12 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2019
TALE OF TWO TOWNS:
HEMPSTEAD SCHOOL CRISIS DEEPENS, DOCUMENTS
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
It was the best of schools, it was the
worst of schools.
U.S. News & World Report ranked
Garden City High School among
the nation’s top 300 high schools
and its football team, the Trojans, is
grabbing headlines for its two-year
winning streak. Three miles away at
neighboring Hempstead High School,
the graduation rate was until recently
among the lowest in the nation, 37
percent, which made it the subject
of a CBS 2 News documentary about
the school administration’s long-festering
corruption. Now, as New
York State lawmakers await word on
whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo will
sign or veto a bill creating an oversight
panel to help fix the Hempstead
School District’s troubled finances, a
convicted pedophile regularly roams
its school grounds while class is in
session, documents obtained by the
Press show.
“We can’t turn a blind eye to these
children,” says Melissa Figueroa, a
former Hempstead School District
board member pushing for reforms
in the district that the state has
termed “persistently struggling.”
Hempstead is not the only troubled
school district on Long Island. The
Wyandanch School District suspended
its superintendent this summer
and its athletics program was saved
just before the school year by donors.
And a handful of other districts
have come under state scrutiny for
their fiscal practices. But what sets
Hempstead apart are the deep-seated
issues that have been entrenched for
decades and the routine infighting
that stifles reforms.
Backing the current Hempstead
School District board majority is a
group called Hempstead for Hempstead,
whose self-proclaimed founder
is Thomas Parsley, a former Hempstead
school board member who
was removed from the post in 2004
after being convicted of stealing a
principal’s debit card and withdrawing
$500. In 2010, records show, he
was convicted of sexual misconduct
against a 15-year-old boy, sentenced to
a year in jail, and ordered to register
as a level-three sex offender — the
classification given to those at the
highest risk of recidivism.
Sex offenders can be barred from being
on school grounds as a condition
of their release, but law enforcement
sources confirm that Parsley is no
longer on parole. Video surveillance
footage obtained by the Press shows
Parsley freely walking the halls of
the school, chatting with campus security
and school officials. Although
he’s allowed to be there, the district
terminated its use of Arrow Security
after ABC 7 News reported that one
of the company’s guards was also a
level-three sex offender not on parole
working evenings at Hempstead
Middle School while waiting for his
license to be approved.
Parsley could not be reached for comment.
The current school board did
not respond to a request for comment.
SEMESTER OF DESPAIR
Parsley isn’t the only convict with ties
to the administration. Randy Stith is a
disgraced ex-village cop who pleaded
guilty this spring to criminal possession
of a forged instrument and petit
larceny in a plea deal that allows him
to keep his elected school board membership.
But the district’s issues don’t
end at school grounds, either.
Nassau County prosecutors have also
recently arrested three Hempstead
village police commanders and a
village trustee in an alleged bribery
scheme. And Hempstead, the state’s
largest village, has seen such an uptick
in gang violence that state police
were called in this summer to help
patrol the streets. The same streets on
which students are required to walk
to school because the district doesn’t
offer buses.
Of the District’s 7,600 students, some
70 percent come from families who
receive public assistance; 40 percent
are not proficient in English; and 10
percent are students with disabilities.
Over the last decade, the school
district’s enrollment has shifted to
70 percent Hispanic or Latino, 31
percent black or African American,
and 2 percent white.
By comparison, the neighboring wellto
do, mostly white Village of Garden
City — where the average household
income is $137,788 annually, versus
$94,158 in Hempstead — and its
high-achieving schools seem like
Shangri-La.
“Growing up in Hempstead, I immediately
became very aware of various
social, educational, and economic
inequities,” says freshman Assemblywoman
Taylor Darling (D-Hempstead),
who was a lead sponsor of the
bill that passed in June to create a
three-member panel of Hempstead
School District fiscal oversight monitors.
“I could not understand how
the largest village in the country had
one of the worst-performing school
districts. I could not understand how
I received a phenomenal education
a few miles away in the Uniondale
School District.
“I could not understand how I could
walk to Garden City from my home
and immediately be transferred to
nirvana — a place with beautiful
green space, smooth roads, economic
development, and a high-performing
school district,” she continues. “Why
was Hempstead struggling to survive
while the surrounding areas were
thriving?”
“This situation would not happen in other school
districts like those surrounding this district:
Garden City and Rockville Centre,”
says Gil Bernardino.
COVER STORY
Surveillance footage of Thomas Parsley in Hempstead schools.
Convicted pedophile Thomas
Parsley has ties to the Hempstead
School District administration.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
