BOE To City: We’ll Handle The Investigations

The school board told City Hall not to interfere with the investigations into recent alleged misconduct by the superintendent and her second-in-command.

That decision was made at Thursday night’s special Board of Education meeting, at which the board voted to hire outside counsel rather than let Corporation Counsel John Rose investigate complaints that have been filed against Superintendent Carol Birks and Assistant Superintendent Keisha Redd-Hannans.

Michael Pinto, the district’s chief operating officer, filed a hostile workplace complaint, claiming that Birks had repeatedly mocked and insulted her top staff. And a school-based administrator filed the complaint against Redd-Hannans.

At the superintendent’s request, Rose, the city’s top lawyer, tried to insert himself, taking over responsibility for both investigations from the school district’s human resources department and instructing staff not to communicate with school board members.

But at Thursday night’s meeting at Celentano School, after a half-hour discussion in private executive session, the five members present unanimously voted to yank that responsibility back and, in its place, to send Rose a mild rebuke, affirming the school system’s independence from the city.

Ed Joyner, one of the board’s two elected members, said the Board of Education should tell city attorneys, who’ve tried to insert themselves into the inquiries about school leadership’s alleged bullying of their employees, to stop ​“meddling.”

Specifically, the board voted to hire an outside attorney to look into Pinto’s allegations about Birks, to task the human resource director to follow up on the administrator’s allegations about Redd-Hannans, and to have an attorney send what Joyner described as, effectively, a ​“cease-and-desist” letter.

Joyner said that letter should tell Rose ​“to respect the jurisdictional authority of the school board and not to interfere with board business.” He added, ​“They don’t have any authority to look into this without the consent of the board and the superintendent.”

“Particularly around school investigations,” Darnell Goldson, the other elected member who serves as the school board’s president, jumped in. ​“The reason why we’re doing this is to make clear that this is a fair process” to both the complainant and respondent, he added. ​“I wouldn’t want there to be any kind of question about whether it was political, so that is why we’re putting these directives in place.”

Rose did not respond to an email requesting comment on Thursday night.

The sparring over legal authority isn’t new. Since at least 2016, when New Haven made its school board a hybrid, comprised of the mayor, four appointees and two independently elected representatives, both sides have argued about the separation of powers.

That year, the Board of Alders sued the Board of Ed in state court over the composition of its membership, and Mayor Toni Harp, who’d taken on a controversial role as school board president, sent cops to a board member’s home to say her term had ended.

The battles continued into last year, amid the backlash to the machinations that led to Birks’s installation as superintendent, as parents and teachers from NHPS Advocates tried to convince alders to limit mayoral control over the school system by setting standards for political appointees.

Now, Goldson said that, after he asked staff what was going on with the investigations into the district’s leadership, Rose sent him an email, saying, ​“What are you doing?”

Goldson said he replied, ​“I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. This is our responsibility as board members. We have to conduct an investigation, and the only fair way to do it so that everybody feels comfortable is to have it by outside counsel.”

For now, the allegations in the latest complaint against Redd-Hannans remain secret, and the complainant has declined to talk about them.

Board members say they have not received a copy themselves. Goldson said that, behind closed doors on Thursday, they discussed only who should investigate, not any specific allegations.

Redd-Hannans, too, said she doesn’t know what the board is talking about. ​“I was not formally notified that there would be an executive session discussing me, nor did I receive a formal complaint,” she said.

City attorneys on Thursday afternoon also denied a public-records request for a copy of the complaint, saying it is exempt as a preliminary draft and a personnel file — a decision that the Independent is appealing to the Freedom of Information Commission.