DOE misconduct investigations result in 6 leaving

The state Department of Education closed out 11 employee misconduct investigations during the past three months, resulting in five terminations and one resignation in lieu of termination, according to data shared Tuesday with the state school board.

Among the 11 completed cases, investigators determined four reports were unsubstantiated, and those employees were returned to work, while another received a written reprimand, Assistant Superintendent Barbara Krieg said in a quarterly update on employees on paid leave while under investigation for alleged wrongdoing. The report now includes the outcomes of resolved cases, based on feedback from Board of Education members.

The exact nature of the investigations is confidential because it involves protected personnel data. The department does, however, provide employee position titles and the general nature of allegations for all open cases in a given quarter.

As of June 30 there were 37 DOE employees on paid leave pending the results of investigations. Most of the cases involve teachers accused of inappropriate physical or verbal conduct toward students.

That’s down from 63 investigations that were pending at the end of 2014, when the Board of Education began scrutinizing the department’s handling of cases. The board, citing concerns over the cost of paid leave and the stigma for employees who might eventually be exonerated, called for quarterly progress updates.

The 37 open investigations include 21 cases against teachers. The teacher investigations involve allegations of inappropriate physical or verbal conduct toward students (15 cases), employee-on-employee workplace violence (three cases) and one case each of sexual harassment and creating a hostile learning environment. One teacher is also under a “suitability analysis” investigation to determine whether he or she is still fit for public employment and to work in close proximity with children.

Officials emphasized that overall the cases represent a small fraction of employees in the Department of Education, which has more than 20,000 salaried employees.

During the last quarterly report, some BOE members requested an analysis of demographic information such as whether an accused teacher is an emergency hire, a new employee or a licensed or unlicensed teacher. The information, they reasoned, could then be used to better target training.

Krieg, who oversees the DOE’s central human resources office, said based on hire dates, the majority of the open cases involve veteran employees. “They’re all licensed teachers, not emergency hires. They really have a broad spectrum of years of service,” she said, but she added that the DOE didn’t see any red flags or patterns in the data.

Board member Hubert Minn, a retired teacher, questioned what the department is doing to prevent new cases. “Although we’ve closed so many cases, we continually open just as many or more,” he said. “What are we doing to start to help reduce the cases that are being opened?”

For the three months ended June 30, the department opened 14 new cases, compared with 21 cases opened during the previous quarter from Jan. 1 to March 31.

Krieg said if the investigators spot patterns — such as repeated cases at a particular school — the issue is raised with complex-area superintendents or principals to target training or other supports. “We don’t see patterns,” she said of the current cases.

Board member Brian De Lima, chairman of the Human Resources Committee, acknowledged that while training can be helpful, some misconduct cases involve unpredictable actions or a lack of common sense.

“People basically snap or act out of character. You cannot really predict that,” said De Lima, who’s a criminal defense attorney. “You can train as to what you should do, but when someone is acting out of the norm, all the training in the world is not going to stop someone who has a defect.”

Krieg agreed and cited the example of an employee whose case involved criminal conduct.

“The employee actually used as a reason they felt they should not be terminated, ‘You didn’t tell me I shouldn’t do this,’” she said. “It was criminal conduct. It was bad. … So much of the conduct for which people are placed on (paid leave) is not even common sense; it’s common decency.”