by Catharine Beale

Created on: June 30, 2009   Last Updated: July 17, 2009

Here in the land of Bernie Madoff - affluent Roslyn Heights, Long Island, where Madoff keeps a house - I was picking my daughter up from school when Madoff's arrest hit the news. It came over my car radio.

Another crook from Roslyn, I thought.

Roslyn, the obnoxiously affluent community where Madoff lived with his wife and family. His two sons, Andrew and Mark, graduated from Roslyn High School. This is the district where the school superintendent pleaded Guilty not long ago to stealing millions from the Roslyn Free Union School District. The dirty super, Frank Tassone, was New York Magazine's cover model, labelled "The Bad Superintendent" that month, just before sentencing. Now he's in jail.

That was after our district's Business Manager, Pam Gluckin, was caught red handed stealing a quarter million dollars for herself. One of Tassone's many district-funded vacations was a visit to Las Vegas - with the high school principal - where he gambled school taxes. MY taxes.

The Roslyn School Board has now been completely replaced, hopefully with new members who will sign contracts with vendors based on the quality of their services. Not, as the previous board did, because of the quality of their freebees.

Then there was Mayer Sadian. The new RHS graduate was flying down the main road, Willis Avenue, in his mother's car when he ran over a popular local doctor who'd stopped by pick up dinner at the pizzeria. In broad daylight, the windshield shattered from the impact, Sadian put the pedal to the metal and drove off as fast as he could. It took months to locate him. He was convicted, and got off with a prison sentence of 3 to 9 years.

My daughter's been dealing with fellow Roslynites since she was a little girl. Honesty just does not cut it around here.

It took me years to figure that out. When she was in 3rd grade, playing college-level tennis, her coach recommended we turn her 30-minute private lesson into a full hour lesson, once a week. To do that, she would have to get out of school 15 minutes early.

I approached her teacher. Would the teacher mind? Would this disrupt the class? The teacher practically begged me to take her out for the longer lesson. It was, she said, a great idea.

So I asked the principal, Steven Kaplan, for permission.

No, he said. She has to stay in school. You can take her for a few weeks, but then you'll have to stop.

Undaunted, I went over his head, to the Dean for Curriculum, and left her a note. I also left a note on Port Washington

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