Quote of the day: Does it really count as stealing from the children when you pocket money for the schools before it gets to the kiddies?

"We just want to make eye contact so that he can see the disappointment and sadness in our eyes."
--Amy Goldman, a former PTA leader in the Roslyn, Long Island, schools, referring to Roslyn's former schools superintendent, Frank A. Tassone, who failed to show up at a sentencing hearing yesterday for the ninth time

We should be used to it by now. People steal money for lots of reasons, but one of them is always that there's money to be stolen. It's just that I always feel a special revulsion when it's money stolen from the public schools, money that is effectively stolen from our children.

This was a stomach-churning story, unfolding over time: the theft of $2 million from this prosperous Long Island school district by a well-regarded superintendent. (The total amount diverted to all parties was pegged at some $11 million.) It's more than a year now since Frank A. Tassone pled guilty, and his sentencing, writes Paul Vitello in this morning's New York Times ("Roslyn Waits, and Waits Again, for Schools Leader's Sentencing")--

has become the occasion for a Dickensian succession of court postponements for frustrated parents, school officials, lawyers and one increasingly impatient judge.

But of that group, none seems more anguished by the delays than the women of the Roslyn parent-teachers association, a core of parent-activists who once considered themselves close to Dr. Tassone, who defended him in the first days of the unfolding scandal, and who have since felt deeply, and personally, betrayed by what he did.

"It's like he manipulated us, and now he's manipulating the court system," said Zina Korn, a past PTA president who attended what was supposed to have been a sentencing hearing here Wednesday that turned into another delay.

In his plea, Tassone agreed to "a term of no more than 4 to 12 years" (roughly half the maximum for grand larceny), but he has yet to appear for sentencing. The last two no-shows have been related to the congestive heart disease with which he was diagnosed last year; before the sentencing dates he checked into the hospital. This time Nassau County Criminal Court Judge Alan Honorof ordered him placed under arrest at Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital, where his lawyer said he was undergoing tests. (He's to be kept under guard or in custody till the next sentencing date, next Tuesday. The judge said that if he fails to appear, the plea agreement will be voided.)

It seems that the PTA women have gotten used to appearing at Tassone's sentencing hearings, even if the defendant hasn't. They've grown used to answering questions "about why they were there, why they seemed deermined to see Dr. Tassone handcuffed and led away to prison."

"In a sense it's almost personal with us," said Kim Floam, a past president of all the district's PTA organizations. "He was someone we talked to, sometimes daily. We thought he was someone who cared about our community. But he was not the person he pretended to be. There's a sense of violation."