School district officials last night declined to publicly answer allegations made by two long-time school board members who abruptly resigned from the board yesterday, accusing fellow board members and the district administration of violating state education and open meetings laws.
Board members did not mention the resignations before voting last night to accept them, other than an expression of thanks by Greg Meyer for the years of service given by Ann Cotten-DeGrasse and Amelia Lantz.
Both Cotten-DeGrasse and Lantz said in interviews they resigned because they objected to practices they believe violate state law, including personnel actions being taken by the district without public board votes. The pair also complained about lack of information flowing from School Superintendent Nancy Carney and school board president Susan Koukounas to the rest of the board members. They said board deliberations were micromanaged and actions scripted to achieve predetermined outcomes.
Carney did not respond to a request for comment yesterday, while Koukounas flatly denied the first wave of accusations leveled by Cotten-DeGrasse, calling them “extremely false” and suggesting Cotten-DeGrasse, a former board president, was both out of touch and having trouble adjusting to her new role on the board as a member instead of its president. See prior story.
Asked by resident Susan Tocci about the departed members’ accusations, Koukounas was silent. Carney answered Tocci but demurred.
“I really don’t want to comment on what’s in the papers right now,” Carney said. “There’s a lot of misinformation in there and I prefer not to comment.”
“If these accusations are true I plead with you to stop what’s going on,” Tocci answered. “It’s terrible and disturbing. These accusations have been made by the public for years. Now we have two board members stepping down making the accusations that the public has been making.”
In response to Tocci’s question about what the board will do to fill the vacant seats, Koukounas said it had not decided.
“We just received this information today,” Koukounas said. “We will open discussion at the re-org meeting July 6.”
Cotten-DeGrasse had one year left in her term and Lantz had two years left. Board members are elected to three-year terms of office. The board can vote to hold a special election to fill either or both seats, appoint people to finish out the departed members’ terms or to leave one or both seats vacant.
Both Cotten-DeGrasse and Lantz said yesterday some personnel actions — including leaves of absence and appointments of classroom teachers to administrative positions — had been made without public board votes. They said some of the actions recently came to light when certain items on the board’s consent agendas for the May and June board meetings involved shifting teachers out of administrative positions. They contend the board never voted to appoint the teachers in question to administrative positions in the first place.
One of the teachers, they said, had never worked in the classroom after being granted tenure because the teacher was moved into an directorship post immediately thereafter — without a public board vote, they said. According to Cotten-DeGrasse and Lantz, the teacher therefore did not accept the tenure appointment as a classroom teacher and is not now entitled to be appointed as a tenured classroom teacher after spending several years in an administrative position. But the district administration sought to shift the administrator into a classroom teacher position with tenure and at the highest point on the salary schedule, Cotten-DeGrasse and Lantz said.
Both said an agenda change advocated by board member Laurie Downs is what alerted them to what was happening with that teacher. Downs had fought for salary disclosures on the professional personnel sheets attached to the board’s agenda.
“A classroom teacher being appointed at a salary of $138,000 caught our attention,” Cotten-DeGrasse said. She inquired about it and in the course of researching the matter said she found there was no record of the teacher’s appointment to a directorship position in the first place.
Cotten-DeGrasse yesterday produced redacted copies of documents marked “IN-HOUSE ONLY” which she said were personnel records indicating changes of status, leaves of absences and other actions that were not voted on by the board. These “in-house” files are not being shared with the board, she and Lantz both said.
“Things are being done outside of public meetings that affect the children and the taxpayers and I won’t be party to that,” Lantz said.
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