Pittsfield School Committee OKs Firm for PHS Staff Investigation
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Officials approved a third-party investigation on alleged staff misconduct at Pittsfield High School that's expected to wrap up by March.
On Monday, the School Committee authorized Chair William Cameron to negotiate and execute a retainer agreement with law firm Bulkley Richardson Gelinas of Springfield for "independent and impartial investigations of certain Pittsfield Public School employees."
"We need to have a credible investigation with the public so that the public can have confidence there is not something being covered up here," Cameron said during the special virtual meeting, citing public suspicion that the administration knew about and failed to act on the allegations.
"This is an attempt for us to find out what somebody who has no stake of any sort in the outcome of what happens here, what someone with investigatory expertise has been able to come up with and make a report to us. It's up to us then to act in good faith on the basis of that report."
This month saw three PHS staff put on administrative leave, including a dean who was arrested on drug trafficking charges. The district is also facing a civil lawsuit over inappropriate conduct by a former teacher and a staff member who left earlier in the year is under investigation at his current workplace.
Mary-Lou Rup, a retired Superior Court judge, will be the lead investigator at a rate of $275 per hour and paralegal services for $110 per hour. Services are said to commence on Dec. 31 and be completed on or before March 31.
According to a draft agreement sent to Cameron, the scope of services includes conducting a limited series of interviews with key witnesses of past or current PHS administrators or educators with allegations against them, seeking out other credible sources and information related to the allegations made and found during interviews, forming a professional judgment that substantiates or fail to substantiate the allegations, making recommendations to the School Committee, and to providing a report of findings.
The 100-year-old firm was chosen based on a recommendation from other attorneys, its tenure, and its experience with institutional investigations of employee wrongdoing. The firm is not believed to have any relation to the city, the district, or members of the School Committee, and Cameron said Rup "seems to be about as impartial an investigator as we would be able to find."
Mayor Peter Marchetti pointed to last week's special City Council meeting where the public wanted answers.
"Because in my opinion, it's a public document, and everything and anything that comes forth in that document should be made available to the public with nothing redacted," he said.
Cameron didn't want to promise anything without a legal opinion but said, "whatever we are legally able to release, we should release."
Committee member Sara Hathaway said this agreement was not what she expected.
"I thought we would be looking at problems in our system more than looking at the allegations and frankly, the allegations are going to be addressed by the U.S. Attorney and the state DCF, is my understanding," she explained.
"So I thought we were going to look more at things like whether our social media practices need to change, whether our background and CORI check systems have flaws, whether the mandated reporting is occurring as it needs to occur. More these kinds of things about our system. Our human resources department is very skeletal in terms of staffing. Is that part of what we need to address? And I thought that was going to be the nature of the investigation and not so much looking into the allegations themselves."
Cameron said this is the first of two "internal inquiries," adding that a Boston law firm will audit the district's human resource practices, hiring, and staffing.
Tags: PHS, scandal,
