By Marjorie Lloyd
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In a heated debate that brought angry protestations from Director of Schools Benny Bills, the Board of Education discussed at their Tuesday, December 15th meeting the potential need for their own investigation into complaints of alleged inappropriate behavior by school system employees and the handling of the complaints by Central Office staff.
Two articles that appeared in both the December 3rd and 4th editions of The Gallatin Newspaper and the Hendersonville Standard evoked comments by the board concerning whether or not board policy was followed in dealing with sexual harassment complaints by school system employees and whether or not an independent attorney should be hired to conduct an investigation and then provide a report to the board.
Beth Cox (District 4) stated that she was in favor of assigning a committee to conduct an investigation.
“My major concern again is to re-evaluate our board policy–are there holes in it? What are the things we can do to insure how we are and what we are doing to investigate, how we’re writing the policy, how we are writing information about these types of complaints, do we need to do a better job of that, is there a different way we can record it so that information is documented correctly? These are the kind so questions I would like to have answered.”
In the articles written by reporter Candy Webb, information was provided by Assistant Director of Human Resources Craig Ott that revealed that the complaint filed last spring was kept only in the complainant’s file and not in that of the person against whom the complaint was filed.
Danny Hale (District 6) stated, “The concern I have in particular on this is the fact that the information on the original complaint … was not in the file of the employee. Even if he was cleared of it, it seems to me like there should be some connection between employees’ files, whether it was this or some other matter that occurred. Administrations come and go, and resource officers come and go–five years from now, how do you connect a complaint that might have happened five years ago? There may be 12 complaints in 12 different files, and nobody is connecting the dots.”
Director Bills questioned the timing of the discussion, noting that the topic was not listed on the agenda.
“It’s amazing to me how this came up tonight. I hadn’t heard anything about this. I read what Mr. Fussell said, that it ought to be investigated. (Mike Fussell was chair of the board when the complaint was filed and quoted in the articles as saying, “It (the handling) was unacceptable.”) Why did it come up tonight? It wasn’t on the agenda. Why did Mr. Fuqua (the board attorney) start calling an outside counselor? Are we guilty already?”
Bills also defended the professional experience of the Central Office staff.
“Mr. Ott has been doing this job for a long time. I’ve been doing this job for a long time. What about credibility here? We understand that, for some, there is no respect or no appreciation for Ott or me. Why won’t you do this demonstration thing and let us bring our notes and let the paper print whatever they want to print?”
He pointed out that there are restrictions on information that the staff is allowed to convey publicly.
“I disagreed with part of the article because they did not get the other side of the story, but they couldn’t print the other side of the story because we couldn’t tell the other side of the story.”
He stated that in the last two years, seven cases of sexual wrongdoing had arisen and that none of those involved is now employed by the school system.
“So who is doing the right job and why are we talking about this tonight?” said Bills.
Rob Wheeler (District 5) stated that he would vote against the motion to hire an independent attorney.
“This is all coming up real quick. There are not any facts that are going to change. This all happened in the past. Let’s take a look at it in the study session and compare prices, if nothing else, with other firms as well as getting a report from Mr. Bills and Mr. Ott to see if it’s worthy of justification.”
Jim Fuqu, the board attorney, had reported that he had spoken with a lawyer from a firm in Nashville whose fee was more that $300 per hour. However, he stopped short of stating that hiring a lawyer to investigate the alleged incidents reported would protect the board from a potential lawsuit.
Tim Brewer (District 2) asked Fuqua if, in his professional opinion, “This is something that would be very beneficial ... in case a suit came against us. … We could say this board recognized there was a possibility a problem could be there and did due diligence to get to the bottom of it. I’m trying to find a cause, a reason, to do this.”
Fuqua responded that “it would certainly behoove us to thoroughly investigate these things with a list of witnesses, perhaps even with a transcript or a recording witnesses. Right now, for anything like that to be done by anybody other than an attorney, in light of a potential lawsuit, providing public record, might be more detrimental than not.”
Chair Don Long stated that he believed an independent investigation was necessary.
“I’m going to reiterate my belief that we do this just to verify ... our staff is abiding by state and federal laws as well as our board policy on what they should and shouldn’t be doing. I would be comfortable with that. I think it would be prudent for us to do that.”
Long stated that two other individuals had contacted him separately about alleged incidents of harassment within the system, but in a tense exchange with Wheeler, Long refused to divulge the names of those people who had contacted him.
“I don’t know if there are others out there. I’m not trying to say there are or there are not. I’m saying it would be prudent for this board to independently look at this. This isn’t to call into judgment their ability and this isn’t calling into judgment their experience in any fashion.”
Wheeler, however, moved to call a second executive session, arguing that since Long had spoken publicly about this, he should inform the board of the details and that as a member of the board, Long should be informing all members of any information he had.
Long replied, “I can tell you when someone approaches me in confidence, I am not going to break that confidence. If they were to make a decision to move this forward formally, obviously I would disclose it.”
The motion to go into executive session was defeated, and the board voted to place this topic on the next study session, scheduled in January.
In a statement released the day after the meeting, Bills continued to defend the actions of the Central Office, saying, ““The investigation into (the ex-employee’s) charges of harassment against her fellow employees was conducted in a thorough and impartial manner and the appropriate action was taken to address each incident. The Board of Education will be given a detailed account of the investigation during their January study session, which I am confident will address any of the Board’s concerns about the matter.”
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