Attorneys Joust as Amagansett Principal's Hearing Continues

Attorneys for Maria Dorr, the Amagansett School principal who has been on administrative leave for months after being accused of stealing a gift card intended for someone else in December 2023, moved for summary dismissal of the charges against her on Tuesday, September 3, in a continuation of the administrative hearing that began in July and is to continue into next month.

Brian Deinhart of the School Administration Association of New York State, representing Dorr, said that the school district had failed to meet the burden of proof in accusing Dorr of taking an envelope containing a gift card that did not belong to her and providing false or misleading information to the interim superintendent, who was investigating the alleged theft.

But attorneys for the school countered that the district had indeed meet its burden, that unlike in a criminal trial, where a jury must reach a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt, the threshold of proof by a “preponderance of evidence,” that something is more likely than not, was irrefutable.

Richard Loeschner, the former interim superintendent who conducted an investigation into the missing gift card allegedly in a red envelope — an investigation characterized by Dorr’s attorneys as sloppy — completed his testimony on Tuesday.

He had previously alleged that a student and their mother brought two red envelopes to the school on the morning of December 15, 2023, and gave them to Cassie Butts, the front office receptionist. According to Loeschner, one was addressed to Butts and the other to Chrissy McElroy, a part-time occupational therapist.

Loeschner said that, based on video from a few of the surveillance cameras at the school, Butts entered the mailroom with one of the cards and exited soon after with nothing in her hands and that when questioned, Butts, who he said had put the envelope addressed to herself in her desk, said that she had put the other envelope in McElroy’s mailbox, and later told McElroy that she had done so.

He alleged that the videotape shows that Dorr entered the mailroom 13 minutes after Butts had, exiting with a red envelope. When McElroy entered the mailroom around two hours later, she did not find a red envelope in her mailbox, Loeschner alleged.

On Tuesday, he maintained that “it is the only explanation. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. … Plus, I thought [Dorr’s] behavior was odd for principal of the building.”

Isn’t it possible that Butts was lying? Arthur Scheuermann of the School Administrators Association asked. “I tried to track down all possibilities,” Loeschner said. Had he looked into the possibility that Butts was lying? Scheuermann pressed.

“Why would she lie?” Loeschner said. “It made no sense.”

Had he considered the possibility that Butts had stolen the envelope meant for McElroy? “Not really,” Loeschner said. Or that someone had hidden McElroy’s envelope in the mailroom, or concealed and removed it from the mailroom? No, was the answer to both.

“Again, Maria walked out with a red envelope,” he said.

Steven Goodstadt, an attorney representing the school district, questioned Michael Davis, the boyfriend of a parent at the school who attended a parent-teacher conference with her. The parent, he said, had given an envelope containing a gift card to a woman inside the school’s entrance and, upstairs, another to a male teacher. One envelope was for the teacher, the other for the principal, he testified.

The parent works at the Shell gas station in Amagansett, he said, and the gift cards were for Shell gas.

Benedict DiPietro, manager of the Shell gas station, was next. He said that a private investigator had come to the station and asked if he could determine if a particular gift card had been purchased there. It had, along with another gift card, on November 29, he said. One of the employees at the station, he said, is the parent who is in a relationship with Davis.

On cross-examination, Deinhart asked if he could tell who purchased the gift cards. Not without camera footage, DiPietro replied, and surveillance video is deleted after four or five weeks. Nor could he determine if a gift card had been used by looking at the receipt, he told Deinhart.

Goodstadt then called Jason Hancock, a sixth grade teacher, who said that he had met with Davis and his girlfriend, the parent of a student. Following a parent-teacher conference, the parent “handed me a card,” he said. It was a Shell gift card. “It was within a holiday card” that he no longer has, he said.

When it was Deinhart’s turn, he asked Hancock when he had first been contacted about testifying. “Today” — the first day of school — was his reply. He had been asked to do so by Michael Rodgers, a gym teacher, administrator and co-president of the Amagansett Teachers Association who in May was named superintendent.

Scheuermann then called as a witness Seth Turner, another former superintendent of the school, who left in October 2023, months before the alleged theft of the card. This fact prompted an objection from Ellen Vega, Goodstadt’s co-counsel, citing irrelevance.

Scheuermann said that he was surprised that the district “does not want to search for the truth,” and that Turner’s relevance was obvious. “Character evidence is perfectly admissible,” he said. His co-counsel had previously alluded to the “lack of credibility” of Butts, and Turner had worked with her for five years.

Turner said that he had worked “in lockstep every single day” with Dorr. “Mrs. Dorr has always presented herself with great moral character,” read one evaluation he prepared. “She is fair, honest, and ethical in all of her actions as principal.”

Turner testified that Butts had made “two outlandish reports” of his own misconduct, which led to the Board of Education investigating and finding that Butts “made outlandish statements, sometimes retaliatory,” he said. Butts was counseled as a result, he added.

He told Goodstadt that he had last seen a report documenting the recommendation that the administration counsel Butts in October 2023, the month that he left the school, because he wanted to ensure he “maintained any evidence I might need to protect my reputation because I couldn’t trust the people in Amagansett, because they had a propensity for fabricating stories.” He understood that he may need to “prove that I was an excellent administrator,” he said.

Goodstadt then accused Turner of stealing documents from the school district and objected to the report being introduced as evidence.

The hearing will continue on October 14, Columbus Day.