THE ATLANTIC SEPTEMBER 2019 47of a place home to so many of the nation’s
leading financiers. For nearly two decades,
outside auditors had validated that view,
issuing annual reports that gave the town
a clean bill of finan cial health.
In 2012, however, the town decided
a fresh look was needed. A new audit-
ing firm came on board and delivered a
rude surprise. The firm found numerous
problems with the town’s practices, from
sloppy record keeping to a lack of checks
and balances. Taken together, the prob-
lems meant New Canaan was wide open
for fraud.
“You have every right to be nervous,”
the auditor told residents during a
presentation, according to the New
Cana an Advertiser.
An outcry went up. The town’s deep
bench of financial talent clamored to
help. The town convened a commit-
tee staffed with not one but two former
CEOs of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, the
accounting giant. But even with such
high-powered expertise, bringing the
town into compliance proved challeng-
ing. After a year of work, the committee
scolded the school board for ignoring
its recommendations. In a letter, the
committee members announced that
they would suspend their work, citing a
lack of “cooperation, trust and transpar-
ency between the Board of Education
and the Town.”
The district charged its newly hired
direc tor of finance and operations,
Jo-Ann Keating, with fixing what the audi-
tors had flagged. She zeroed in on the
obvious— the cafeterias.
School cafeterias can be financial
briar patches. They are businesses unto
themselves, taking in large sums in cha-
otic conditions. So tricky is cafeteria
oversight that many schools outsource it.
New Canaan had gone another route. It
kept both food preparation and financial
management in-house and tasked the
food- services director with oversight of
both. Its cafeterias raked in some $2 mil-
lion a year, most of it through prepaid
accounts, but about 5 percent arriving
as cash.
Keating concluded that the cafete-
rias’ cash-handling procedures were lax,
and she mandated new, tighter rules. At
the start of the 2016–17 school year, the
district also installed software on all
cash registers that provided end-of-day
cash tallies for each machine to Keating
but not to cashiers. In Keating’s words,
the system was a good, clean check—
she could tell if a register’s tally differed
board alleging that Gluck had created a
hostile work environment and discrimi-
nated against female workers.
The town stood behind Gluck. “A sense
of ‘How dare you go up against us?’ per-
meated the whole thing,” Richard Pate,
Tor casio’s attorney, told me. He recalled
district officials being united in their de-
fense of Gluck. “Everyone praised this guy.
Every one thought he was incredible.”
But a federal judge ruled in March 2017
that the suit could go forward, citing evi-
dence showing that “Gluck mistreated
many or all of his employees” and
“laughed and boasted about making
employ ees cry.” (The school-board chair
declined to comment for this article.)
The parties settled the case for un-
disclosed terms. Gluck stepped down at
the end of the school year and moved
to Vermont.WILSON SHOULD HAVE BEEN a
natural candidate to succeed Gluck; she’d
been his deputy for more than 20 years.
But about a month before the start of the
2017–18 school year, the district passed
her over and hired an outside candidate.
The new director was told to keep an eye
on cash handling in the cafeterias.
In November, the new food- services
director alerted Keating to an argument
between employees at the middle school.
It had esca lated quickly, faster than it
should have, as if there were something
more at root. Keating decided to pay a visit.
Pascarelli, the manager, was under a
great deal of stress outside of work. Her
husband had filed for divorce and would
later accuse her of changing the locks on
their home while he was in the hospital for
heart-transplant surgery; renting out the
home without his permission; and clear-
ing out their bank account, leaving him
with $46. (Pascarelli’s attorney declined
to comment on these allegations.)
Keating, during her visit, handed out
her business card and invited workers
to contact her if they wanted to talk pri-
vately. Less than a week later, at 7 p.m.,
she received an email from a worker.
They met the next day, and Keating lis-
tened as the woman shared her com-
plaints. Of particular interest to Keating
were her concerns about cash handling.SERGEANT KEVIN CASEY WAS
a 23-year veteran of the New Canaan
Police Department. Before joining the
force, he’d been a correctional officer
at Rikers Island, in New York City. Now
his office was a repository of some 1,600from the amount reported to be in the
drawer at day’s end.
Soon after, Keating started noticing
problems at the high school.ANTONIA TORCASIO FIT a familiar
profile in the kitchens— a daughter of Italy,
she grew up working in its fields, immi-
grated in 1970, became a homemaker,
and, when her children were grown, took
a job in New Canaan. She would claim in
court that she was a frequent object of
Gluck’s ire. She would get her revenge.
According to Torcasio’s version of
events, in October 2013, Wilson called
her into Gluck’s office, where he accused
her of complaining to the school principal
about her workload. He warned her not
to speak with administrators, teachers, or
staff. Then he turned to Wilson and said,
“You deal with her.” Wilson said she was
going to transfer Torcasio to a different
school. (Wilson and Gluck dispute Tor-
casio’s account of the meeting.)
Years earlier, Torcasio would have let
the inci dent go. But her daughter had
become a human- resources manager,
and told her mother she had options.Torcasio filed two lawsuits. One was
against Wilson, claiming that she had put
her hands on Torcasio’s shoulder after
the meeting with Gluck and shoved her.
A jury found in Wilson’s favor. Torcasio
also filed a federal lawsuit against Gluck,
the town of New Canaan, and the schoolSergeant Casey
had been
a correctional
officer at Rikers
Island. Now his
office was a
repository of
some 1,600
pages of docu-
ments related
to missing
cafeteria money.