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| The Sandpaper's Rick Mellerup questions Pinelands Regional Board of Education 02/26/2019 |
On Tuesday, the Pinelands Regional School District Board of Education unceremoniously announced the elimination of the district's Director of Special Education, without providing any notice to the parents of the approximately 380 affected children (nearly a quarter of total enrollment), no plan in place going forward, and tried to avoid answering questions about the change altogether.
At the Feb. 26, 2019 board meeting, the board voted on a resolution to "effectuate a “Reduction in Force” and layoff the Director of Special Education," a resolution which was published at 10:35 am that morning, four links deep into the district's website.
No notice was given to the parents of affected children, and consequently, no parents of special ed children knew to show up at the meeting and voice their concerns.
Fortunately, reporter Rick Mellerup of The Sandpaper did attend the meeting, and questioned the board about this decision.
Mellerup told the board that he had researched all of the district's departments, and "Special Ed had far more administrators and teachers than any other department, and I'm wondering how you could possibly eliminate the position of department head of Special Ed?"
"And again you can address that later. If you don't, I'll come back at you," Mellerup added.
School board Vice President Patricia Chambers replied "You don't, you know, I'm not even going to comment on your last question. That is a personnel issue, so we're not at liberty to discuss that."
"But are you eliminating the position?" Mellerup pressed, and again, Chambers refused to answer.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss, it's on the agenda the way it is," Chambers said, a lie that Mellerup would later expose.
The board then discussed, and voted on, the 19 agenda items in section B of the agenda, and not one member brought up the resolution or debated it. They voted unanimously to pass it. (Watch here)
Following the vote, Mellerup pressed the board again on the decision.
"I'm sorry that we can't get any sort of answer on the reduction in force," Mellerup said. "You said it's a personnel issue. We've always had discussions here about reduction in force, not a termination. It's just..."
District Superintendent Dr. Melissa McCooley then offered comment on the issue that Chambers had earlier falsely insisted that they were not at liberty to discuss.
"So I'm going to give you an overview of that decision," McCooley said. "I've been here now since June of 2018, I've had the time now to do a careful analysis of all departments, as well as our budgetary concerns, and I've decided to move the district in a different direction."
"Okay, is it going to be shared services?" Mellerup pressed.
"It could possibly, moving forward," McCooley replied, adding "Right now we have a consultant that you saw on the agenda tonight, and he will be here part-time per diem."
So with no prior notice, Dr. McCooley unilaterally decided to eliminate the district's director of special education, and offered no plan to replace the services going forward, without notifying the parents of the affected children. This is a done deal, there is nothing any of them can do about it.
Two days later, the parents were notified of the change in an email which read "The purpose of this email is to inform you the [sic] Ellen Ward, Director of Special Services, is no longer with our school district. Tom Hand will be serving as a part-time consultant for the department. The plan moving forward is to have a permanent replacement in 60 days. If you need assistance with your child's IEP, please contact their caseworker."
But according to the leader of a special needs parents group, even that email was only sent after she suggested it on Thursday.
Reached by phone on Friday, Dr. McCooley objected to the idea that the decision was unilateral, saying "I did have an audit done of that department, and based my decision on the findings of that."
She also claimed that "notice was sent out to parents, a blackboard went out yesterday in the form of an email."
Neither of those things are true, an email two days after the fact does not constitute "notice," and the words "my decision" are literally the definition of unilateral.
Furthermore, despite the show vote at the board meeting, Director of Special Education Ellen Ward had already been fired sometime on Tuesday, at 9 am according to McCooley.
McCooley also said she believes that even if parents had been given notice of the resolution being voted on and shown up to protest, the board would have voted the same way "based on the information from the audit."
That audit, she added, "can't be shared with the public."
According to McCooley, the district is going to seek a shared services agreement with the Little Egg Harbor school district, but that plan has not been approved. Under such a plan, LEHT Director of Special Services Erin Lichtenwalner would service both districts. A vote on that proposal is tentatively scheduled for March 20, she said.
McCooley says such a plan will save the Pinelands Regional district $70,000.00, out of a budget that was over $32 million this year, and which featured a $137,565.00 increase in state aid for special education. Despite that increase in state aid, the board has cut special ed supplies, textbooks, and equipment by $79,939.00, in addition to the money they will save by eliminating the director. McCooley also explained that Ward will continue to be paid for 60 days following her dismissal.
McCooley now says she will try to get a summary or some other version of the audit made public, but for now, she insists that parents should be reassured that things will be better because of a secret report that they're not allowed to see.
Additionally, on Sunday, McCooley said that she's trying to organize a "parent night" to answer questions about the change that has already been made.
Parents who were reached for comment are not happy about the decision, or the way in which it was carried out.
Jennifer Griffin, the mother of a special education student in the school's autism program, said she felt the change had been made "sneakily," and "for the exact purpose of us not being able to attend the meeting, where they would be more or less forced to have to answer all our questions, which [Dr. McCooley] obviously wouldn’t have had many answers for."
"It’s worrisome that these board members and superintendent had no regard for parental opinion," Griffin wrote in an email, "like we are unimportant and not worthy of knowing what’s happening to our child’s program until it’s too late to do anything about it."
Sandy Evans, a parent with a multi-disabled child in the school district, said she was "upset that notice wasn’t given so I could be in attendance and have questions/concerns answered instead of message sent after the fact." She called the move "scary," and wondered "How can one person handle two districts of special needs population properly, efficiently without cutting corners?"
"To just hit us with this news without warning is sneaky in my opinion," Evans said, and added "I think at this point I’m going to have to drop everything else in my crazy life and focus on this situation."
Michele Collins-Davies, one of the leaders of the special education parents group CATS (Creating Awareness Together for Success) at Pinelands, says that the day after the school board meeting, she told Dr. McCooley that parents were unhappy about the move, and the lack of transparency.
"I reached out to the superintendent Wednesday after I reviewed the board meeting minutes and video," Collins-Davies said in an email, adding "Our group was not informed that a vote was being taken to eliminate the Director of Special Ed."
When McCooley called her back on Thursday, Collins-Davies said that Lichtenwalner was on the call, as well, and that McCooley told her that Ms. Lichtenwalner would be taking over the position in 60 days, even though that proposal has yet to be approved.
"I explained that parents were concerned about this lack of communication on these changes," Collins-Davies said, which is when McCooley offered to send the notification to parents.
"The parents that I have interacted with are concerned about a reduction in service for the special education students," Collins-Davies said.
Several parents who wished not to be named expressed similar alarm, and noted that when Dr. McCooley met with the group several weeks ago, none of these potential changes were discussed. They also say that parents and school officials are already being referred to Lichtenwalner for questions, despite the fact that she is not a district official.
Dr. McCooley said, Sunday, that she's "not aware of any questions being referred" to Lichtenwalner, but that "She has helped out in the past and will continue."
"Little Egg and Pinelands has that relationship," she added.
Dr. McCooley was sent a draft of this article for review and comment. She replied with a text message that read "I find the entire piece rude and insulting with many errors and assumptions. You are free to publish whatever you want on your blog however I will no longer correspond with you."
When offered the chance to identify any errors, McCooley replied "As I said you are free to publish what you want but your article is one-sided and your opinion. I'd be happy to meet with you during the week just let me know".
The board members who voted in favor of this resolution were Thomas D. Williams, Jr., Karen Poklikuha, Jeffrey Bonicky, Susan M. Ernst, Patricia Chambers, Betti Anne McVey, Christie Palladino, Stephen Kubricki, and Kim Hanadel.
Update: Superintendent McCooley has scheduled a Q&A session Thursday, March 7 at 5:30 pm at the Pinelands Regional Junior High School Media Center.
More Secrecy and Dishonesty at Parents Meeting
On Thursday night, several dozen parents showed up to Dr. McCooley's Q&A session, which lasted about an hour and a half. New Jersey State Ombudsman for Individuals with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities and Their Families Paul Aronsohn was also in attendance.
McCooley was joined by Erin Lichtenwalner, who is slated to take over as director of special services under the share services proposal, and Tom Hand, the consultant who conducted the audit that resulted in his own appointment to a lucrative part-time stint in the position until Lichtenwalner is installed.
The meeting began with a Powerpoint presentation, and in yet another example of an utter lack of transparency, McCooley refused to share the presentation with parents who were not present for the meeting.
While much of the meeting was devoted to vague assurances to the parents, there were several notable examples of further dishonesty, secrecy, and indifference to the objections of parents.
When asked why no attempt was made to notify parents of the Reduction in Force proposal before the board meeting, McCooley responded by inaccurately referring to it as a "personnel issue," and stating that she doesn't "typically" notify parents about such issues. In the same exchange, she insisted that the former director was not fired, meaning it was not a "personnel issue."
McCooley repeatedly ignored follow up questions, including whether she would notify parents in the future of such important proposals.
The meeting also shed some light on the secret audits of the special education department that McCooley commissioned. Parent Charlie Roth asked McCooley about an audit that was approved in July, and conducted by Shelly Myers.
According to the July board meeting agenda, the board approved a "Motion to approve Shelly Myers to conduct an audit of the Special Education Department, concentrating on out of district placements, with a cost of $1,000."
But at the Q&A session, Lichtenwalner insisted that Myers "was not doing an audit of any program" and McCooley claimed "it was not an audit," which, if true, means that the motion that the board approved was a lie.
And when Roth asked if Myers had a "relationship with anybody in this room," McCooley revealed that Myers is Lichtenwalner's mother. McCooley and Lichtenwalner each insisted that McCooley was not aware of the relationship until after Myers was hired.
"This really doesn't pass the giggle test," Roth told Lichtenwalner. "And now you're going to get an extra job, and an extra income. The timing is just terrible."
McCooley also claimed that the secret audit upon which she based her decision to eliminate the director was approved in November, and was conducted by Mr. Hand.
But according to the November board agenda, there was no audit proposed or approved. The only related item was a "Motion to approve Thomas Hand as Educational Consultant for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2019, not to exceed $1,800."
Instead, the audit was conducted without specific approval from the board, and without the public's knowledge or consent, by the same person who stood to gain a $60-an-hour job based on the audit's secret findings.
On Thursday, McCooley also continued to refuse to share the results of that audit with the public, despite the promises she made last week to try and do so. The Sandpaper's Rick Mellerup pressed McCooley on the issue.
You just said that the audit did not involve any personnel issues at all, correct?" Mellerup asked, to which McCooley agreed..
"Was there a lawsuit involved with this audit?" he asked, to which McCooley replied "No."
"Okay, if it didn't have any personnel evaluations, and it wasn't a lawsuit, how can you possibly say that you can't release it?" Mellerup asked.
"Because there may be student information in there, I want to hand it over to the attorney to make sure nothing in there is confidential," McColey replied.
Several parents expressed dismay that this had not been done prior to the vote on eliminating the position, or even prior to Thursday night's meeting.
Board Vice President Pat Chambers was also confronted for lying to Mellerup at the board meeting by telling him she was "not at liberty to discuss" the RIF proposal prior to the vote, and Chambers lied again.
"No, I said I would answer that question, that's where you're wrong," Chambers said. As video of the board meeting clearly shows, she twice refused to answer Mellerup's question about the RIF by telling him she was "not at liberty" to discuss it.
At another point in the meeting, several parents expressed dissatisfaction that the shared services agreement is a fait accompli, as was the decision to eliminate the director in the first place.
McCooley said that "Both boards would have to approve the shared service."
She was then asked if the board had already agreed to approve the arrangement in private, and McCooley essentially confirmed that they had.
"I've spoken to both boards in executive session about this," McCooley said, and when asked if they agreed to approve it, said "They will formally approve it at a board meeting."
But even after that clear admission, two other board members spoke up to, at best, mislead the public.
Neighboring Board President Robert Moncrief said "As a member of the Little Egg Harbor board, no, the board has not agreed to approve anything, we only do that in public session in compliance with all laws."
This is misleading, because McCooley had just stipulated that no formal approval had been made, but indicated an informal agreement. Moncrief simply repeated the irrelevant and obvious fact that the agreement to approve has not been expressed publicly.
"The Pinelands board must have agreed to it, because they voted to lay off..." Mellerup began, and was interrupted by Chambers, who echoed Moncrief.
"Pinelands board has not agreed to the shared position," Chambers insisted.
"Okay, so you laid off the director, but you had no idea what was coming up. Come on," Mellerup said, adding "there's no way you don't know that this is going to happen."
A review of the minutes from that executive session would clear up the discrepancy, but logic and McCooley's own answer indicate that both boards have, in fact, secretly agreed to approve the shared service proposal.
McCooley says those minutes will be posted to the board's website "when they are complete and approved," but declined to say when that session took place. A review of executive session topics in board agendas since the audit was approved shows no discussion of a shared service agreement.
While several parents have publicly expressed anger and concern about the dishonesty, secrecy, cronyism, and self-dealing at play, others have said they're afraid to speak out for fear of a variety of recriminations.
They have also expressed skepticism, publicly and privately, about the assurances that McCooley and Lichtenwalner have given about the services children will receive under the new arrangement, based on their experiences with Lichtenwalner in Little Egg Harbor and the Pinelands administration's handling of the current issue.
Given the lying and the secrecy, it's reasonable to ask why parents should believe anything the board or the superintendent tells them.
Update: Here's video from the March 18, 2019 Little Egg Harbor BOE meeting, where they voted to approve shared services.
This is Dr. McCooley's presentation:
This is the public comment section before the vote:
This is public comment after the vote:
This is board member Daleo's letter to the parents for the record, scolding them for contacting a public official:
[The author is the parent of a special needs child in the Pinelands Regional School District. The author gives permission to republish this reporting with proper credit and link, where possible: Tommy Christopher]
