DISTRICT ATTORNEY - NEW YORK COUNTY

News Release
October 28, 2004
Contact: Jennifer Kushner
212.335.9400

Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau announced today that a 44-year-old woman has pleaded guilty to stealing $43,182.97 from a nonprofit organization, which provides music education and instruction to public school children in East Harlem.

KATHARINE OGONEK, former Executive Director of Opus 118 Harlem Center for Strings, then located at 112 East 106th Street, pleaded guilty yesterday to a Superior Court Information of Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree, a class E Felony.

KATHARINE OGONEK admitted stealing $43,182.97 from Opus 118 Harlem Center for Strings ("Opus"), a private, nonprofit organization. Opus provides music education and string instrument instruction to at-risk children in Harlem at its own community school and through school-based programs (in Manhattan and out-of-state) modeled after Opus' program. Opus is currently located at 103 East 125th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues).

From May 1999 to March 2003:

· The defendant used an Opus credit card to charge $10,532.34 for personal expenses such as shoes, clothing, home furnishings, restaurants, food, airline tickets, limo services, and other unauthorized purchases, including purchases at The Sharper Image ($140.02), Saks Fifth Avenue ($232.26), Fairway ($101.94), Pottery Barn ($860.92), and Crate & Barrel ($342.64).

· OGONEK wrote $14,208.13 worth of unauthorized checks using Opus' checking account. Some of the checks she wrote out to herself, but entered the name of another individual or company into the QuickBooks computer accounting program. Other checks were made out to individuals or agencies, such as the New York City Department of Finance or the Department of Motor Vehicles, for personal use. A few checks were written to cash and deposited in OGONEK's personal bank account.

· She used Opus' credit account at Dell to purchase two computers (1 laptop and 1 desktop), valued at $4,074.44, for her own use.

· She used Opus' credit account at Staples to purchase four Palm Pilots, valued at $829.90, for personal use.

· She used Opus' FedEx account and spent $86.16 to send personal packages.

· In addition, she was charged with $13,452 for additional unauthorized salary that she paid herself.

OGONEK was hired in March 1999. Her salary went from approximately $65,000 in 1999 to $77,000 in 2001. The investigation by the Special Prosecutions Bureau began after Opus fired her and reported the matter to the District Attorney's Office in September 2003.

As a result of her felony plea in New York County, the defendant will receive a sentence of 5 years probation, a restitution order, which will be paid over 5 years, and a full confession of judgment.

Assistant District Attorney Judy Salwen is in charge of the prosecution under the supervision of Special Prosecutions Bureau Chief Leroy Frazer.

Defendant Information:
KATHARINE OGONEK, 8/20/60
2675 Henry Hudson Parkway
Bronx, New York
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Opus 118, New York String Education Program Celebrated Onscreen, Faces Budget Shortfall
By Brian Wise
andante - 13 February 2002

As financial support for public arts education in the United States waned during the 1990s, the Opus 118 Music Center was a bright spot, operating a thriving string education program in four New York City public schools in East Harlem.

The scrappy nonprofit organization, which was the subject of Music of the Heart, a 1999 feature film starring Meryl Streep, overcame considerable odds to bring several teachers into the public schools, garner public interest and train over 250 students every year. Now after a period of growth, it faces a budget shortfall of more than $75,000 due to extensive budget cuts by the New York City Board of Education at the beginning of the 2001–02 school year as well as the widespread decline in charitable giving to non-September 11-related causes.

According to Katherine Oganek, executive director of Opus 118, the organization is struggling to maintain its school-based programs and to open a tuition-free community music school in East Harlem, a project that requires additional funding of $150,000. "It is by far the most difficult moment Opus 118 has faced," says Oganek. "We've had some major private donors that have been forced to abandon pledged gifts in the past few months, but the real problem began at the beginning of the school year, when the [former mayor Rudolph] Giuliani administration slashed education spending."

Until September 2001, the salaries of four Opus 118 string teachers brought into East Harlem's District 4 and 5, a cost now being shouldered by the organization, were paid by the city. The program otherwise subsists entirely on private and public donations.

Dorothea von Haeften, president of Opus 118's board of directors, says that the past several months have been shaky. "We've been surviving on a month-to-month basis," she says. "We had some new funding come in around Christmas time, which was a temporary boost, but it is still very precarious."

Von Haeften adds that plans to open up a community-based school, while seemingly an unnecessary extravagance, will in fact free the program from reliance on city education budgets. "A community school will be structured differently and we won't be entirely dependent on the ups and downs of the school system. I hope it opens up different funding for us."

The center will be housed in a building in East Harlem and will offer a variety of after-school and weekend programs to a wide range of students in the neighborhood.

As the now-familiar story goes, Opus 118 was the brainchild of Roberta Guaspari, who, after separating from her husband in the early 1980s, moved her two small sons and a crate of violins to East Harlem, talking her way into a job at Central Park East, the acclaimed alternative elementary school. Beginning with eight students, she gradually developed a highly regarded string program built on innovative teaching methods. But in 1990, funding for the program was abruptly eliminated from the city's budget. Guaspari joined with parents, teachers and other volunteers to create Opus 118, a nonprofit foundation that raises funds to support the violin program. Its founding event was a glittering fundraiser at Carnegie Hall, where her students performed alongside the likes of violinists Itzhak Perlman, Arnold Steinhardt (von Haeften's husband and member of the Guarneri Quartet), Isaac Stern and Mark O'Connor.

The program gained momentum with the 1995 Allan Miller documentary Small Wonders, which was nominated for an Academy Award. After the 1999 release of Music of the Heart (with Streep as Guaspari), the Board of Education restored funding for Guaspari and two teachers. The organization continued to expand and garner extensive media coverage, and Guaspari and her students performed publicly at venues ranging from a New York Knicks game to the Kennedy Center and the White House. A lottery system was implemented to meet the increased interest in enrollment (as of 1999, only half of the students who applied were admitted).

The program suddenly came into jeopardy after 31 August 2001, when, facing a $290 million budget shortfall, New York City schools chancellor Harold Levy ordered $150 million in immediate spending reductions, which amounted to 1.3 percent of the Board of Education's $11.5 billion budget. These cuts meant less spending for after-school classes, athletics and arts programs. Because of the decentralized nature of the New York City school system, the local district superintendents who preside over 32 community school boards enacted many of the specific cuts, in both jobs and extracurricular programs. (School board officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

Oganek says Opus 118's troubles were exacerbated following September 11, when its corporate, foundation and government funding streams were cancelled, postponed or drastically reduced. The program's major donors include the Barthelmes Foundation, the J. Arons Foundation, the Salomon Family Foundation and the Music for Youth Foundation, the latter having bestowed annual grants of $25,000 in the past several years. (Oganek declined to name the programs that have ended their funding.) Plans are being made for another major fundraising event, though the details have yet to be worked out.

One artist who has committed his talents and support since the 1991 Carnegie Hall fundraiser is O'Connor, the violinist, country fiddler and composer. This past October he welcomed students from the program to the stage of New York's Avery Fisher Hall in a concert he led with the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra.

"It's obviously a really tough time now for all arts groups," says O'Connor. "Even programs like this that are really established and respected aren't having an easy time of it."

Oganek says that she remains hopeful about the plans for education overhaul being touted by New York's new mayor, Michael Bloomberg. He has called for abolishing the embattled seven-member Board of Education and placing the city schools directly under mayoral control. Advocates of the plan say there will be a greater impetus for accountability and budget allocations will be made in a more systematic fashion. "I'm encouraged by that, but we still have a long way to go," says Oganek. "Opus 118's work has had an undoubted influence on other educational organizations. Hopefully others will pick up on the message when times are bad just as when they're good."


© andante Corp. February 2002. All rights reserved.