For many of those who reside in the Westbury School District, the reinstatement of Dr. Robert D. Pinckney as superintendent of schools in August, 1996, after a controversial eight-month suspension, was the beginning of a new era in the community.

Three months earlier, in late May, former school board member Robert Troiano, Jr. had soundly defeated incumbent school board president Joseph Pascarella by a margin of 756 votes, and April Brown Lake handily dispatched Dr. Leon Dodson by a staggering 1068 votes.

That pivotal election brought to a head a controversial and often explosive school year in Westbury, and was seen by supporters of Troiano and Lake as a prelude to getting their superintendent back.

"Finally," declared local civic activist Ann Sweat after the votes were tallied, "we'll have a board that Dr. Pinckney can work with."

Initially, Sweat's prediction appeared to be coming true. Then, this past July, just shy of two years to the day of his return, a new chapter began in Westbury. Dr. Pinckney was informed for the second time in his five years with the district that his services would no longer be needed.

He's due to leave the district at the end of this current school year.

So what happened?

Although the official line is that Dr. Pinckney tendered his resignation and the school board voted unanimously to accept it, in fact it is now apparent that the board had intended to push him out of the district for months, if not actually years.

While Troiano has to date declined The Westbury Times' requests for interviews, sources who know him well contend that the board president went into the 1996 school board elections entirely unsure of what Dr. Pinckney's future role and length of tenure would be.

Those who supported the ticket of Troiano and Lake for election believed that once in place the "new" board would quickly bring Dr. Pinckney back and create a new stability around him.

Yes, Troiano agreed that Dr. Pinckney should return, insiders now say, and yes, his goal was to create stability, but as the incoming board president, Troiano's aim was evidently to create a sense of stability not around one man, but throughout the entire district.

This explains, at least in part, how Troiano and his supporters could be speaking the same language during the brief school board election campaign that year and yet view the world from markedly different perspectives.

"Without stability in the district, in a very short time, the chaos in the district would have begun to seep into the classroom," one associate of Troiano's said last week.

Though Dr. Pinckney's reinstatement was widely anticipated in the community immediately after the May 20, 1996 school board election, several school board and community members apparently felt deep reservations about a unilateral return by the superintendent.

Opponents of the move, for instance, believed that the court appointed hearing officer in the case of the Westbury Schools versus Dr. Robert D. Pinckney, should finish listening to both sides in the dispute and render a decision on the charges that had been levied against the superintendent.

And apparently, Robert Troiano had his own reservations, not having clearly resolved in his own mind how to proceed with the Pinckney matter.

By a four-to-three vote in late August of 1996, the school board decided to officially end the dispute and bring the superintendent back immediately.

The settlement agreed to by the current board and Dr. Pinckney included a two-year extension of his contract ¬ guaranteeing that he would stay in charge of the Westbury Schools until at least 1999; that the charges levied by the district would be dropped, that Dr. Pinckney's own suit against the district would be dropped; that all of Dr. Pinckney's legal fees incurred since his Jan. 17 suspension be picked up by the district; and that a public statement be made to the effect that the charges made by the former board majority "don't merit termination."

Troiano did indeed make that statement during the board meeting at which Dr. Pinckney was rehired.

The next morning, a banner heralding his return greeted Dr. Pinckney as he pulled into his parking space in the administration parking lot off Hitchcock Road. Bagels and coffee and well-wishers were waiting just inside the door.

"The staff across-the-board has been very warm," said the superintendent at the time. "What I've told them is, it's Godly and Christian to forgive, but you don't have to forget and I'll never forget what happened here."

Dr. Pinckney asked staff and administrators to pitch in and help him make changes in the district. "As warped as what happened was, I think that ultimately it was cathartic."

Former School Board President Joseph Pascarella, who was among those who thought the court ordered disciplinary hearings should continue, characterized Dr. Pinckney's reinstatement as a "political payback," and one of the board members who voted against Dr. Pinckney's reinstatement, Henry Razzano, said he hoped the board and community could come together in the weeks and months ahead for the benefit and well-being of the district's children.

Asked what he'll do differently during his second tenure as superintendent of schools, Dr. Pinckney said he would be more open to talking about his "efforts and successes."

"I'll be talking to the community more directly, in the future," he continued. "I think, overall, I'm a little wiser and a little more astute than I was before this all happened."

While Troiano's supporters had evidently gotten what they wanted, sources now characterize Dr. Pinckney's first day back on the job as the beginning of his tenure with the district.

"In order to achieve the stability he was after, Bobby [Troiano] knew he had to bring Pinckney back. First of all, that was the only way to bring an end to all the litigation that was being hurled around at the time. Secondly, it would erase a situation that pitted different elements of the community against each other. Everyone, or at least, most everyone, would then be moving along in the same direction.

"Finally, Troiano has a great deal of respect for Dr. Pinckney, Though it's hard to speak for another person, Troiano has never said anything that would indicate that he thought Pinckney an incompetent superintendent. In fact, Dr. Pinckney was a key and instrumental player in making Westbury a whole district again.

"With that in mind, one of Troiano's main goals was to help Bob [Pinckney] rehabilitate his reputation. With the stability in place and Dr. Pinckney's reputation restored, however, Troiano felt the time was right for Pinckney and the district to move on to their respective futures."

Over the course of the past two school board elections, relying on the same support that led to his own election to the board, Troiano has solidified that body with what can only be described as "his" people.

A year after his own election, Troiano reportedly approached the Central Westbury Civic Association and asked them to recruit a [white] women from the west side of Post Avenue."

It was a line he said to many people. In short order, Connie LoCascio, a long time member of the Westbury Chamber of Commerce and a real can-do person, found herself running for the school board.

Earlier this year, two more members of the Troiano's carefully selected team -- local Realtor Carlos Aristy and attorney Floyd Ewing --were elected.

Five weeks later, the newly constituted board began to meet to discuss Dr. Pinckney's future, a proposal to extend his contract being on the table.

Though neither of the principals in the currently unfolding drama are talking, a number of sources told this newspaper that the superintendent was shocked to learn that his contract would not be renewed by the board.

In late June, Troiano had reportedly told Dr. Pinckney that the board would need more time to consider an extension of the contract, which was to lapse on June 30.

According to at least one, admittedly second-hand account, Dr. Pinckney saw no problem with this. At the time, the board was said to be considering whether the extension would be for three years or for five years.

Then, on July 24, Troiano visited Dr. Pinckney in his office and informed him that the board would not be extending his contract after all.

Dr. Pinckney, surprised, responded by asking the board president the reasoning behind this decision.

"I can't," Troiano is alleged to have said. "I am not at liberty to discuss it."

Oddly, administrators for the district said, since word of what appears to have been a forced resignation leaked out, response from the community has been relatively muted.

However, a telephone chain started by some of Troiano's one-time supporters for election seems to indicate deep feelings of betrayal.

"We elected Troiano and other board members to give Pinckney a board he could work with," said one participant in that chain.

"Now this. I'll tell you, Troiano really cut everybody up... boy, when he strikes, he's deadly."

A number of individuals have said they believe Troiano has shifted loyalties away from the people who helped him get elected -- essentially elements of the Central Westbury Civic Association -- and aligned himself with two other groups: The Community Action Team and the so-called hate Group, both of which are said to be disenchanted with Dr. Pinckney.

Officially, Dr. Robert D. Pinckney tendered his resignation, effective Aug. 31, 1999.

Pinckney, the first African-American to serve as superintendent for the predominantly black and Hispanic school district, was seen as a breath of fresh air when he first came to the district during the summer of 1993, succeeding Charles Swensen as superintendent.

On the plus side of the ledger, his tenure here was defined both by his personal efforts to reach out to the children and the parents of the district's schools, and his tireless efforts to secure for Westbury its fair share of school aid from state lawmakers in Albany.

On the other hand, many were threatened by this very outreach. The Pascarella-led school board, for instance, saw in much of the superintendent's outreach, a hint of building a political power base, and associates of Troiano say the current school board president evidently shared some of those very same concerns, believing that Dr. Pinckney had come to see himself as something of a "king" rather than as an employee of the school board.

"Bob Troiano always saw Pinckney as a superintendent, plain and simple," one source said. "Unfortunately, he came to believe that Pincnkey saw himself as something other than that -- and one thing Bobby Troiano is just completely unable to stomach is a 'king'" critics contend, Dr. Pinckney came to see himself as something of a 'king.'"

Though what essentially boils down to a dismissal of the superintendent was handled more adroitly in 1998 than it was in 1996, when the sitting school board first extended the superintendent's contract and then tried to sack him, Troiano himself has now come in for criticism.

"The fact is, the people who appear to be upset about this are people who feel not that Pinckney's been abused once again, but that they were left out of the process.

"Troiano's failing in this situation isn't that he may have done the wrong thing -- only time will tell - but that he didn't adequately communicate his thoughts to the community," a source said. "Frankly, in this case, Bobby's shortcoming is that he's not a politician and never will be."

Three years ago, when Pinckney's ouster created a firestorm, residents circulated fliers around the community depicting then school board attorney Anthony Mastroianni as a puppet master, forcing board president Pascarella and others to do his bidding.

One of the ironies of the current controversy is that fliers very similar to those of 1996 are once again making the rounds of the community -- this time with Robert Troiano depicted as the puppet master.

"Bear this in mind, though," another associate of Troiano's said. "The board will not reverse this decision. No matter what the public response. If the board -- any board for that matter -- were to cave in to public pressure and the shouting masses, that board would simply cease to function."