Schools Deputy Cleared In Retaliation Complaint

An internal investigation has concluded that Assistant Superintendent of Schools Keisha Redd-Hannans never retaliated against Donna Aiello, an assistant principal who publicly opposed her plan to involuntarily transfer 53 teachers.

Despite that internal finding, Aiello said she still stands by her complaint, which claimed that Redd-Hannans harassed and intimidated her throughout the summer, leading up to a meeting where Redd-Hannans allegedly threatened to involuntarily transfer her.

The findings were detailed in six pages of records that the Independent obtained after filing a complaint to the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission.

For four months, the district tried to withhold all records about the investigation. Its lawyer claimed they were too incomplete and too personal. But halfway through a late October hearing in Hartford, city lawyers gave up their case and agreed to turn over the documents.

(The district still has not released emails between Aiello and Redd-Hannans, requested more than three months ago.)

The records released so far show that Taryn Bonner, the district’s new labor relations director, conducted four interviews, read through a couple emails and reviewed personnel files, before writing up a four-page ​“confidential memo” on Oct. 2 for Iline Tracey, who’d become interim superintendent that same day.

Bonner wrote that Aiello’s allegations against Redd-Hannans are ​“unfounded.” She said she could find ​“no conclusive evidence” during her investigation that Redd-Hannans ​“retaliated, harassed or threatened” Aiello.

Redd-Hannans told the Independent last week that she feels vindicated by the investigation.

“It never feels good to be falsely accused of harassment. However, I was raised knowing that if I hold my peace and let the Lord fight my battle, victory shall be mine,” she said. ​“I will not let this unfounded complaint deter or distract me from working for the children and families of the greatest small city in America.”

Aiello said that after previously working as the district’s human resources director, she knows how hard it is to file a complaint against a supervisor — let alone, to prove it.

“I have no reason to lie. There is no reason for me to say anything unfounded. It’s just that I couldn’t take it anymore. It became so much of a pattern I finally said enough is enough,” Aiello said. ​“I never would have done this to embarrass the district, to create any more attention to the district that we didn’t need at this time. But I have to be my own voice.”

Sequella Coleman, the head of the School Administrators Association, declined to comment on whether the union wiill file a grievance.

Bonner did not respond to multiple emails with questions about how she’d conducted the investigation.

A Public Disagreement

In late May, then-Superintendent Carol Birks decided to balance a multi-million-dollar budget deficit by eliminating 53 teaching positions. Those teachers would’ve been involuntarily transferred out and forced to reapply for jobs at other schools.

After a week of protests and walkouts, the Board of Education voted to temporarily pause the involuntary transfers. They instead appointed a Budget Mitigation Committee to give them advice on what to do next.

Both Redd-Hannans and Aiello (who’s now an assistant principal at Worthington Hooker Elementary School) were picked as members.

In late June, the committee spent four hours debating whether the 53 involuntary transfers were necessary. They asked whether other non-instructional cuts could be made, and if not, whether these were the right classes to cut.

Birks had repeatedly said principals were the ones who decided which teachers they could do without next school year.

But nobody knew how those decisions were really made, Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, the school board’s secretary, told the budget committee. ​“What were [their] criteria?” she asked. ​“It was not transparent.”

Aiello backed her up. She said that, in the past, principals asked for voluntary transfers first. She said she’d heard that this year’s process had varied across school buildings. ​“There are still some principals saying, ​‘Yes, it was up to me,’ and other principals saying, ​‘I was told what to do,’” she said.

Redd-Hannans defended their choices. She said the unions had signed off on it as a ​“fair” process, and she said she was still ​“in negotiations” with a few principals who’d ​“raised concerns” about next year’s class schedule.

The committee narrowly voted, 6 to 4, to tell the Board of Education to permanently reject the 53 involuntary transfers. Aiello voted for the resolution; Redd-Hannans, against it.

A week later, the Board of Education followed through on their suggestion and blocked the involuntary transfers.

In Bonner’s write-up, Redd-Hannans said she wasn’t mad about that committee vote, but she said she did feel concerned, based on Aiello’s comment, that principals hadn’t been documenting their official complaints.

She sent what Bonner called ​“a clarifying email” to the administrators’ union, explaining that the grievance process was the best way to make sure all complaints can be ​“logged and properly addressed, investigated, and ideally remedied,” as Bonner paraphrased it.

Nothing came out of it, Bonner said, as no formal complaints were filed.

Make It 54 Involuntary Transfers?

About two weeks after the budget committee meeting, on July 8, Redd-Hannans called Aiello to the district’s Meadow Street headquarters for a one-on-one meeting. Redd-Hannans said they needed to talk about where Aiello would work next year.

Before the meeting, Aiello said she wanted to put everything that happened over the past year behind the two of them. She told Coleman, her union representative, that she didn’t need to come.

“I just want to tell you that I’m coming with love in my heart. The past is the past,” Aiello recalled emailing Redd-Hannans. ​“I’m more than willing to come in and meet.”

When Aiello arrived, Redd-Hannans said she was following up on how Aiello was doing at Hooker, after the district passed her over for a promotion to lead the entire school.

The previous fall, Aiello had been in the running to replace Hooker’s outgoing principal, Evelyn Robles-Rivas.

When the search was widened beyond two internal candidates, Redd-Hannans asked her not to go to a forum for the finalists, saying it would be ​“too upsetting” for the staff. Shortly after, Redd-Hannans also told Aiello that nearly two dozen staff and parents on Hooker’s school planning and management team had written complaints about her. When Aiello asked to see the letters, Redd-Hannans refused to show her any, saying she should reflect on her behavior.

At the time, Aiello wondered if that was retaliation for a successful grievance the administrators union had filed over unpaid summer work Birks had assigned them.

The top Hooker job ultimately went to Margaret Mary Gethings, a former Fair Haven School principal whom the district hired back from Branford.

About a month after, in November 2018, Redd-Hannans asked if Aiello wanted to return to Central Office, where she’d previously overseen human resources. Aiello declined.

But Aiello added that, as one of the last year-round assistant principals in the district, she had ​“a feeling” she might be moved anyway. She asked if Redd-Hannans could let her know what openings the district needed to fill.

Redd-Hannans said she wanted to talk about Aiello’s ​“aspirations.” She asked how Aiello was getting along with Gethings. Aiello said they worked well together. She added that she liked working in Hooker’s separate elementary school on Canner Street. She said she’d already been a director and felt ​“very happy” in her current role.

But Aiello remembered the conversation turned when Redd-Hannans said, ​“According to her contract, the superintendent can reassign you anyway.”

Calling the comment ​“very threatening,” Aiello told Redd-Hannans that, as a former member of the union’s board, she knew that provision of the contract very well.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Aiello asked.

“Nothing,” she remembered Redd-Hannans saying. ​“I’m just making it clear.”

“Oh, it’s clear,” Aiello said. ​“Is that it?”

“There’s one more thing,” Redd-Hannans said.

“More Than Willing”

On her laptop, Redd-Hannans pulled up the email Aiello had sent about the meeting.

“Ms. Aiello,” she went on, ​“what did you mean when you said that you were ​‘more than willing to come in’?”

“Now my head is starting to spin,” Aiello recalled feeling, as she wondered where the conversation was headed. She started to regret telling Coleman she didn’t need anyone from the union there.

“I don’t even understand what you’re saying right now,” Aiello said. ​“I said I was willing.”

“Well, I’m the assistant superintendent,” she remembered Redd-Hannans saying. ​“It doesn’t matter whether you’re willing or not.”

Aiello said that wasn’t what she’d meant, but Redd-Hannans started going through the email, line-by-line, to point out how she felt the message had been ​“disrespectful” and ​“unprofessional.”

“I said I have love in my heart. This is the way I have lived my life. It’s about forgiveness, repairing relationships and moving on,” Aiello said she tried to clarify. ​“That’s what I meant by that. How could you ever take that as disrespectful?”

“None of your colleagues would ever send me an email like this,” she remembered Redd-Hannans responding while shaking her head.

(Redd-Hannans later confirmed to Bonner that the email came up in their meeting. Bonner herself said that the email ​“appeared positive and appropriate,” but she added that it ​“appears the implied meaning or perception of the email differs” between Redd-Hannans and Aiello.)

When Aiello got back to her car, she said she felt ​“beside herself.” Her hands shook, her jaw clenched and her stomach hurt. ​“I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone right now,” she told Coleman on the phone from the parking lot. ​“I was never spoken to like that in 27 years.”

For two weeks, Aiello didn’t do anything. She said she feared further retaliation. But after she read that Mike Pinto, the district’s chief operating officer, had accused Birks of creating a hostile workplace, she decided to send in her own to human resources.

“At this point, I feel there is a pattern here of harassment and that now I have to speak up for my rights,” Aiello wrote to Lisa Mack, the human resources director, in a July 22 email. ​“I am a loyal, committed, hard working, dedicated to New Haven employee, and I feel [Redd-Hannans] is trying to force me out somehow.”

Aiello said she couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. She said that she’d sent congratulations when Redd-Hannans became assistant superintendent, and she’d offered to share pointers about what she’d learned from her own years in Central Office.

“It’s really unfortunate. I still don’t understand it,” Aiello said. ​“A lot of questions have never been answered for me: whether this was appropriate conduct on her part, was she was following protocol or not, was she spoken to or reprimanded, I don’t know.”

Bonner, in her write-up, said she believed that a third-party mediator could get back their previous ​“collaborative and productive” relationship.

“From meeting and speaking with the parties, I do not believe that their professional relationship is beyond repair,” Bonner wrote. ​“I believe the parties are open to having honest conversations than trust can be reestablished.”

“Often times, it is challenging for former colleagues to find a balance and effectively work together when one is promoted to a supervisor position,” she went on. ​“Finding the balance for the subordinate and most important for the supervisor is imperative in order for a productive professional relationship to continue.”