A Board Of Education Letter To The Editor Many Of You Have Been Waiting For

Joe,

I am contacting you regarding your blog about the situation involving John Fredericksen and Stephanie Moses and Stacy Messick. I am neither Stephanie nor Stacy and I am not serving in any capacity as their representative. But I am someone with direct knowledge of the situation who has access to direct information and the records in the file.

I saw that eventually you brought the blog discussion back to a place of greater reasonableness and that you seem to have gained some insight into what is happening. However, based on your focus on them being forced or pressured to do things, I don’t know that you have the complete picture at all. I will not be posting to the blog, but I can fill in the blanks for you.

The timing of everything is unfortunate because the board is required by Maryland education law to make the renewal decision on Fredericksen by March 1st (4-201 of Education Article). There is no way that a hearing will occur before then in the case of Moses and Messick. All of that information will have to come to light much later. The board is determined to renew him in part because a majority of them are complicit in what has occurred in Messick and Moses’ case. It appears now that the board will vote to renew him at their February 14, 2012 meeting.

To clarify the facts, they were terminated by Fredericksen for filing a discrimination complaint against them on the basis that he treats female employees badly and creates a hostile environment for females. The board ignored their complaint and refused to investigate it at all. When he wrote them up at the end of September for senseless issues, some of them illegal, they filed their complaint with the board. A separate complaint was filed with the Wicomico County Ethics Commission against Fredericksen for abuse of prestige of office because one of the issues involved the hiring of a board member’s future son-in-law.

First, board president Willey wrote to them asking them to withdraw the complaint and indicating that their complaint was unclear. This letter from Willey dated November 2, 2011 represented that the board was seeking a clarification of their complaint. Willey signed this letter representing a board decision even though the board had never met to consider the complaint. Willey acted after only consulting Fredericksen and Fulton Jeffers. In fact, Willey ordered the board clerk to not forward the complaint to all board members. As you are aware, this violates the Maryland Open Meetings Act.

At that point the two women wrote to the entire board and clarified their complaint and sought documents under the Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) to confirm that no meeting had occurred prior to the November 2 letter from Willey. They also then made the board aware that Fredericksen had begun to retaliate against them by having their computers files seized and searched. They implored the board to intervene and to investigate the appeal before more retaliation could occur.

The board, which was now complicit for violating the Open Meetings Act, for defyingthe MPIA in response to the request to confirm a meeting, and for violating ex parte communication, began to circle the wagons. They responded illegally by trying to force the two women to fill out discrimination complaint forms rather than assign a qualified investigator. They informed the two women that they had no reason to fear retaliation. And, when pressed, they tried to assign Cathy Townsend to investigate the discrimination complaint despite protests from the two women that Townsend, as Fredericksen’s subordinate, was not a legally acceptable investigator. Townsend even indicated to Willey that she was not appropriate to investigate. To this date, the complaint has not yet been investigated in defiance of federal and state anti-discrimination laws and the board has vicarious liability under Title VII.

Subsequently, the two ladies filed a grievance with the EEOC and an appeal with the State Board. In the meantime, Fredericksen was presented with two separate MPIA requests seeking email correspondence regarding his directive to search the two women’s computers. He twice signed his name that no such email correspondence existed, thereby implying no such directive had happened. These two signed responses represent lies on his part among many others.

Evidently, he was unable to find anything on the computers to use to terminate them. At that point, which is now late December, 2011, he then sought a new vehicle to dismiss them. He used the pretext that they had had lunch in October with the union president, Dave White, where they made derogatory statements about Fredericksen. It should be noted that Dave White is perhaps Fredericksen’s only friend in the system and someone with whom he roomed with and rented a car with at a conference in Denver. White is also someone who was an unsuccessful candidate for Messick’s job at the time she received it. Finally, White is someone who his attorney with the union refers to as being out of control.

Prior to the meeting on this issue with Fredericksen, the ladies’ attorney contacted White who denied having any such conversation with them. They met with Fredericksen on December 28, 2011, informed him that they had no lunch with White in October, and told Fredericksen that White had indicated to their attorney that no conversations had occurred. They were placed on leave that day so that he could “investigate,” which defies normal process. In January, he produced written statements from White, crafted after December 28, claiming such conversation occurred in November (not October), that he gave credibility to White and not them, and that they were terminated.

That is a very accurate factual summary of what transpired. Things like this are always like an onion with too many layers. The underlying issues are at the root of the bigger outcome and involve not only Fredericksen but board members as well, including some no longer on the board. Fredericksen and certain board members frequently held private discussion where decisions were made that should have been deliberated or at least decided in public under the Open Meetings Act. In many of these cases, it involved situations that are very questionable under the Public Ethics Law as abuse of prestige of office. When Moses and Messick offered advice counter to the wishes of certain board members, secret meetings were held, illegal decisions made, and Fredericksen placed the blame on them to appease those board members and help his own cause to be reappointed. These issues are part of an ethics complaint that implicate Fredericksen and board members Willey, Wright and Fitzgerald (more below).

There are some cases that are easy enough for you to verify. One is the case of the daughter of the senior vice-president of Perdue where Michelle Wright worked. She was a first year teacher in school year 2010-11 who was submitted for non-renewal as a probationary teacher. The standard process was used where the recommendation from the principal was reviewed in committee by Fredericksen, the two assistant superintendents, Moses and Messick, and the appropriate school director. It was sent to the board and acted on by the board in April 2011 along with six other non-renewed probationary teachers.

When Michelle Wright became aware of what the board, including her, had done, she lost it. Wright actually told the teacher to file an appeal with the board. When the stickiness of that process became clear, a secret meeting was held with Fredericksen and board members Wright, Holloway, and Willey. Following that meeting, Handy, Townsend, and Moses were called in by Fredericksen and told to ignore the appeal and to rehire the senior vice-president’s daughter for the coming school year. No application process was needed or used, just an order to restore her to a vacancy. She was placed at Beaver Run where she remains. In other words, because Wright was personally affected, three boards members met with Fredericksen in an illegal non-quorum and overturned a legal decision of the full board based on the recommendation of a principal, director, and superintendent’s staff, ordered a hiring outside of the process all other applicants go through, and restored employment without proper action. No other non-renewed probationary teacher gets such treatment.

Another situation easy to verify involves Fitzgerald’s future son-in-law becoming an special ed assistant. This is the issue that caused Fredericksen to go after Moses in late September. The son-in-law was interviewed by a principal of a Title I school who failed to confirm an application on file. The principal forwarded a job offer at which point Human Resources noted that an application was not on file. They worked with him to get it on file and then recognized that he wasn’t qualified under No Child Left Behind to work in a Title I school. Within three hours, he was offered another position at a non-Title I school which he declined. Moses reported the situation to Fredericksen immediately who offered no concern with how it was handled.

One week later, Fitzgerald became involved and Fredericksen made the situation Moses’ issue. As a board member, Fitzgerald met with staff members to voice his displeasure over his future son-in-law not having the job he wanted. Fredericksen then ordered the Director of Special Ed and the Comptroller to create non-budgeted positions for the son-in-law so that he would have a choice to select from for a newly created position just for him, even though he had turned down Moses’ offer out of spite or frustration. An email exists confirming this action of Fredericksen. He is now employed at Williards in a job created outside of the public budget process just for him. An ethics complaint was filed on November 14, 2011 with the Wicomico County Ethics Commission. To date, no known action has occurred on the complaint.

There are many other issues that can and will be discussed but these are some of the more severe issues that directly involved board members, included violations of Open Meetings, and resulted in the board’s majority circling around Fredericksen, at least for now. There obviously will be more situations to come out in a hearing and/or trial.

As usual with people like Fredericksen there is more to it than what first appears. Who knows the level of background check that the board did before hiring him in the first place, but he left Minnesota as Assistant Superintendent in the middle of a major dispute involving a community action group and his then boss, superintendent Susan Hintz. The issue at hand there was budget reduction and school consolidation, but the violations of process are eerily similar: violations of open meetings/secret meetings with non-quorums, bizarre or inappropriate relationships with board members, defiance and dishonesty on public information requires, and perjury in general.
Fredericksen left Minnesota in the middle of that dispute and ended up here. The board there, like this one circled around Hintz, actually gave her a new contract with a golden parachute, and left her retire the next year and collect the lump sum. In the next election cycle, three of the board members were unseated and the superintendent was gone, suddenly working for the consulting firm involved in the contested issue. If you track what occurred there versus how Fredericksen operates here, apparently he learned a lot. Accusations of improper relationships with board members, delay and lack of compliance with the MPIA, lying about events, holding illegal, non-quorum discussions with board members to make decisions of personal interest to them. That community group had to sue in order to get the release of documents under the Minnesota public information law. Emails show that Hintz and staff ordered the deletion of emails on the contested action. They also show the intentional non-disclosure of information to the public (enclosed emails of interest). Furthermore, Fredericksen lied in an affidavit about the date of board budget action (court order enclosed).

Sadly, Wicomico County is about to be subject to four more years of the same once the board takes action to renew him on February 14, 2012. You have said that you will clarify the picture when the time is right. I am sending this to you so that you can do so. The time is right now.

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