is whipped up into a frenzy,” said Willie Reale, a television and theater writer, whose son Leo, 4, attends the school and whose older son, Gus, 6, is an alumnus. “In the minds of a lot of parents, the church reacted very strongly to rather trivial allegations.” Through a spokeswoman, Amanita Duga-Carroll of Rubenstein Associates, Riverside Church declined to comment, saying that it was inappropriate to discuss personnel matters but that the suspension decision had been made in the best interest of the students and the school. Jeremy Orden, a lawyer and school parent who is representing Ms. Herman, gave an account of the allegations in a March 22 e-mail message sent to other Riverside parents. Among the claims, he said, Ms. Herman was accused of discussing one child’s low score on a kindergarten assessment test with another child’s parent and of speaking with a school admissions director about that same child without informing that child’s family. In appraising the claims, Mr. Orden said, “We have entered the realm of the surreal based on allegations that are false and/or immaterial.” Many parents expressed shock at the school’s behavior. Nancy Ulrich, a clinical psychologist whose 4-year-old son attends the school, said, “What felt bewildering and upsetting was the magnitude of their response and their suddenness and secrecy.”