First in Her Class
LAST, JONATHAN V.
First in Her Class The valedictorian sued, and the town turned on her. BY JONATHAN V LAST Moorestown, New Jersey No one in Moorestown can remember a graduation day quite like the one the class...
...For violating her rights under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and other state and federal statutes, she sought $200,000 in compensatory damages, and $2.5 million in punitive damages...
...The Hornstines may not have needed that good a lawyer, however...
...On May 1, she filed suit in federal court...
...And Betancourt smelled a rat...
...Hornstine intended to manipulate the system is immaterial," because over the course of four years, "the Board approved every aspect of [Blair's] curriculum...
...And I'm not sure whether it's all her, or whether it's her father...
...At the time, Blair had an A- in the class...
...And then of course, there were the media...
...A petition supporting Kadri flew around town and collected 862 signatures almost overnight—275 of them from the senior class, nearly every member...
...In the process she used large unquoted chunks of other people's writing—a speech given by Bill Clinton, the Family Research Council's i.e...
...During her senior year she came to school for homeroom and one class—all of her other instruction was provided by home tutors...
...With a practice in Atlantic City, Jacobs has represented a colorful array of organized crime figures along the Broad Street-Boardwalk corridor...
...Most of her volunteer work is done by phone now," Jennifer Moroz and Toni Callas reported...
...Newspapers don't have footnotes...
...As chair of the Tri-County Food Drive she collected, according to her bio on the Points of Light Foundation's website, 56,000 pounds of food for the Food Bank of South Jersey and some 600 prom dresses for needy teens with the Tri-County Prom Dress Drive, which she founded...
...He would come in his car...
...Moorestown went into an uproar...
...She also joined the model Congress and debate team and became captain of the moot court team...
...In court documents responding to Blair's lawsuit, Kadri claimed that Hornstine "told me that he had been salutatorian in school, and that he did not want his children to face 'the same embarrassment.'" Therefore, "he would 'use any advantage of the laws and regulations to give [Blair] the best opportunity to be valedictorian.'" According to Kadri, Judge Hornstine "told me that he was going to manipulate rules designed to protect disabled students" and said, "All I'm interested in is what is best for my daughter...
...There are conflicting accounts of the discussion...
...In a few months Blair will leave Moorestown and begin her freshman year at Harvard with a star-quality résumé— academic honors, extracurricular achievements, scholarships and charitable works galore...
...It's easy to wonder, under the circumstances, if being valedictorian is all that it's cracked up to be...
...When I am running with that torch, I will be the only person on Earth at that time who has it...
...The best a student could do in gym was an A+ worth 4.3 points, which would have dragged down her GPA...
...I now realize that I was mistaken...
...The Inquirer reported in May that she works out at a local gym...
...And if there is any disability, it was inflicted by the father...
...Blair's lawsuit puts the township on the hook for $2.7 million when the entire school system's annual budget is only $50 million...
...It may be that in part...
...A surprising number of townspeople, though, will be delighted to see her go...
...As a follow-up article in the Courier-Post noted, two of the articles were "composed mostly of material written by others...
...Hornstine earned her distinction as the top student in her class in spite of, not because of, her disability...
...She and her family have never disclosed the exact nature of her disability...
...And the Hornstines' old family friend Mary Betancourt also swung into action...
...Three years ago, a newspaper reporter spoke briefly with 16-year-old Blair and asked her what it was like to carry the Olympic flame: "Not many people get this honor," she said...
...The Hornstines went into damage-control mode...
...What's more, "When absent or significantly fatigued, teachers will make appropriate accommodations to due dates for assignments...
...typically denounce as misplaced egalitarianism...
...The valedictorian was nowhere to be seen...
...That first year, she won the Prudential Spirit of the Community award and was featured on CNN for her extensive volunteer work...
...Following federal and state disabilities law guidelines, the school district's child study team came up with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to accommodate Blair's health problems...
...On June 3, the local paper, the Courier-Post, published a brief editor's note explaining that five essays Blair had written for the paper contained "information from sources that was not properly attributed...
...Blair received a threatening letter which warned that she "would have trouble" if she came to graduation...
...In 2000, Blair ran with the Olympic torch when it came through Philadelphia...
...She then allowed, "I erroneously thought the way I had submitted the articles was appropriate...
...Whether or not Mr...
...But before the board had a chance to meet, Blair sued...
...And David Rhody, a Latin teacher who's also a lawyer, remembers Blair as "very bright, very interested, very curious—good student...
...An A+ in an advanced placement course was worth 5.3 points...
...I think that the view is there is not a genuine disability," explains a parent from the community...
...We have more important things to deal with...
...And salutatorian Mirkin, who ended up with a cumulative GPA .055 points behind Blair Hornstine...
...Then there's the charitable work...
...magazine, Christian Teachers Aid, Justice William Brennan, and Steve LaMontagne, an analyst at the Nautilus Institute in Washington, D.C...
...They view her no-holds-barred effort to secure the top spot in the Moorestown class of 2003 as a Bobo version of the Texas cheerleader case—a combination of obsessive pursuit of academic credentials and parental ambition run amok...
...Interviewed in July 2002, she told a reporter from the Courier-Post, "If I didn't lead a busy life, I'd be bored...
...And what about Blair...
...I think you don't have a leg to stand on," she told school board attorney John Comegno...
...Those other papers include the Philadelphia Inquirer, which in late May reported that Blair's volunteer work is often helped along by her father...
...Another petition materialized online, urging Harvard to rescind its offer of admission...
...Having vociferously supported Kadri, the school board is in a tough spot...
...In 1998, he represented Philly drug kingpin Louis Turra, accused of plotting the assassination of underboss Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino...
...Just a few weeks before that semester ended, Blair dropped AP European History—one of the two courses she was taking at the school—citing exhaustion...
...Blair was enrolled in gym class in 9th and 10th grades (receiving an A and A+, respectively...
...They will have to publicly vote on the terms of any settlement...
...Blair thrived academically under this plan, finishing each year with a GPA in excess of 4.0...
...She chalked the entire episode up to "an effort to discredit Blair...
...In a statement printed in the Courier-Post, Blair noted that "these voluntary articles were not written for class assignments...
...One of Blair's former friends expressed similar sentiments to the Crimson: "From what I've seen and heard, I don't believe she has a disability that really prohibits her from going to school," said Allie McGuigan...
...Beyond the résumé jealousy, small-town rivalries, hostility to litigiousness, and concern for fairness is a deeper reason for Moorestown's hostility to its valedictorian, which finally comes up in almost every interview: Few people in town believe that she's really sick...
...There was also her choice of lawyer...
...He then set out in search of a policy that would allow him to do so...
...Her father, Louis, is a New Jersey superior court judge in neighboring Camden County, and her mother, Linda, is a stay-at-home mom who's been active in the community for many years...
...His plan was for the school board to vote at its May 12 meeting on the new policy, which would allow the board, at "its discretion, with the assistance of the administration," to "designate multiple valedictorians and/or salutatorians to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to compete for these awards...
...A close friend of the family told me "she developed an illness when she was visiting Turkey, and when she came back—it's kind of a disease that you break out in blisters all over you...
...Kadri wanted the new rule to apply retroactively to the class of 2003...
...But there are always the intangibles of being Number One...
...The school has let | them have meetings where they talk about—some of them say 'rip her heart out' S and 'they know how to take s care of her, whether it's during graduation On June 10, Jacobs sent a letter to Kadri informing him that "the hostile environment at the school has traumatized Blair both physically and emotionally, to the point that she cannot and will not attend the graduation ceremonies...
...Mostly this meant home tutors and extra time for assignments and tests...
...The papers are killing her," Judge Hornstine told the child study team while trying to withdraw Blair from the class...
...to turn their backs while she's speaking...
...But the Moorestown saga suggests a simpler explanation: self-defense on the part of school officials...
...She took two classes at home during her freshman year...
...Maybe the biggest reason the town turned against the Hornstines is money...
...The parents will advise teachers when Blair has been too fatigued or otherwise unable to complete or to submit work in timely fashion...
...Because he thought these findings raised concerns "about the fundamental fairness of the academic competition," Kadri decided to elevate the number two student to co-valedictorian with Blair...
...Following that logic, though, I don't have any relatives at any other papers that I'm aware of, so I would assume that all the other papers are out to get her, too...
...Her brother, Adam, graduated as Moorestown High's valedictorian in 1999 and also went to Harvard...
...The case immediately made headlines, and not just because of the eye-popping price tag...
...Jacobs, their lawyer, told the Associated Press, "It was a whole lot of nothing...
...All of these arrangements were checked off from standard bureaucratic forms used by school districts across the state...
...For instance, Blair took Latin 1 in middle school, over the course of 7th and 8th grades...
...Guess who has an aunt who works for the Courier-Post...
...He was not valedictorian...
...This proved an academic boon—she ended up with a 4.689 grade point average, .055 higher than runner-up Kenneth Mirkin's 4.634...
...Mary Betancourt, an exceptional teacher with 43 years of service who spent her last 25 years as head of Moorestown High's English department, says that she's the one who "encouraged Blair to submit her writing" to the paper...
...To accommodate unspecified disabilities, the district had arranged home instruction for most of her high school career...
...They will have to publicly vote on the terms of any settlement, leaving them vulnerable at the voting booths...
...To qualify for this honor, students must complete and document 400 hours of voluntary public service, 200 hours of personal development, 200 hours of physical fitness, and a 4-day exploration...
...As Kadri explained to the court, an A+ in gym is worth only 4.3, and thus would have lowered her cumulative GPA, which was well above 4.3 by that point...
...Unusually, she then retook Latin 1 as a freshman—and got an A...
...The trial phase of Blair's lawsuit will unfold slowly over the coming months, in part because Judge Wolfson is pressuring both sides to settle...
...class per year...
...Brother Adam will be entering Harvard Law School this fall, and according to one of the court documents, Judge Hornstine will "be spending a lot of time in an adjunct position that he accepted at Harvard...
...She'll go off to Harvard with the rest of her family...
...Sometimes she would change a word in the middle of the sentence...
...Because he was new on the job, Kadri began looking at the district's home instruction programs, and on September 19, he met with Judge Hornstine...
...I think most people's view is that this man put so much pressure on his daughter to be perfect that she literally is a nervous basket case...
...The only allusion to her came from Kadri, who said in his speech, "In life, in order to pursue your goals, you will need to interact with or compete against others" (Kadri's underlining...
...They have threatened to boo when she gets up to speak...
...As one parent put it, "Lou Hornstine was bragging about the fact that he was manipulating the system and that his daughter was going to be valedictorian...
...What's more, she had been medically excused from the gym course other students were required to take...
...But Blair's health was poor...
...Over the past four years, she's won enough scholarships and awards to fill a small truck, including an essay prize from MENSA (the high-IQ club), $20,000 from Toyota, a $20,000 Coca-Cola scholarship, and a $25,000 award from Discover, the credit card company...
...Knowing her and knowing her father, I think he owns this situation as much as she does...
...She won the first round—getting an injunction that made her the sole valedictorian...
...Newspapers do it all the time," she told me...
...The Hornstines' house was egged twice and hit with black paintballs once...
...He first rose to prominence in the mid-'80s defending Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, a legendary Philly mob boss...
...This cynicism is fed by the fact that the Hornstine family guards its privacy and won't explain what her illness is, which is of course their right...
...She wrote Harvard a multi-page letter defending Blair and attacking the Courier-Post, accusing the paper of hypocrisy, mismanagement, and systematic plagiarism, concluding that "If the paper's adult writers cannot give proper citations or attribution, how can they question a student who received no guidance...
...If the school board's case was weak to begin with, it teetered on collapse after Jacobs produced a certification from Judithann Keefe, Moorestown's assistant superintendent...
...A cartoon appeared in the local paper, the NewsWeekly, showing Judge Hornstine shining his shoes with Lady Justice's robe...
...I have dealt a lot with her father because we're open during school hours," Valente told the Inquirer...
...The kids have been awful," says Mary Betan-court, a retired English teacher who taught Blair in a number of courses and coached her throughout her debate career...
...Her father wanted the grade removed, and since she shouldn't have been graded for a waived class, it was...
...A lot of times it would be their father delivering [the food donations]," Betty Mendez, the executive director of the Food Bank told me...
...Jacobs never got to show his stuff on that case—Turra hanged himself in his cell before the trial started...
...But in the process, she made a lot of enemies in this one-Starbucks town...
...Students made computer icons of Blair's face with tears streaming from her eyes...
...Jacobs is something of a legend in Jersey legal circles...
...They came not to see graduation but to report on the girl who had graduated top in the class and wasn't there, Blair Hornstine...
...And the only way you can control it is medication," which made Blair "very tired...
...She "could take as many AP or Honors courses as she wanted to" because her home schooling eliminated scheduling conflicts—and the grades in these courses added extra points to her average...
...she asked...
...More often she would lift them whole...
...At Moorestown High, the calculations for valedictorian are made at the end of the first semester senior year...
...In 1999 Blair enrolled as a freshman and began compiling the type of résumé that college admissions counselors dream of...
...And I hate being bored...
...She wrote some fluff pieces for a kidchat column...
...In June 2001, Blair was given the Congressional Award Gold Medal...
...Moorestown High School students, it should be noted, take roughly 75 hours of Phys...
...At the most basic level, she had about half as much class time as school-bound students, freeing her up for extracurricular activities...
...And Louis Hornstine often is the one on the other end of the line," said Kristin Valente, volunteer coordinator for the Food Bank of South Jersey...
...As the New Jersey state chair for the Smile Train, she raised money for cleft palate surgeries in China...
...She went on the senior class trip to Disney World this spring, and in the summers, she does intensive academic work...
...Whereupon Blair sued—not just to retain the distinction for herself but also for $2.7 million in damages...
...it is alternately referred to as "chronic fatigue" and an "immune system disorder...
...I don't think the paper's ethical motives are pure," she said...
...Comegno, the school board attorney, replies, "I think that statement's unfortunate and it really doesn't justify a response...
...Last summer she spent eight weeks at Stanford taking classes in Expository Writing (A-), Psychology (A), and Philosophy of Public Speaking (A...
...As a senior, she was a third-team member of USA Today's All-USA High School Academic squad...
...But just three years later, Jacobs was defending Skinny Joey, who needed help beating a rap for three murders, two attempted murders, and a murder conspiracy charge...
...It would have been one of the lowest grades of her high school career...
...But there's also a real belief that, even though it was legal, Blair and her father did manipulate the system, and were acutely aware of every subtlety in the grading system...
...How good is he...
...Instead of hiring an expert in education law, Louis Hornstine hired Edwin Jacobs Jr...
...So Blair threw herself into the task, writing on such topics as religion in public schools and art censorship...
...Meantime, two other lawyers, Warren Faulk and Steven Kudatzky, played offense with Harvard to make sure Blair's acceptance there wasn't jeopardized...
...It's important to remember that such accommodations are commonplace under modern disabilities law...
...Through a family friend, Blair and her family referred my interview requests to her lawyer, who did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story...
...Keefe sat in on the September 19, 2002, meeting between Superintendent Kadri and Judge Horn-stine, and in her May 7 filing she contradicted her boss's account no fewer than eight times: "Louis Hornstine's educational record was never discussed," she said, and he "did not state that 'he would manipulate the system to benefit his daughter.'" The next day Judge Freda Wolfson granted Blair's request for a temporary restraining order to prevent the school from changing its valedictorian rules, and the judge took every opportunity to thump the administration while she was at it...
...Her education plan stipulated that she would be allowed "more time to take tests and quizzes," and "will not be required to take more than one test or examination per day...
...Like bread crumbs dropped along a path, footnotes and citations allow aspiring academics to follow previous scholarship to better enhance our general knowledge...
...Just weeks before the end of her junior year, she received a doctor's note waiving her from gym altogether...
...The immediate concern was that Blair's GPA might take a hit because of a provision in the student handbook which says that plagiarism in school work "will result in a failure for that course...
...In recent years, an increasing number of American high schools have given up naming valedictorians altogether—a move that proponents of excellence and high achievement Jonathan V Last, online editor of The Weekly Standard, was a 1992 graduate of Moorestown High School...
...Kadri also believed that the home tutors did not grade as rigorously as some of the regular AP teachers...
...In January, he met with the class officers for all grades and brought up the idea of co-valedictorians...
...Having vociferously supported Kadri, the school board is in a tough spot...
...By junior year she was coming to school only for homeroom and two periods...
...Her sophomore year, she took four classes at home...
...Blair Hornstine lives in a pristine neighborhood where the houses sell for anywhere from $550,000 to $1.5 million...
...She stopped coming to school altogether...
...When asked by the Discover Card scholarship how she got everything on her résumé done, she replied, "There's plenty of time in the day...
...Still, an A+ for the class showed up on her transcript...
...Why would an entire town go into a frenzy over a relatively straightforward disabilities case...
...Moorestown uses a weighted grading system, where an A- is worth 3.7, an A is 4.0, and an A+ is 4.3...
...At graduation, amidst the TV cameras and standing ovations, Blair Horn-stine's name was not mentioned even once...
...In a tort claim filed on April 3 against Kadri and the school district and school board, she argued that she "should have been awarded sole valedictorian" and that the superintendent and school district were attempting to deny her that status "solely by virtue of her disability...
...The cynics point to her activities...
...The nature of the mistake...
...I don't think it's an accident," says one high school humanities teacher, "that the closer one is to this, the harder it is to find anybody who is supportive of Blair...
...The salutatorian was greeted like a conquering hero, with a long standing ovation...
...But as Blair's senior year began last fall, a trickle of parents began making their way to the new superintendent, Paul Kadri, complaining that it was unfair to compare the grades earned under the ordinary regimen of classes and exams with the grades Blair had earned from her special arrangement...
...But she dropped the course and finished it the following year at home, with a different instructor...
...During previous summers she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell...
...policy on the Korean peninsula...
...Kudatzky told the Harvard Crimson, "I am confident that, at the end of the day, Harvard will see that this is a non-issue, and quite frankly, something that is another example of Blair being singled out and victimized...
...History and was taking it at the school with a teacher whose policy is to never give A+ marks...
...In February, he met with the entire senior class and told them that the school was going to start having co-valedictorians...
...That's the one thing I admired, he would bend over backwards for his children...
...Honors courses add 0.5 to each grade, and Advanced Placement classes a full point...
...She even tackled tough geopolitical issues, such as the conflict in Iraq and U.S...
...For a variety of reasons, superintendent Paul Kadri wanted to name the two of them co-valedictorians...
...Beginning in October 2002— the same time she was struggling with the killer papers in AP European History—Blair began contributing to the Courier-Post...
...During her sophomore year, Blair was enrolled in AP U.S...
...To me, that's fascinating...
...Except, of course, for the plagiarism...
...BY JONATHAN V LAST Moorestown, New Jersey No one in Moorestown can remember a graduation day quite like the one the class of 2003 had on June 19...
...She got an A...
...Kelly Fanning, from the Congressional Awards office, says, "For her physical fitness she did jogging, power-walking, and dance...
...And while she was on home instruction, Blair's experience was markedly different from that of other students...
...Blair Hornstine became a celebrity this spring by suing the Moorestown school district...
...John Comegno...
...Observers with varying sympathies think Blair is in a position of strength, with a friendly judge and an opportunity to seek further damages since, as she told the Courier-Post, she was "victimized" and "terrorized" out of attending her own graduation...
...She commended Blair, saying "the evidence in this case has shown that Ms...
...Eventually, Kadri concluded that Blair had received an unfair advantage over her fellow, full-time students...
...He'll also be going to Harvard...
...Television crews and print journalists descended on the small Philadelphia suburb, while banks of photographers crowded in the gymnasium's crevices...
...Footnotes provide not only an outline of the logic of the author, but also a detailed road map to the past...
Vol. 8 • July 2003 • No. 42
