By Eva Mandelbaum
Longtime math and science department coordinators Mr. LaPorte and Dr. Doty will both be replaced by one STEM Coordinator in the 2024-25 school year. This news came as a shock to the school community and was met with intense controversy.
One teacher representing the math department who chose to remain anonymous said, “We were shocked as a department...we were not excited about it at all.” Many other teachers attended a school board meeting in April to argue against the restructuring of the science and math departments, describing the important roles Mr. LaPorte and Dr. Doty have played in the district. The representative added, “We’re on the front line and we see how students perform and what they need and what we need, [so] we felt it was really important to make sure they understood that.”
When describing their relationship to Mr. LaPorte through the years, the math department representative said, “He advocated for us, he advocated for the students, and he did everything...so not just getting rid of him as a person because we do appreciate him as a person, but the position and combining it with possibly two other positions is just ludicrous.”
Ms. McCormick Lyons told The Examiner News that Mr. LaPorte and Dr. Doty are “two individuals who have put in so many years in the district.” She added, “We’re a school community. They’re part of the fabric of that school community.”
In a Zoom interview, Superintendent Dr. Ricca acknowledged the difficulty of this decision, but also noted that “when we need to make decisions about changes to the organizational hierarchy, we can't even really consider individual people. We're looking at the positions and we're looking at what needs to happen in the organization for our students...one of the core goals we have is to be able to expand our career and technical educational offerings to our students.” He also discussed the importance of avoiding increasing costs: “Ultimately, the collapsing of those two positions to create one position will get us to a place now where we can begin planning for that career technical education side at the same time as recognizing the need to try to avoid increasing administrative cost where we can,” he said.
When questioned how one person will be able to juggle all STEM departments, he said, “The role will be to help to guide and lead these departments in conjunction with the building level administration, the district level administration, the support from faculty and staff members. It really is a team effort. There is no one individual that makes everything run. It's the team working together and supporting each other.”
Dr. Ricca is hoping to hire the new STEM coordinator by July 16, but this is not definite. He is looking for someone “who is capable of identifying mastery, capitalizing on experience, and bringing people together.”
Referring to Dr. Doty and Mr. LaPorte, the math department representative said, “They were both a year away from retiring and the response to that was that when they’re making these decisions, they think about the students and so even though it was a tough decision, they don’t think about the person, meaning they don’t think about Dr. Doty and Mr. LaPorte, they think about how to better help students and help the needs of the students, but at the end of the day, I don’t think that they thought about students or Mr. LaPorte or Dr. Doty at all. I think that this could have waited. This is not going to be a life altering thing in the next year, so it could’ve waited.”
On the contrary, Dr. Ricca said, “I can also tell you without a doubt that if we're planning for these changes for career and technical education, there can be no delay. We have to move according to the timeline and the planning...I definitely appreciate the sentiment though.” He also stated that he will “continue to be supportive of our colleagues in any way that we can moving forward as well” and that he appreciates “everybody...sharing feedback and sharing their feelings.”
While this restructuring of the STEM department will take place despite the strong feelings of members of the White Plains community, there is no doubt that this exemplified the strong sense of unity amongst White Plains teachers. As the math department representative said, “I think that the importance of us going [to the school board meeting] is to show that we all can come together and that we are one, and we went as a collective group to represent our union and to show that we stand together on the issues and that we feel strongly about it together.”
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