(Updated: 7:20 p.m.) From the steps of City Hall Wednesday, Principal Kermit Carolina decried an “abuse of power” and vowed to fight a three-day suspension for allegedly overseeing transcript-tampering and rule-bending at Hillhouse High.
“This is political vindictiveness,” Carolina declared at a 5:30 p.m. press conference, in which he maintained his innocence and sought to shift the blame to the superintendent and mayor for casting his school in a negative light.
Click on the play arrow to watch his remarks.
Carolina was reacting to a meeting midday Wednesday at the Board of Education headquarters at 54 Meadow St., in which schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo issued him a three-day, unpaid suspension in connection with a grade-changing probe at Hillhouse. The discipline came as a result of a 28-page report accusing Hillhouse staff of participating in transcript-tampering and preferential treatment for student athletes.
On Tuesday, Mayo issued unpaid, two-day suspensions to three Hillhouse staffers — part-time administrator Ed Scarpa, Hillhouse Assistant Principal John Nguyen, and football coach Tom Dyer — as well as Riverside Principal Wanda Gibbs, for their roles in the case.
Carolina on Wednesday said no one deserved even a day’s punishment. He continued to maintain his innocence; he said he was the victim of a “witch hunt” because he refused to support Mayor John DeStefano’s 2011 reelection bid.
“I did nothing wrong,” he said. “All my staff members who were suspended did nothing wrong.”
Melissa Bailey Photo
Carolina and Jefferson.
In a press statement distributed Wednesday afternoon by Carolina and his attorney, Michael Jefferson, Carolina lashed out at his boss, calling Mayo “a political hack” who should be “fired.” He said he plans to file a grievance to fight the discipline. Click here to read the statement.
“They’ve got a recourse” if they want to contest the discipline, Mayo said earlier Wednesday. “But the superintendent is through” with his role in the probe.
Carolina said despite his objections, he does plan to serve his suspension on Thursday, Friday and Monday as directed. Mayo also ordered him to undergo professional development and to “meet with athletic coaches and make it clear in writing that they are not to request grade changes and credit consideration from teachers.”
Mayo refrained from disciplining Carolina Tuesday because he couldn’t find him, according to schools spokeswoman Abbe Smith. Smith said the school system didn’t want to announce what the discipline would be until Mayo could meet with Carolina. Carolina “could not be located at school” and “failed to return calls to his cell phone” Tuesday, Smith said. He “told his director he planned to leave early Tuesday,” she said.
They met Wednesday instead. The meeting was apparently very quick: Carolina signed into the front desk at Board of Ed headquarters at 11:56 a.m. and signed out at 11:59.
“I just did what I think I needed to do,” Mayo said outside his office after the meeting. “We’ve got to move on and educate these kids.”
Carolina gathered a few dozen supporters Wednesday evening on the steps of City Hall. He accused Mayo of distracting kids by announcing the probe publicly on the Friday before Christmas break, before any allegations were checked out; by taking eight months to drag out the investigation; and finally by dropping the report two days before school started.
“You can’t drop a stink bomb on our school, and then tell us to focus on kids with the bad stench in our building,” Carolina said. He said he is “disappointed” in Mayo for carrying DeStefano’s water.
“The school district now is governed by a philosophy of mayor first, kids second.”
“The fact that Principal Carolina does not appear to take the investigation and the problems at his school seriously is very troubling,” schools spokeswoman Smith responded in an emailed statement Wednesday evening.
“The investigation has nothing to do with politics,” Smith said. “It grew out of a whistleblower complaint by an assistant principal at Hillhouse. It would have been irresponsible not to fully investigate the allegations and not to discipline staff who played a role in the wrongdoing. Dr. Mayo believes the discipline he, and he alone, decided on is more than fair.”
“Political attacks are nothing more than an attempt to distract from the real issues here,” added mayoral spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton Wednesday.
After reading the report, Mayo met individually with Carolina and the rest of the staff who were cited for misconduct and heard their sides of the story.
The discipline centers on a handful of students at Hillhouse, most of whom were athletes. The alleged wrongdoing did not concern standardized tests.
Case 1: Transcripts Altered
The report found that two Hillhouse football players, referred to as Student #1 and Student #2, were sent to Riverside to earn credits for summer English classes instead of taking more advanced classes at Hillhouse. The students were awarded twice as many credits for the summer courses as other students were, according to the investigation, performed by outside attorney Floyd Dugas.
Dugas said Wanda Gibbs, Riverside’s longtime principal, “misled” him as to the length of the summer program. She was suspended “for misleading the investigator about the length of day for the Riverside summer school program and for allowing two student athletes to be granted double the amount of credit usually granted for summer school classes.”
Several Hillhouse staffers were accused of tampering with the two students’ transcripts, allegedly in order to make them look more desirable for the NCAA.
The classes the two students took had been listed as “Summer School 2010 English I” and “Summer School 2010 English II” on the students’ transcripts. Hillhouse football coach Tom Dyer became aware that the transcripts had the words “summer school” on them and was concerned “it would not look right or be given appropriate weight by the NCAA,” Dyer told Dugas in an interview.
Melissa Bailey File Photo
Football Coach Tom Dyer will serve his suspension next week.
Dyer (pictured) brought the matter to Carolina, who brought Dyer to the office of Ed Scarpa, a retired teacher who had returned to Hillhouse to work part-time, to discuss the matter. Assistant Principal Nguyen was also present for the discussion, according to the report. Scarpa upgraded the description from “basic” English to “college” English, giving the false impression that the classes were different from the ones the students had already taken at Hillhouse. He deleted the reference to “summer school.”
Scarpa confessed to changing the course description and appeared to know what he was doing was wrong, Dugas found: Before making the confession, Scarpa prefaced his remarks by, “I know I will probably get fired, but,” according to Dugas.
Scarpa was punished “for his role in deleting a reference to summer school for classes taken by two student athletes and adjusting school records regarding grades, credits and courses.”
Dugas charged that Carolina knew about the grade change. In his defense, Carolina admitted he brought Dyer to Scarpa’s office to address Dyer’s concern, but claimed he did not stay “more than 30 seconds” and left the two to sort out the problem. He claimed he was unaware of any wrongdoing. And he argued that there is no distinction between a “basic” and a “college-level” course in the New Haven Public Schools; all courses are considered “college-level” on transcripts; therefore the change in course description was not substantive, he said.
In addition to asking for the course description change, Dyer further asked a guidance secretary to replace the D and D- the students had received in English at Hillhouse with the A and A+ they received at the easier summer school courses, according to the report; the guidance counselor refused that request.
Coach Dyer was disciplined “for his role in course descriptions changes and granting enhanced credits for student athletes.”
Case 2: Missed Days Of School
The report also accused Carolina of bending an attendance rule to enable one of those two same student athletes to advance to the 12th grade. The “160 day rule” specified that a student who skipped more than 20 days of school would not be allowed to move up to the next grade, according to Dugas.
Student #1 missed 45 days of school, and was nonetheless promoted to the 12th grade. In his own defense, Carolina said Hillhouse had stopped following the attendance rule during his tenure; however, Dugas produced an email that he said contradicted Carolina’s claim.
Case 3: A Missing Signature
Dugas accused Carolina of bypassing the rules for a third student, who was not a student athlete. The student, who was in danger of not passing junior year due to lack of credit, requested permission to receive three credits for work experience. Dugas accused Carolina of signing off on a form to grant the credits before the student’s work supervisor had verified that the student did the work — a violation of protocol.
Carolina argued that he directed an assistant principal, Shirley Love-Joyner, to corroborate the hours and complete the form. Love-Joyner claimed Carolina ordered her to grant the credits without verification.
It turned out the student had performed the hours needed to get the credits. Dugas charged Carolina had bent the rules for the student by skipping proper procedure.
Case 4: Grade Deleted
Mayo himself investigated the case of a fourth student, Student #4, a student-athlete seeking to play Division 1 sports in college. Mayo concluded that Carolina and others bent the rules to help the student scrape by in school.
After the student flunked Intermediate Algebra at Hillhouse, Carolina and girls basketball Coach Catrina Hawley approached math teacher Fred Redeaux and asked him to take the student in an “independent study,” according to the report. Redeaux initially declined. School staff came up with a plan to help the student make it through the year, including giving the student extra time to take tests. Redeaux eventually was “persuaded” to take on the student in his college Algebra I course at Gateway Community College.
After the student passed Redeaux’s course, Hillhouse staff later deleted the student’s failing mark in Intermediate Algebra from the transcript, “including any reference to the student ever having taken the course.” The deletion had the effect of inflating that student’s GPA, the report notes.
The report is unclear as to who deleted the grade: In one place it says Scarpa did it; in another place the report alleges Assistant Principal Nguyen (pictured) made the deletion.
Nguyen was disciplined “for his role in adjusting school records regarding grades, credits and courses.”
In these four cases, Carolina and other Hillhouse administrators “allowed a process whereby coaches and other staff influenced grades, course selection and credits for certain students. The lack of oversight over coaches and the extraordinary efforts to adjust courses mid-year for certain students created to a culture of special treatment for certain student athletes,” the school district’s press release read.
Gibbs, Scarpa and Nguyen will serve their suspensions on Thursday and Friday; Dyer will serve his on Monday and Tuesday of next week, according to Smith. They could not be reached for this story.
“The bottom line is that administrators and staff at Hillhouse and Riverside engaged in grade and credit tampering and preferential treatment of certain students,” a statement from Mayo’s office read. It noted that the problem was not “widespread” and “seemed to focus on student athletes.”
In the press release, Mayo outlined steps the school system will take “to ensure all students are afforded the same opportunities for courses and credits and that no one set of students ever receives preferential treatment.” That includes reviewing policies about credits, courses and grading; clarifying summer school protocols “to confirm that academic rigor and course credit remains consistent”; and notifying coaches that “that they are not to request grade changes, course changes or credit consideration from teachers for any student.”
Superintendent Mayo, who initially called an “emergency” school board meeting last December to publicly announce the investigation before any allegations were checked out, on Tuesday called on the district to move forward and “bring our focus back to what matter most, educating our children.”
“Mistakes were made and lessons learned from this unfortunate incident. It is time to move on,” he said.
“Bully Ball”
In a statement issued Wednesday by Carolina and Jefferson, Carolina stood his ground.
They said the investigator, Dugas, was biased against him because he donated to the mayor’s reelection campaign. Superintendent Mayo “once again has proven his willingness to follow orders from his political master,” they said.
“Not one person should have been disciplined based on this sham investigation,” Carolina and Jefferson maintained. “The discipline imposed was done for one reason and one reason only – to ensure that the Mayor’s blunder in going after Principal Carolina for political reasons was not exposed.”
In his statement, Carolina questioned why the investigation took eight months to investigate.
Carolina further accused Mayo and DeStefano of using the school system as a “patronage system” and “coercing” school employees to contribute to DeStefano’s campaigns.
“If Dr. Mayo was held accountable for all that is wrong with this District he should have been fired as superintendent a long time ago. But because he’s useful as a political hack for the Mayor’s political ambitions he conveniently remains as the Mayor’s faithful servant in the Black community,” Carolina and Jefferson wrote.
“If the Mayor and Dr. Mayo want a fight they will get one. We are not backing down one iota,” their statement reads.
“The Mayor has played bully ball for far too long and someone has to stand up to him. They have intimidated individuals to the point where there hardly any political dissent whatsoever in this city. We are tired of this and we will fight to the bitter end to clear Principal Carolina’s good name.”
Carolina hugs a supporter after his press conference.
Related stories:
• Principal Calls For NAACP Probe
• Report: Hillhouse Has Rule-Bending “Culture”
• Hillhouse Probe Stretches Out, Tops $26K
• Asst. Principal Sues Ed Board In Hillhouse Case
• Jefferson: School Official Shouldn’t Be In Room
• Hillhouse Rallies For Carolina
• New Suspect Named In Grade-Changing Probe
• Jefferson Calls For “Conflict”-Free Investigator
• He Was Where?
• A Standoff In Grade Probe
• Investigation Formally Revealed At “Emergency” School Board Meeting
• Out Of Public View, Schools Rush “Emergency” Pre-Xmas Meeting On Grade-Altering Charges
Honesty. Integrity. Character. Truth. Fairness. Justice. Fair play. Academic integrity.
These are principles we teach our young people at home. We send our children to the New Haven public schools to have those same principles taught there.
We tell our kids to study and work hard and it will pay off in the long run. Most of our students who excel and do well do just that: they work and learn and EARN their grades by their own diligence and intellect and are able to succeed beyond high school, graduate with degrees from college, and become successful in their chosen careers.
Now such principles have been subverted and publicly exposed in New Haven. Now like in the adult world, students learn its not what you know but who you know. The Hillhouse lesson is that rules are meaningless, cheating is not taken as a really serious offense, and that nice administrators will help you out if you are missing a credit or two, or if you need a higher grade. It is NOT a level playing field in school. If you are an athlete, school administrators will lie and cheat for you to help you graduate, help you get an athletic scholarship, and help you get into college to play a sport even though the likelihood that you will ever graduate from college with a degree is almost nil. You can be absent from school 30, 40, 50, 60 days and school administrators will retroactively rescind decades-old absentee rules designed to discourage high absenteeism in order for you to receive credit and graduate. A nice message to children who come to school every day or most days. Student athletes can receive double the credits for half the required work time for summer school courses. Yes, scholars, school administrators look out for student athletes in strange and unethical ways, and give them unfair advantages over other students.
Those liars and cheaters who really harm our students by their actions and who are such horrible role models are unfit to remain educators. Nevertheless, they will be suspended for two days and will be back on the job next week to mold the hearts and minds of our youth! Some of us thought that the Superintendent needed to clean house at Hillhouse and provide fresh new leadership. Now we seriously question the judgment of the Superintendent and the Board of Education.