Less than a week after filing a Civil Rights law suit against the Van Buren Public Schools, four teachers that had been at Savage Elementary School were suspended, without pay, for 14 days – May 27-June 16.
Pamela Bradley, Michelle Komaromi, Brent Held, and Rebecca Tennis had been on paid administrative leave without charges since January.
Their original law suit against the school district, six of the seven members of the board, Michael Van Tassel and Shonta Langford-Green was filed May 20.
According to their law suit, amended June 2, less than a week after filing suit on May 26 the four teachers received disciplinary letters from VBPS alleging various violations of the M-STEP examination’s testing protocols.
The amended law suit said the four were not given any notice in advance of receiving this discipline and they were not afforded the opportunity to respond to the allegations of wrongdoing set forth in the disciplinary letters before being disciplined.
The amended law suit claims this discipline was issued as a direct result of, and in retaliation to, filing of this law suit.
“At no point during their suspension over the course of the last five months was any disciplinary action taken, nor were any forthcoming disciplinary actions discussed with Plaintiffs until their law suit was filed,” the suit states.
Further, it says, a disciplinary letter was not sent to the fifth teacher, who was able to return to her classroom without discipline despite being accused of conduct the same or similar to conduct that the four teachers received disciplinary letters and unpaid suspension for, solely because she had released her legal claims.
On Monday, a large audience waited more than an hour for the school board meeting to begin because the board had gone into closed-door session with its attorneys Collins-Blaha to discuss the law suit.
Before leaving the Belleville High School cafeteria for its closed-door session, board vice president Martha Toth read a statement saying board members are unable to respond to details of the litigation. President Brent Mikulski was not present because he was at the special event in the BHS gymnasium because his daughter was entering high school from eighth grade.
When the board returned to the meeting, Mikulski was present.
Trustee Sherry Frazier noted at the beginning of the meeting that there have been no invoices from Collins & Blaha for the board to approve because the law firm hasn’t billed the district for May or June. She said if they don’t bill regularly it could throw the district’s budget off.
Frazier said to date the law firm has been paid $264,000 and she thinks that will rise to a total to $350,000 this year, up from $65,000 the previous year. She said this extra money paid to the lawyers is taking away from instruction.
At the end of the meeting, Frazier again spoke of the Savage issue.
“I personally take the Savage issue to heart,” Frazier said it is difficult to go into executive session to discuss it while “this toxin is running through our community.”
She said it may not have hurt others on the board, but it hurt her and now she’s over it. Frazier said, “This issue has developed into a community concern.”
She said possible errors in the M-STEP test have been identified and remedied with help from the state. She said her granddaughter in the Gifted and Talented program at Savage took that test, too, and had her results thrown out.
“The board needs to step forward and put this behind us,” Frazier said. “I am begging this board to become transparent and be straight with the community instead of letting the attorneys run the district.”
She said the attorney fees could be $500,000 by the time this is all over and, “That to me is a shame and shame on all of us.”
Board Secretary Kevin English brushed away the comments by saying the school year is almost over and for everyone to have a nice summer.