False statements exposed former AP to ‘public contempt’

There was no truth to Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz’s statements about the assistant principal of P.S. 24 Spuyten Duyvil some eight years ago. That’s according to a Jan. 27 ruling from a state supreme court judge in Manhattan.

Dinowitz’s claims Manuele Verdi was responsible for the school losing annex space at The Whitehall exposed the now-retired school administrator to ridicule and public contempt, — key elements of a defamation claim, Judge Lynn Kotler added. However, she stopped short of whether the Assemblyman’s claims were delivered with actual malice.

The summary judgment ruling leaves Dinowitz a narrow avenue of defense against Verdi’s defamation suit, but his lawyer, Charles Moerdler, says  he’ll recommend his client to appeal in the coming months.

The question of actual malice must be settled to prove Dinowitz’s liability, Kotler wrote, meaning Verdi’s case will rest on whether Dinowitz’s statements were made knowingly — with a “high degree of awareness of their probable falsity.”

The case has been winding its way through the courts since late 2016. Verdi’s lawyer, Ezra Glaser, said an important aspect of the case is that “the court is saying that legislators have certain responsibilities,” contrary to the defense’s argument that Dinowitz is “basically legislating by going to public meetings and making false statements.”

“There is substantial case law on this,” Glaser said. “He wasn’t passing a bill on that day. He wasn’t legislating. He was lying.”

Dinowitz’s roots at P.S. 24 run deep. He sent his own two children there.

The school across from Seton Park is known as “up the hill” — coded language some say describe school segregation in the borough’s largest school district.

P.S. 24 is 43 percent Hispanic, 36 percent White, 7 percent Black and 9 percent Asian, according to city education department data

More than 1,000 students were enrolled at P.S. 24 in 2016, nearly double the number of students the 1950s-era building was designed to accommodate. Seeking more space, P.S. 24 expanded into five extra classrooms at the neighboring Whitehall, a luxury high-rise co-op building.

But by 2015, Whitehall’s management had found a higher-payer tenant for the space, and decided to cut ties with P.S. 24. During a parent association meeting later that fall, Dinowitz laid the blame for losing the space on P.S. 24’s top administrators, according to court filings — principal Donna Connelly and Verdi, her assistant principal.

The two were “derelict in their duties” and the loss of the lease was “their responsibility,” the Assemblyman said, according to court records.

Dinowitz shared similar concerns to reporters, with debate about P.S. 24’s enrollment rancorous and chronicled regularly in not only The Riverdale Press, but also the now-defunct Riverdale Review. 

Dinowitz claimed Verdi of exacerbated overcrowding at P.S. 24 by allowing the lease at the school’s neighboring annex to expire, according to court records, and improperly enrolling students from outside P.S. 24’s school zone — neither of which school administrators are allowed to take part in.

“In the deposition transcript, Dinowitz did admit he knew that,” Glaser said. “The principal doesn’t negotiate leases. It’s black and white. So he’s saying that they are derelict in their duties, but he knows they don’t negotiate leases.”

In his court deposition, Dinowitz continued to blame Verdi for the loss of the lease, saying the administrator should have been “on top of it.”

Connelly would retire soon after the controversy came to light in 2015, with Verdi following in 2016, no longer able to struggle with what he described as the emotional toll.

In between, Verdi triggered an investigation into what he described as a Dinowitz staff member’s improper access to P.S. 24’s registration information.

The school’s interim principal was later removed, and the district superintendent — Melodie Mashel — also resigned.

Verdi settled with the city in 2018 for $230,000 over a whistleblower suit claiming the education department retaliated against him after he tipped off investigators.

Verdi said he and Connelly shared a vision for P.S. 24 before the mayhem broke out.

They made changes to the services the school offers to children with special needs, making faculty less reliant on the practice of simply whisking them away from the classroom for separate lessons.

“This was not new or experimental,” he said. “But maybe it was new in Riverdale.”

He swas excited to see the student population diversify during his time at P.S. 24. But “there was this whole political aspect,” he said. Verdi never got used to that.

“My crime was not putting politics over kids.”