AMHERST — An Office of Civil Rights complaint has been filed against the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District following a recent decision by the superintendent to pass over a search committee’s top choices for the middle school principal position.
Christine Harmon, a member of the search committee and parent of three children in the district, said she recently filed the complaint out of concern that Superintendent Michael Morris is using a hardship waiver process, which is allowed by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, to appoint teachers who don’t have appropriate licenses to principal and vice principal positions.
“In the case of the middle school principal search, he attempted to use the hardship waiver process to discriminate against an African-American principal, which I thwarted and then filed with the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights to ensure he never abused the hardship waiver process again,” Harmon said.
The two candidates recommended were the African-American man and a Latina woman. But rather than interviewing either candidate, Morris instead decided to keep Patty Bode on for a third year, even though she does not currently have the administrative license required by the state department of education. Ultimately, Bode declined the one-year position.
The Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee met in executive session at the middle school May 18 to discuss strategy with respect to the Harmon complaint, which it considers litigation.
The executive session was attended by Morris, Debbie Westmoreland, assistant to the superintendent, an attorney for the school district and six members of the School Committee, all of whom voted to enter the private setting. These included the five Amherst representatives, Chairman Eric Nakajima, Peter Demling, Allison McDonald, Anastasia Ordonez and Kerry Spitzer, and Leverett representative Audra Goscenski. Pelham’s two representatives and Shutesbury’s lone representative were not in attendance.
Nakajima said that the committee was doing an executive session because he found “that an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigation position of the committee.”
Harmon said she is concerned about a high number of hardship waivers from licenses.
But Morris said in an email that there is no evidence Amherst is out of line with other districts across the state.
“All three of our districts are above the state averages of educators working with full licensure,” Morris said.
In fact, 98.8 percent of teachers in the regional schools are licensed, compared to 97.2 percent statewide.
The question of licensed staff at schools came up at a session of annual Town Meeting, when former Vira Douangmany Cage raised the question to Morris.
“We’ve consistently tried to find licensed educators and we’re doing a review right now of the licenses of all educators and administrators because we want to tighten that up,” Morris said. “I think we endeavor to do better in the future in ensuring licensed educators in all of our classrooms and schools.”
Whether state education officials are working with the district or investigating the use of waivers is unclear.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
