One of the candidates being eyed by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio to become the city’s next schools chancellor is under fire from Maryland parents for failing to aggressively crack down on teachers accused of molesting students.
Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua Starr faces questions over his school district’s handling of a music teacher who was charged in August with sexually abusing 14 female students in a kindergarten-to-second-grade elementary school over an eight year period.
Parents and teachers complained that it was known that veteran music teacher Lawrence Wesley Joynes was a suspected pedophile, but school administrators did not move fast enough to remove the teacher to protect their kids.
Parents at the New Hampshire Estates Elementary School in Silver Spring, near DC, also were unhappy with Starr’s response.
“I believe it was mishandled. My child was put at risk,” parent Rick Rick Bonazelli, whose daughter attended the school from 2009 through last year, told The Post.
“If a situation like this comes to my attention again I will not trust the Montgomery County school system to handle it. I will go directly to the police.”
Earlier in the year, music teacher Joynes was arrested for possessing child pornography. The principal at the time said, “We have no reason to believe” that any students’ images were included. But subsequent searches allegedly found that Joynes had videos and images of 14 of his students whom he directed to make sexually suggestive gestures, including inappropriate touching.
Starr’s office defended his handling of the matter.
“Dr. Starr is very concerned about the Joynes case and has ordered MCPS [Montgomery County Public Schools] to review its processes to ensure the district learns from this case and puts steps into place to make sure concerns about staff misconduct are reported and traced appropriately,” said Starr spokeswoman Dana Tofig.
Formerly the director of school performance and accountability for New York City public schools, Starr is considered a favored candidate of the teachers union for the chancellorship.
De Blasio’s transition office declined comment on Starr’s chances of being tapped.
“There are a lot of rumors out there, and we are not going to comment on any of them,” said his spokeswoman, Lis Smith.