School board and top educators create a case study in human psychology. District is abuzz about board secrecy and two rebukes in court in the last week.
About 200 residents of the Jordan-Elbridge school district attend a meeting Sept. 26 in the Elbridge Fire Department to express concerns about the district and the school board.By John O'Brien and John Stith
Staff writers
Elbridge, NY - Bill Hamilton wrote a memo in 2005 criticizing the job performance of the Jordan-Elbridge school district treasurer he supervised.
Hamilton, the assistant superintendent for business and finance, never got to deliver it. The treasurer, Diana Foote, walked out of a meeting that summer day and never returned to the job.
But she came back to school. Foote won election to the school board, and was still there this summer when the district suspended Hamilton. Two months after that, the board fired the man working in Foote’s old job.
The lesson, Hamilton says: If you cross the wrong people in Jordan-Elbridge, expect payback.
He and three other employees who were fired, suspended or reassigned found out the hard way over the past year, he says. Superintendent Marilyn Dominick also will step down in November, two years before her five-year contract was to expire. On Friday, for the first time, she cited a rift with the board as the reason.
In Jordan and Elbridge, instead of talking about Homecoming next weekend, people are buzzing about the shake-up in the school leadership, the board’s secrecy and two rebukes in court for the district in the last week. About 200 parents jammed a fire hall last week to demand answers from the board. The Elbridge town board even rescheduled its meeting so members could attend Wednesday’s school board meeting.
The battles in the administration feature some unusual small-town intrigue: Two weeks before his first reprimand, Hamilton wrote a memo questioning the bills of the school district’s lawyer — who is dating a board member. Before he was suspended, high school principal David Zehner complained to the Onondaga County Bar Association about the lawyer’s handling of Zehner’s private adoption.
School board members say there is no campaign or vendetta. The board members say they were doing their jobs, handling specific situations as they arose and holding employees accountable.
“The perception that the board is ‘house cleaning’ is simply that, a perception,” the board said in a statement Friday. Its demand for excellence “includes making some extremely difficult decisions that we know are important to the integrity of our district and to the future success of our district and students.”
The school district is the second-largest employer in the area, behind Tessy Plastics, so even a little scandal affects everyone, said Ken Bush Jr., the Elbridge town supervisor, lifelong resident and graduate of Jordan-Elbridge schools.
There’s a sense that the school board has an agenda of vengeance, said Bush, whose five children graduated from the district.
“People hear that sort of stuff and they wonder, ‘Who’s in charge?’” Bush said.
Connections overlap
The district listed 128 charges as its reasons for wanting to fire Hamilton. Each is either false or frivolous, Bush said.
An example: The district accused him of using the school’s credit card to pay for a $72 parking ticket he received on his car while he was in a conference in New York City in 2008. But Hamilton said neither he nor his car was there, and that the traffic ticket was for a district school bus at a cross-country meet.
The ticket, which identifies a yellow school bus, was in the district’s records, according to Fred Weisskopf, an accounts clerk in the business office.
The other charges say Hamilton exhibited sexist behavior by such acts as having his secretary retrieve documents from his car and that he violated the competitive bidding policies on a tree-removal job, which he disputes.
Hamilton said he’s never been micromanaged in his seven years as assistant superintendent the way he has been recently.
He said he felt Foote’s animosity shortly after she was elected to the board in 2008. At every board meeting, she focused on something to do with business and finance, he said. She questioned Hamilton’s purchase of an $8 wire folder rack for his desk, he said.
Dominick and the school board deny that he is being punished for his conflict with Foote.
Foote agrees that she left the treasurer’s job on bad terms with Hamilton five years ago. But that has nothing to do with his suspension, she said. Foote and other board members said it’s their job to question his work. The $8 rack was mentioned in an internal audit because he improperly paid sales tax on it, they said.
The board also says his suspension is unrelated to his complaints about district lawyer Danny Mevec.
Mevec is dating school board member Jeanne Pieklik, according to board president Mary Alley.
Alley and other board members said they don’t know how long the relationship has been going on, but that Pieklik has voted each July to reappoint Mevec. In recent weeks, the board told its special counsel, Frank Miller, to research whether there was a conflict.
In a recent interview, Mevec would not talk about the relationship, saying any relationship would be “personal.” Neither he nor Pieklik responded to phone messages for comment since the board discussed it.
Three board members interviewed last week had no problem with Mevec dating Pieklik.
“There’s nothing that she could’ve influenced ... to benefit her personally or to benefit him personally,” Foote said.
Mevec has noted that he receives his work from the entire board, not any specific board members.
The lawyer also has said he did not know Hamilton questioned his bills until after Hamilton was suspended.
Mevec was also at the center of another suspended administrator’s claim of retaliation. Zehner, suspended last month, filed a complaint in May with the bar association over Mevec’s handling of Zehner’s adoption case.
Every layer of the conflict reveals another connection. Mevec used to work for Dennis O’Hara, the district’s former lawyer who now is representing Hamilton and Zehner in their lawsuits against the district.
David ZehnerSuddenly in hot water
Zehner was granted tenure in February 2009, but by that summer he knew he was in trouble. That’s when he started getting notes in his personnel file from Assistant Superintendent for Instruction Sue Gorton.
In June 2009, he was accused in an audit of the district’s computerized grade record system of altering grades. He denies that. He says teachers corrected several rounding errors caused by the system’s software and teachers gave affidavits confirming that.
But, Zehner said, the board chose to believe the auditor’s report and rejected the response he prepared with Dominick’s help.
The write-ups started after that, he said.
“I was getting something in my personnel file every two or three weeks,” he said. “I’ve never had anything in my personnel file in the previous ... 24 years, and all of a sudden I’m getting written up.”
Sue GortonBy this spring, high school teachers caught on. Two dozen tenured teachers at the school signed a letter of support and sent it to the board.
Superintendent’s rift
Some board members came to Dominick more than a year ago about a rift between them and her, she said Friday. She would not say what the rift was over. The members said they’d talked it over with the full board before going to her, Dominick said.
“I enjoyed a decade of no rifts at all with the board,” she said. “I was surprised to be approached by the board officers and asked to consider an exit plan.” She told them she wanted to stay in the job at least until her granddaughter started kindergarten, which she did this year.
Dominick said it became uncomfortable for her to go to work. She does not believe the board retaliated against the other administrators, she said.
The board members won’t talk about Dominick’s departure. “I don’t feel it’s my position to hurt anyone who I consider a professional,” board member Connie Drake said.
A difficult time
Weisskopf, the business office clerk, wrote a letter to all the school board members in July, accusing them of having a hit list of administrators they wanted to pay back. He was the longtime owner of a hardware store in Elbridge, and took the part-time job in the business office to keep busy and help out, he said. What he’s seen in the district has astounded him, he said.
“Certain board members have somebody they don’t like and want to get rid of,” Weisskopf said. “It’s like they’re combining forces and saying, ‘If you help me get rid of this person, I’ll help you get rid of that person.’”
Board members say the publicity over the district’s troubles over the past couple weeks has been difficult for them.
“It’s difficult when your integrity and your honesty are constantly being challenged,” said Alley, the board president. “But I know who I am and I know who the other board members are, and we’re people of integrity.”
The board members said state law prohibits them from talking publicly about actions they took against employees, or any discussions in executive session.
The administration’s lack of openness has contributed to the idea some unspecified campaign is under way.
The district announced in July that the assistant superintendent for instruction, Gorton, would be the interim superintendent Nov. 1. Zehner challenged that appointment in court, saying the board never voted in public on it. Last week, Miller, a district lawyer, was left to tell a judge Gorton’s appointment never happened, that nearly two months of public notice about it were in error.
On Friday, a judge in that case found the district violated the state Open Meetings Law in several ways.
A week earlier, in a case brought by Hamilton, the same judge ordered the district to stop withholding Dominick’s severance agreement from the public. The judge ordered the district to pay Hamilton’s legal fees of $2,500.
Another example of secrecy cited by lawyers for Hamilton and Zehner: In response to a Freedom of Information Law request for Mevec’s legal bills, the district supplied dozens of pages of heavily redacted bills. Under “services rendered,” one section reads, “Attend meeting with client, re: pending (redacted) matters.” The word “legal” can just be made out behind a blackout line.
The community needs someone from the outside to lead the district once Dominick is out in November, Bush said. Gorton should withdraw her name because she’s an insider, then the board needs to reevaluate, he said.
“We need an interim superintendent who is not connected to this school district at all,” Bush said. “Because the community is so divided, the staff and faculty would feel a lot more comfortable being led by someone who doesn’t have a history.”
Previously: Ongoing coverage of the Jordan-Elbridge school board.
Up Next: J-E school board calls executive session for Monday.
Contact John O'Brien at jobrien@syracuse.com or 315-470-2187, and John Stith at jstith@syracuse.com or 315-251-5718.