For Paterson school district, the denial continues | Editorial

The administrative gag line known as Paterson Eastside High School had a chance to do the right thing last week by applying appropriate, proportional disciplines to a few of the characters who brought shame to the school and its vaunted basketball programs.

And once again, it air-balled a layup.

Apparently, the Paterson school board has forgotten that Eastside is still the subject of criminal inquiries by the state Attorney General and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of Homeland Security.

It also forgot that its sleazy recruiting practices earned the athletic department unprecedented penalties from the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, which walloped Eastside with a two-year state tournament ban, plus suspensions and fines for both boys coach Juan Griles and girls coach Ray Lyde, Jr.

Considering that they falsified transcripts, flouted eligibility rules, and stashed kids from Nigeria and Puerto Rico throughout the city - including six boys who were shoehorned into Griles' two-bedroom condo - you could argue that the NJSIAA let them off easy.

But the Paterson school board's response to this ethical meltdown was to reward Lyde - he recruited three Nigerian players himself - with a pay raise for his district job.

Meanwhile, the board has allowed the Eastside principle, Karen Johnson - who was supposed to retire in June for allowing the athletic department to become a moral dead zone - to remain on the district payroll.

Members of the board have refused to explain this about-face. Fittingly, state Senator Richard Codey, D-Essex, asked the Department of Education Tuesday to seize disciplinary powers from the Paterson board - not only because the district is under state control, but because it has been taken captive by people who are "tone deaf, delusional, and divorced with reality," to borrow Codey's analysis.

Hyperbole? Not really. The corruption in and around the Eastside athletic department was so off-the-charts brazen that it "normalized cheating," as Assemblywoman Marlene Caride, D-Passaic, put it.

An NJSIAA panel unanimously denied appeals from both Griles and the district last week, which was an easy call, even as Griles' attorney trotted out to this knee-slapping narrative: "He was just trying to return a favor, to try to help some kids who were out here in the country with no place to go," Alfred Maurice said.

Yes, how magnanimous of him, finding a home for a 7-foot nomad.

As nine months of jaw-dropping reportage from NJ Advance Media has shown, these kids were delivered to Griles and Lyde by street agents overseas, brought to Paterson to play basketball, had their enrollment and housing arranged, and were treated like chattel. That's illegal recruitment - full stop.

And it still cannot be ruled out whether these actions constitute human trafficking.

But the folks at Paterson aren't ready to accept any of this. According to the superintendent, the district will appeal to the Department of Education to get its penalties rolled back.

What part of "federal criminal investigation" don't these people understand exactly?

They need to take their medicine, withdraw the financial rewards for Lyde and Johnson, and bring the curtain down on this comic opera. And if they can't bring themselves to do the decent thing, the DOE should do it for them.

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