Hiring Question Sparked ​“Hostile” Probe

It was the third hour of another endless virtual Board of Education meeting. Board member Darnell Goldson asked a school system administrator why a contract was going to a white out-of-town law firm instead of a local African-American firm.

Little did anyone know that this public-meeting exchange would turn into an eight-months long (and counting) tempest that could cost the school system up to $14,000 — or, as Goldson would eventually charge, a ​“witch hunt.”

“I’m going to say it. He’s a Black firm. He’s the only Black firm doing business with his district, and this is not going to end here,” Goldson remarked during the March 23 exchange with school district Chief Financial Officer Phillip Penn.

“Next year, he’s going to get less money, the year after that he’ll get less money, and then he won’t be doing business anymore. It’s unfair.”

“The way these contracts are given out is not fair: ​‘I think you do a better job, so I’m going to give it to you.’ And that’s the nice way of putting it. We all know what the real deal is,” Goldson continued.

After 20 more minutes of back and forth, the board voted 4 – 3 to add dollars to the white-run firm’s contract to continue working through its caseload. The discussion ended.

Or so people thought.

After the meeting ended, Penn filed a complaint against Goldson for allegedly creating a hostile work environment by making those public statements.

The school board at first handled it quietly, launching an internal investigation — but not telling anyone, including Goldson, what it was all about.

Click on the above video beginning at the 03:00:30 point to watch the exchange and judge whether it violated norms of public conduct.

The existence of the investigation has since come up at nearly every board meeting. But not what prompted it. The Independent has confirmed the exchange that prompted it, according to several people familiar with the investigation. But that hasn’t been publicly acknowledged. So everyone outside the school system’s inner circle has been left to guess: Did it involve corruption? Secret behind-the-scenes nefariousness? Personal threats? Improper personal behavior?

And of course, the specter of lawsuits, and additional taxpayer outlays from a strapped education budget, loom over the discussion.

At some Board of Ed meetings, an update on the investigation lands on the agenda and the majority of the board seeks to go into executive session, out of public view, to talk about it.

At others, Goldson invokes the case himself when he asks a tough question and says that he expects his comment to launch another investigation.

Board members said they want to tie up the investigation and move on.

The question now is: How?

And what constitutes acceptable behavior, or questioning, on public boards and commissions? What constitutes needed tough questioning versus time-wasting harassment?

In addition, what responsibility do board officials have to address concerns by appointees who feel wrongly treated? What’s the best way to go about it, protecting the rights and reputation of a targeted board member as well?

“I just want it to be resolved,” said Board President Yesenia Rivera. ​“Resolved in a way so that Mr. Penn feels like he was treated fairly and also that Mr. Goldson feels he was treated fairly. And we can come to some understanding on how to communicate without any issues.”

Penn declined to comment on the investigation while it is ongoing.

“My understanding is that the results of the investigation are supposed to come out at a board meeting,” Penn said. ​“Until those results are out, I don’t know what they are. They are not being shared with me, and I wouldn’t expect them to be.”

Penn has stopped participating in full Board of Education meetings since late September. However, he has continued to participate in the board’s Finance and Operations Committee meetings, where Goldson is not a member of the committee. Penn declined to say why this has been the case.

“A Cloud That Hangs Over Me”

To Goldson, the investigation is meritless but has impacted his life. He described driving up to a red light and being stopped by an acquaintance who asked if he was going to be OK.

“I get that every day in the supermarket. They figure that maybe I did something wrong. And: Am I gonna survive it?” Goldson said.

He at first laughed it off and told acquaintances not to worry about it, he said. Now he worries that the investigation is going to continue until the lawyers the district hired to look into it, Waterbury-based Tinley, Renehan & Dost, LLP, find something.

He called the request to the firm to look into his conduct at multiple meetings and see if it constitutes harassment a ​“witch hunt” — as in, a search for something to pin on someone rather than starting with a specific complaint.

“That’s unfair. No one’s perfect. Maybe I might have been mean to somebody, I guess, but to suggest I did something like that …” Goldson said. ​“It’s frustrating. It’s like a cloud that hangs over me every day.”

Goldson said that his ideal resolution of the investigation would be to make the final report public. The leadership of the district and school board would then apologize publicly to him for going through with the investigation for no good reason and to taxpayers for spending up to $14,000 to pay Tinley, Renehan & Dost, LLP.

Goldson said the experience reminds him of Mayor Toni Harp’s investigation in 2018 into whether his conduct was making then-Superintendent Carol Birks so uncomfortable she would not meet him alone anymore. Rumors circulated that Goldson was possibly sexually or physically harassing Birks.

Eventually, Birks apologized that her complaint sparked those rumors and clarified that she just wanted to find a way to work together with Goldson.

Goldson said that he let that situation go after the apology because he thought everyone had learned their lesson.

“This time, a public apology is not going to be enough. Someone is going to have to fall on their sword,” Goldson said. ​“I am absolutely going to sue; that’s no doubt. The only question is that my lawyer and I are going to have to decide who it is.”

Goldson and his attorney, John R. Williams, see broad responsibility for the situation and a possible intention among Mayor Justin Elicker, Rivera and the majority of the board to silence him.

Rivera became board president in January after Goldson decided not to seek a third term. Since then, Goldson has come down on the opposite side as Rivera and Elicker on nearly every issue.

Williams said that defamation cases — if Goldson tried to sue by alleging that Penn or the administration has dragged his name through the mud — are hard to win. However, he does see a case to protect Goldson’s right to free speech.

“I think that this whole thing is absolutely outrageous. They’re treating him like he is an employee. If you have a problem with an elected public official, put up an opposing candidate and see what voters want,” Williams said. ​“They’re denying him and his constituents their First Amendment right to participate in affairs of government.”

Was The Question Harassment? Or Was The Investigation?

Part of Tinley, Renehan & Dost’s charge is to wade through how power affects the tense exchanges at Board of Education meetings.

Goldson often asks far more questions than other board members at meetings, sometimes speaking as long as the others combined. He is one of the first two elected members of the board since it went from being a fully mayorally appointed to a hybrid appointed-elected body; he has spoken about the need for the group to independently raise more issues and debate than in the past.

Is Goldson using his platform as a Board of Ed member to bully staff members? Or is he making valid points about discrimination against African-American businesses, leading to a biased investigation?

Mayor Justin Elicker is ready to let the lawyers decide whether Goldson’s tough questions bled over into harassment. In general, he said, he sees a clear distinction between tough questions and unhelpful comments.

“It’s pretty clear in the tone of people’s voice, the words they use and the number of times people interrupt their colleagues. I think we all know what the difference is between respectful but tough questioning and being disrespectful,” Elicker said. ​“Certain individuals tend to be more aggressive than others. Most meetings have some dialogue that goes over the line.”

Did that lead Elicker to try to silence Goldson with the investigation?

“I have zero involvement in this investigation, other than my role as a board member. I know just as much as every other board member does,” Elicker said.

Board member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, a pediatrician and frequent ally of Goldson, said she did not see Goldson cross over into harassment when he advocated for the African-American law firm. She hasn’t seen him cross that line since, she said.

“I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the exchange. I think the investigation is harassment to the board member,” Jackson-McArthur said.

“I think that there’s a lot of tough questions because we are not professional educators. We are New Haven residents who are given the task of the Board of Education. When we ask finance professionals and the leader of the district questions, we are asking because we need clarity. That’s what they do. They should be able to clarify. … [You can be] transparent and still not tell me anything,” she said.

While Jackson-McArthur does not see race or white privilege from Penn for making the complaint, she said, she does see mismanagement from the superintendent and board leadership in bringing in lawyers rather than talking through the issue.

“It was not done in the way to fix something. To me, it was done to try to hurt somebody,” Jackson-McArthur said. ​“Don’t you think you should have a conversation before you spend money on a lawyer?”

Elicker said that he has not heard Penn make any comments that he perceived as racist and has not seen more systemic discrimination against African-American businesses from the financial department.

“I have not seen evidence that there’s any favoritism based on race. That would be awful and something we should not tolerate,” Elicker said.

Superintendent Iline Tracey she she too has not seen such racial discrimination.

“I don’t see that as an issue in New Haven, at least. It has come up a number of times in board meetings. I don’t see where race plays any role in the contracts we get. We approve contracts because people are capable of doing their jobs,” Tracey said.

She said that the district retains different law firms based on their expertise. Berchem Moses PC, the white-run law firm that got additional dollars in March, focuses on Special Education cases. The Law Office of W. Martyn Philpot, Jr., LLC, the Black-run firm Goldson advocated for, helps the district with expulsion cases.

Tracey said that she has retained the division of labor between these firms from past superintendents. However, that does not mean she is opposed to adding more work to Philpot in the future, she said.

As for whether she sees white staff members’ biases impacting their relationship with board members, she is not sure. She sees board members ask white staff members not to interrupt them, just as they ask her not to interrupt them.

“It may be in certain respects. I have yet to see it been proven. I can’t speak about it when I have not really, really observed,” Tracey said. ​“At least from my vantage point, we don’t make it to be about race in hiring people. It’s about whether the have certain skillsets — while we are still conscious that we need to diversify staff.”

“I Want To Get It Resolved And Behind Us”

It has been four months since the investigation began, as a contract not to exceed $14,000 that Tracey approved to look into unspecified employee-related allegations of harassment. Tinley, Renehan & Dost, LLP sent a letter to Goldson informing him of the investigation in late July.

Since then, the Board of Education has twice discussed not having the report yet. It went into executive session once to offer more details on the same theme. At the last meeting on the investigation, Rivera invited all board members aside from Goldson into the private, executive session, on the grounds that his presence ruined the attorney-client privilege that justifies the executive session. Goldson threatened to sue and other board members decided to get an outside legal opinion on what to do.

Rivera said she hopes to get that opinion this week and to hold a special meeting of the board on what she described as a ​“personnel complaint.”

“I just want it to be resolved. If the parties would agree to some mediation, so we can get to amicable resolution on both sides … It’s hard to have board meetings when staff and board members are not quite able to get along,” Rivera said.

Board member Larry Conaway, who often votes with Goldson, echoed Rivera’s sentiments.

“I want to get it resolved and behind us. Let’s get it off the agenda and behind us. Whatever happens happens,” Conaway said.

Conaway emphasized that he wants to see respect and accountability from every member of the board, including himself. He lamented that lawyers are involved in the complaint.

“It’s unfortunate that we have this type of stuff on a board of education that’s attempting to educate a very vulnerable population. We’ve got some high-risk things that we’re dealing with. We need to take care of that,” Conaway said.