A month after announcing the completion of an internal review into district operations following the arrest of a former girls’ wrestling coach and custodian for rape, officials in the Saugerties Central School District (SCSD) said that Saugerties is still picking up the pieces.
At a meeting of the Board of Education held on Tuesday, January 13, interim superintendent Gwendolyn Roraback said the district needs to rebuild trust and strengthen safeguards.
“Our highest priority is the safety and well-being of students and staff,” Roraback said. “The district has taken decisive, comprehensive action both immediate and long-term, in close partnership with the Ulster County Special Victims Unit, Mobile Mental Health, Ulster BOCES and trauma-informed care experts from around our nation.”
Last week, former Saugerties High School Lady Sawyers wrestling coach and custodian Reid Kappler pleaded guilty in Ulster County Court to multiple rapes of two girls he coached. In a plea arrangement with the Ulster County District Attorney’s Office, Kappler will be sentenced to 6 1/2 years in state prison.
Last July, Kappler initially pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of third-degree felony rape of two girls between the ages of 15 and 16 between 2023 and 2024. Kappler, a 2011 SHS graduate, was no longer employed by the district, and was living in Connecticut at the time of his arrest.
The fallout from the allegations against Kappler at the end of the 2024-25 school year were immediate, with the board of education authorizing the internal audit; the ripple effects continue, with former superintendent Daniel Erceg being placed on paid administrative leave in September; Erceg has since resigned from the district, with Roraback, the district’s deputy superintendent, filling the role in an interim capacity ever since.
Roraback added that the district was working to improve its communication, particularly in moments of crisis, but asked the community’s understanding that not all information is able to be shared with the public.
“We do know that when there is a hold in place or a lockdown or if you in the community see a police presence in front of a building, we understand that you might be nervous or fearful,” she said. “So if there isn’t a communication, it is to protect the dignity of the student. And their situation…may not be for the greater good of the public to know because it might do more harm sharing that with the public. So please understand that not everything needs to be known public-wide if it is going to do damage to a very specific situation and a specific student. But we can always do our best in letting you know the building is safe and we will do better with that.”
School board president Jeffrey Riozzi said transparency is not absolute.
“People have to realize that when there are personnel matters involved, there’s HR (human recources) involved, there are unions involved, which have certain rules,” he said. “There is going to be no announcement here at the board level of names, specific names…We just don’t have that ability, legally, from a personnel perspective. So if that’s what people are expecting, people need to reset that expectation.”
Riozzi said the external investigator found flaws in how the district handled complaints, citing an anonymous report against Kappler from 2023.
“When that complaint came in, the process that was followed and the investigation process
that went into that complaint was lacking any sort of best practice or any sort of proper protocol, to the point where the investigator found there was no clear record of how the complaint actually came into the office, there was no official investigation file created on that. And outside of the wrestling coach, there was no one else talked to around the complaint…No wrestlers were spoken to, there were no parents spoken to. And when other information became available, the investigator found there was no subsequent follow-up discussion.”
Riozzi said that specific example speaks to much-needed changes in the district’s human resources practices.
“This all centers, if you can put the pieces together, around HR,” he said. “HR needs to function in a district this size. And what I mean by a district this size, forget the number of students, it’s really around the number of employees we have and having a process…for a standardized protocol for investigation. So when something comes in, it is handled exactly the same way.”
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