Headmaster Of Scandal-Ridden Poly Prep To Step Down

The headmaster of the scandal-rocked Poly Prep Country Day School has announced he will step down at the end of this school year.

The posh Dyker Heights school was the subject of many lurid headlines this year after headmaster David Harman was named in a lawsuit claiming two 17-year-old students, including rocker Jon Bon Jovi’s son, were taken on a booze- and hooker-fueled Cuba trip on the school’s dime.

“By next summer, I will be pushing 68, and after much reflection and many conversations with my wife Kristin, my family and others, I have concluded that it is the right time for me and for the school to make this change,” Harman wrote in a statement on the school’s website on September 1. “I am ready to start a new direction in my life and am confident this is the best time for Poly to transition to a new leader who can take the school forward to even greater success.”

In the lawsuit, Lisa Della Pietra, a school employee, claimed she reported the Cuba trip to Harman, who promised to keep her identity under wraps, but instead she was bullied and eventually fired.

Towards the end of his statement, Harman made a reference to the ongoing legal battle, “The school is in great shape, the current lawsuit notwithstanding, but I have always said to the students and faculty that all of us can be better than we were, and I aspire to model that mantra personally and for Poly again this year.”

This was not the first sex scandal to tarnish the prep school’s image. Poly Prep apologized in 2014 to a group of alumni who said they were sexually abused by the school’s longtime football coach Phil Foglietta between 1966 and 1991. A three-year court battle involving 12 former students was settled in 2012.