On this, the townfolk of Amagansett agree: On Friday, Dec. 15, 2023, at 8:37 a.m., principal Maria Dorr emerged from the mailroom at the local elementary school with a red envelope in hand.

Whether it was rightfully hers is a question that has convulsed the small town on the eastern edge of New York’s Long Island ever since.

By some measures, the stakes could not be lower. A red envelope that went missing—or was stolen—from the school’s mailroom on that day was said to contain a $25 Amazon gift card, a Christmas-season expression of gratitude from a parent to one of the school’s occupational therapists. 

Yet the missing card has prompted a police report, accusations of foul play and bullying and a disciplinary trial that has generated some 1,400 pages in testimony from more than a dozen witnesses. Passages read like an Agatha Christie mystery, except there is no antique revolver or pearl-handled dagger.

Meanwhile, based on his published rates, the fees for the arbitrator overseeing the hearing have already exceeded $24,800—or nearly a thousand-times the value of the missing card—and are sure to rise further. Adding to the absurdity, the intended recipient of the card asked the local police not to pursue the matter.

“It’s insane,” said Nika Nesgoda, an artist who splits time with her husband and three children between Amagansett and New York City. “Who said, ‘The fighting is so vicious because the stakes are so small?’” (It was political scientist Wallace Sayre).

Her husband, Hank Muchnic, a former school board member, was reminded of the town’s sometimes nickname: Drama-gansett. Yet the saga with Dorr, he noted, is hardly a trivial matter.

“The more details that come to light,” he said, “the more it seems there was something nefarious happening at the school.” 

38 surveillance cameras

Amagansett is a postcard hamlet in the larger town of East Hampton, and a last glorious stretch of beach before Long Island peters out at Montauk. Celebrities including Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker have houses there. It is also home to realtors, contractors and gas station owners, some who have been there for generations. One resident described a divide between the 917s—those with a Manhattan mobile phone area code—and the local 631s.

The Amagansett School, the hamlet’s largest employer, runs from prekindergarten through sixth grade. It has about 110 students but a budget of $13.4 million and, as the trial revealed, 38 surveillance cameras. 

The gift card caper began during the preholiday rush. A parent presented Cassie Butts, the school’s long-serving receptionist, with two cards, one for Butts and one for the therapist, Chrissy McElroy. Butts testified that she slipped McElroy’s card into her mailbox that morning. Hours later, when McElroy went to retrieve it, there was nothing there. Last January, Dorr was placed on administrative leave.

The ensuing disciplinary hearing, known as a 3020a under New York state law, was designed to handle cases involving tenured teachers. 

Typically, such proceedings are private. But Dorr demanded a public hearing and so the details of the gift card saga have become known to the wider world. 

As presented by Steven Goodstadt, a lawyer representing the school district, the case seemed straightforward: Timestamped footage from a camera posted outside the mailroom showed Butts entering with a red envelope at 8:24:17 a.m. and then leaving, empty-handed, seven seconds later. Dorr then popped in at 8:37 and left with a pile of papers, including…a red envelope.

Later that day, Butts encountered Dorr and told her about the missing card. Butts testified that the principal told her to keep quiet, lest attorneys and the police become involved. “It is obvious that Maria Dorr was hoping this would die down because she knew that her sticky fingers would have been caught,” said Goodstadt. “Monday did come but the mystery of the missing envelope only grew.”  (At one point Goodstadt submitted into evidence a photograph of the Amagansett School’s mailroom cubbies.)

By Tuesday morning, Richard Loeschner, Amagansett’s interim superintendent, was pulling video feeds and interviewing teachers. “I did the investigation,” he testified. “There is no other explanation as to where that gift card went.”

Or was there? 

Gas card theory

In her own telling, Dorr found a red envelope in her mailbox that morning and opened it the next day to find a $50 gift card from the local Shell gas station. A family had given her a similar card a few months earlier and she assumed it was from them, Dorr said. When Butts told her a card was missing she asked her to refrain from raising the alarm, she explained, because she assumed the card would soon turn up.

“It’s a school. Things go missing all the time,” Dorr testified. 

She discovered Butts was spreading rumors and confronted her, she said, by producing the Shell card. She later found the accompanying red envelope in her recycling bin at home and presented it to Loeschner. But Loeschner dismissed it since the envelope wasn’t signed. Soon he was pressuring her to resign.

That she would risk a 25-year career over a $25 gift card is hard for some to comprehend. Dorr, who had worked at other schools on Long Island, was appointed acting principal in 2015, Amagansett’s third in as many years. She received exemplary reviews.

“Mrs. Dorr stands as a role model for the highest of ethical standards in her work and interactions with others,” one former superintendent wrote. “Her example permeates the school.” 

In September 2023, just before the gift card saga erupted, Amagansett School was awarded a Blue Ribbon designation by the federal government for its students’ academic excellence—one of only three schools on Long Island to achieve the honor.

“To me, it really stinks. I don’t think she took the card,” Joe Karpinski, a gadfly who has followed the case closely and signs his copious letters to the local East Hampton Star: “Still here.” 

‘A known liar’ 

Like others in the Dorr camp, Karpinksi was skeptical of Butts, who retired last February. In 2019 Butts was counseled for making exaggerated claims against the then-superintendent after an outside law firm was called in to investigate. 

“Cassie has a tendency to embellish things or not tell the truth on many occasions,” a school district official testified in the gift card trial.

Arthur Scheuermann, Dorr’s lawyer, called Butts “a known liar” and speculated that the missing gift card was a setup to torpedo Dorr’s candidacy for superintendent. That job went in May to Mike Rodgers, a gym teacher and volunteer firefighter who has spent 25 years at Amagansett School and is widely known around town as Coach. Rodgers was also co-president of the local teachers union. 

Loeschner admitted on cross-examination that before he had even accessed the surveillance footage, Rodgers slipped him a piece of paper with the relevant times—8:24 a.m. and 8:37 a.m.—scrawled on it. He acknowledged this was inappropriate.

As superintendent, Rodgers has free use of a house adjacent to the school, a valuable perk given the cost of housing in Amagansett. 

Rodgers’ candidacy and selection has been divisive. 

When he applied for the job in March one resident, Kate Ciullo, a former student and now an Amagansett School parent, started a petition on his behalf, touting his “dedication, integrity, and unwavering commitment to our children’s education.”

But in a confidential survey of residents and teachers, some noted a toxic atmosphere at the school and urged a candidate from outside Long Island.

One self-described “concerned teacher” complained about a bullying cabal who used the school “as their own personal Game of Thrones.” A teacher wrote they would rather resign than work under his leadership.

The arbitrator indicated a decision was likely by mid-February. Yet Valentine’s Day came and went without a report, leaving Amagansettians on edge.

“A lot does ride on this bullshit $25 gift card,” one parent said. “It’s definitely going to throw a huge wrench in shit — no matter which way it goes.”