Birks’ Board Prez Concerns Probed

Mayor Toni Harp has hired a private investigator to look into allegations that the school board president makes the superintendent so uncomfortable that she won’t meet alone with him anymore.

The school district has brought on Andrew Crumbie, a Hartford attorney who opened a firm after a two-decade career in law enforcement, to find out if Darnell Goldson, the Board of Education’s president, acted inappropriately toward Carol Birks, the New Haven Public Schools superintendent.

Goldson has retained his own lawyer, civil-rights attorney John Williams. He said Monday night that he hasn’t seen a complaint with specific allegations and doesn’t have anything to hide. But he added that the investigation won’t get him to back off from supervising how Birks does her job.

“I absolutely do not understand what’s going on. From what I understand, there hasn’t been an official complaint made, just some kind of indication that the superintendent is not happy at times because we’re, apparently, doing our job and supervising her,” Goldson said. ​“Certainly if there was an actual complaint made against me, I would welcome an investigation. I have not threatened anybody, so I’m not real concerned about that. I’m curious to know what the actual complaint is.”

Birks declined to discuss the investigation, but she said that she’s ​“committed” to getting along with the school board. No one involved has detailed the specifics of her complaint.

“I have no comment on Mr. Goldson’s behavior in private meetings,” Birks said. ​“However, I can say that I remain committed to working collaboratively with Mr. Goldson, Mayor Harp and all Board Members for the benefit of our students.”

During her latest appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Mayor Monday” program, Harp said that she felt a responsibility to get to the bottom of whatever transpired between the school’s two leaders during one of their Meadow Street meetings.

“As the chief elected official of this city, when someone says that they feel discomfort, I believe I have an obligation to look into it,” she said. ​“I didn’t think there was anybody in the city who could actually do that. So we hired a neutral person to do that.”

Harp said that, so far, she has seen no evidence of any physical intimidation. ​“It’s not a safety issue from a physical point of view,” she said. ​“We will find out more as soon as I get the report.”

The school board hasn’t signed off on an agreement with Crumbie, though he might be subcontracting for one of the district’s go-to law firms.

Goldson said he’d prefer if the Board of Ed manages the investigation, not City Hall.

“The mayor is not the boss of the board,” he said. ​“She appoints some board members, but at the end of the day, the board is responsible.”

To avoid any interference, Goldson said, he has already recused himself from developing Birks’s evaluation, passing off the responsibility to Jamell Cotto, the board’s vice president, along with Mayor Harp.

He said that he and Birks still talk regularly on the phone, and he now copies another board member on all emails.

Goldson hasn’t been interviewed yet for the investigation, he said, though his lawyer has talked with Crumbie. He said he wasn’t sure who will pay for Williams to represent him, though he guesses that the school district would eventually cover the cost.

“I’m hoping that it’s all a big misunderstanding. Because if it’s some deliberate attempt to try to eliminate a boss, then that would be extremely disconcerting for me,” Goldson said. ​“If false accusations are being made to remove a supervisor, then that is obviously a huge issue of concern. It also completely destroys trust between leaders. I’m hoping that is not the case.”

For months, school board members have gone back-and-forth about how involved they should be in oversight, with some board members even switching sides in the debate about whether they’ve been ​“micro-managing” Birks.

In July, five school board members ripped into Birks for sending dismissal letters to 1,153 part-time employees, calling the move a ​“stumble” and ordering her to reverse the decision. Mayor Harp and Goldson called a press conference — with Birks noticeably absent — to blast her decision.

Emails later revealed that board members had also been giving Birks directions behind the scenes, overturning her decision to suspend a student from going to prom and telling her how to manage her time. One board member objected saying that his colleagues were ​“undermining” the new superintendent. 

In August, Harp, Goldson, and Birks all made nice. They invited the news cameras back for a press conference — together this time — to say ​“in the future, that we will be working together,” as Goldson put it.

But the relationship shifted again two weeks later, as board members restricted access to student data for the Weiss Institute, a contractor offering to analyze the district’s finances for free.

“All I know is that our relationship changed when I told her that she did not have the authority to sign contracts without board approval. That’s when I was told that I wasn’t doing my job, that I was doing her job,” Goldson said Monday evening. ​“She has to be responsible to somebody, and that is to the Board of Ed. We have policies and state laws that we have to follow. For some reason, when I reminded her of that, I am not allowing her to do her job.”

Goldson added that he won’t apologize for carrying out what he sees as his duties as the board’s president.

“If the state statutes say we are responsible for hiring and laying off, for approving contracts, for having the superintendent report to us yearly whose evaluations have been done, then that’s what we are going to do,” he said. ​“I’m not going to apologize for us doing our job, just because some superintendents are not used to being supervised.”

Tensions between boards and superintendents are nothing new for an urban school district, with whole books and dissertations being written on how to manage the relationship.

Scholars say that ever since reformers began to demand test-score gains, especially after Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, boards have been willing to toss superintendents, pay out their contracts and find a replacement who can quickly move the performance numbers.

A recent analysis by the Broad Center found that superintendents in the country’s biggest school districts lasted for an average of 6.16 years. Tenures were shorter for female superintendents and in districts with more students of color and more low-income households.

Before Birks arrived, New Haven’s Board of Ed drove out her predecessor Garth Harries. They criticized him for not sharing details about a breakup of Hillhouse High School into independent academies and a partnership with a charter school operator on a new school.

This time around, Mayor Harp said, she feels confident Birks and Goldson will be back on the same page soon.

“I think they’re going to work it out,” she said in an interview last week. ​“I’m counting on it.”

Click on the play arrow for the full episode of WNHH FM’s ​“Mayor Monday.”

This episode of ​“Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.