New York Magazine – July 08, 2019

july 8–21, 2019 | new york 77

mented on Chelsea Redick’s Instagram

on New Year’s Eve. “I love you—whoops,

I’m fired.”

Redick, who assumed the director was

joking, lol’d. But Morgano really was

worried.

S

ince this past fall, there have

been certain rumors going around

our school,” read an email several

members of the board received on

January 16, 2019. “The teacher survey ad-

ministered in October 2018 was a good start

to furthering the current progress of the

school and providing an outlet for future

feedback.” However, it went on to say: “We

are extremely concerned that the results of

the survey do not reflect the support and ap-

preciation the majority of our teachers feel

for Amy as our director.”

The letter was signed by five young

teachers, all Morgano hires, which seemed

especially suspicious to those members of

the board who had heard about the divide

within the staff. They consulted with the

rector, who decided it would be best to

hold a meeting for all of the teaching staff.

The idea was transparency, but one of the

board members, an attorney, drew up an

NDA that she asked the board members

present to sign, so that the teachers would

feel secure that nothing they said would

get back to Morgano. By morning, it

already had.

“Chelsea said if it was a drinking game

and she had a shot every time Ashley said

‘I’m an educator,’ that she’d have been

drunk,” Morgano wrote of the meeting in an

email to the authors of the original letter, in

which she thanked them for their support

and encouraged them to reach out to Chel-

sea Redick, who she said was planning to

speak with the rector on her behalf.

If this was true—and a spokesperson for

Redick claims the drinking-game joke is “a

fabrication”—she didn’t have a chance

before the missive found its way into the

hands of Phyfe and board members aligned

with the president, who were furious at

what they saw as Redick’s betrayal and

Morgano’s attempt to manipulate the situ-

ation. Something, they decided, needed

to be done.

An emergency off-site meeting was con-

vened the following day, January 22, 2019.

When Chelsea Redick arrived at the Brook-

lyn Trust Company Building on Pierrepont

Street, the home of one of the members, the

17 other members of the board, along with

the rector, were gathered in the top-floor

owner’s lounge. The mood was grim. Some-

one had brought in bagels, but no one

touched them as, for the next three hours,

the fate of Morgano was debated. Evidence

of Morgano’s alleged inappropriate conduct

was produced, including portions of the

teachers’ survey, Phyfe’s exit interviews with

teachers, and emails that included the

“drinking game” email. Redick’s name had

been blocked out on the page, and her

friendship with Morgano was not directly

addressed. But according to someone pres-

ent at the meeting, around the time they

began to discuss the director’s inappropri-

ate use of social media, Redick began to cry,

and she didn’t stop until well after the board

voted 16-2 in favor of removing the director

from her position.

Redick did not, as promised, follow

through with telling Morgano what hap-

pened at the meeting. Morgano didn’t find

out until the following afternoon, when she

was summoned to the rectory, where she

found the Reverend Robinson sitting with

one of the junior church wardens. “Effective

immediately, you are terminated,” he told her.

“Why?” Morgano asked.

“We’re not going to discuss that,” said

the junior warden. It was the end of the

school day, but teachers were still putter-

ing around the building when the warden

escorted her to her office to gather her

things, and outside, parents with strollers

were idling on the curb where Morgano

found herself put out. Even after every-

thing, she was stunned. Later, when she

opened the separation agreement the war-

den had given her, she almost laughed:

The school had offered her just $10,000.

Apparently, not a single one of them had

any idea what it costs a normal person to

live in Brooklyn.

“We are writing to let you know that

Director Amy Morgano will be transition-

ing from our school, effective immediately,”

read the letter from the Reverend Robinson

and Phyfe that parents received later that

evening. “We recognize that you may have

questions and we assure you that this tran-

sition comes only after careful thought and

reflection, and with the best interests of our

students and highly capable caring fac-

ulty in mind.”

It was true: There were questions. But

with NDAs on top of NDAs, no one was

willing to answer them, and in the absence

of information, rumors swirled. “If they’d

just fired her in June, no one would have

noticed, but they did it in such a melodra-

matic way it makes everyone think some-

thing must have happened,” said one par-

ent. Morgano herself never got an official

reason for her firing. But a few weeks later,

she found a clue in an unmarked envelope

in her mailbox: the word karma, spelled

out in stickers on Grace Church stationery.

She wasn’t sure who the sender was, but

she had a couple ideas.

After she was fired, Morgano retained a

lawyer, Doug Schneider, who has been in

communication with the Grace Church

School regarding the circumstances of her

termination. “Ms. Morgano has been the

director of three different pre-schools and

an early childhood educator for 25 years,” he

told New York in a statement. “She took

over a struggling Grace Church School and

in a short time built it into the prestigious

school it is today. The way she is treated was

shameful and we look forward to vindicat-

ing her legal rights and her reputation.”

The school responded to this with a high-

powered law firm, Schulte Roth & Zabel, as

well as a crisis-management expert best

known as the former spokesman of then-

Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It seems that

sweet Grace Church understood how best

to prepare its children for a cruel, competi-

tive world all along. “What I find to be kind

of comical is that Amy does not understand

why she was fired,” says Pat Jones, the for-

mer head Threes teacher whose dismissal

had tugged heartstrings on Goodbye Day.

“As she wrote in one of her social-media

things, #meanrichpeople. Does she really

think it was mean rich people? I don’t think

she has any idea that I never really went

away. That I played kind of a big hand in a

lot of this.” Calm and controlled as ever,

Jones went on: “I think Amy assumed,

because I am quiet, she was going to tell me

she wasn’t renewing my contract and I was

going to walk away quietly. I refused to walk

away quietly. The minute Amy started tell-

ing me these lies about why she was not

bringing me back, she had a fight on her

hands that she was never ever going to win.”

Jones had spoken to Phyfe and the mem-

bers of the board “many times,” she said.

“I spoke up, and I didn’t go away, and I kept

coming back again and again and again.

I just kept the ball rolling. I just kept giving

those stories to the board. And I was pre-

pared to take this further and further. I was

not going to go away until [I saw] the result

that I wanted. I would accept nothing less.”

It’s unclear if the Redicks will be return-

ing to Grace Church school in the fall; JJ

just signed with the New Orleans Pelicans.

The school has hired a new director. This

time, it went with a candidate who came

from closer to home: a former Grace parent

who’d served on the board during the

Prosky years. The rector offered a placid

statement from the former Bloomberg

spokesperson. “During the school’s admin-

istrative transition this winter, our great

staff ensured that the children’s joyful class-

room routines continued seamlessly. We

look forward to starting a new school year

in September, and welcoming our students

and families who will continue to enjoy the

level of caring, expert teaching, and sense of

community for which Grace Church School

is known.” The bubble bath roils on. ■