A Little More Light On Fredericksen And The Board

Joe,

Thank you for bringing a large portion of the truth to light regarding Fredericksen and the majority of his board. I am not a fan of blogs in general because there tends to be little reasonableness but in this case you have provided a factual account of the situation and a balanced moderation to the posts. It is interesting to see the responses and what the public generally believes. Some of it is close to the truth, some of it contains a hint of the truth, and some of it is simply way off base. In the situation of Fredericksen and the board it is necessary to use this forum because the level of incompetence and collusion among him and the board is too deep to address in other ways.

I found it funny that some people posting assumed that I was writing to defend of Moses and Messick. That's not the bigger purpose here. What Fredericksen has done to them, and what the board has allowed him to do with them, is maybe the worst example, mainly because they are women who stood up to him, but it is much larger than only that situation. If anything, that is a case where eventually Fredericksen and those board members involved will pay, and probably quite literally. Either the State Board will take up the case and assign an administrative law judge to do the fact-finding that the board has refused, the EEOC will enforce an investigation, or it will reach a federal courtroom where those two women then will have subpoena power, and the whole house will tumble down on Fredericksen, Willey, Wright, Fitzgerald, and the others if it hasn’t already.

In that case, the great irony is that the board has chosen to put their eggs in Fredericksen’s basket and their trust in Jeffers’ legal advice. Under the Title VII anti-discrimination law, the board as the employer will have all of the liability and Fredericksen none. They may endorse his incompetence and lying but they will end up accountable. I suppose that is poetic justice. But once that case gets to trial each board member, Fredericksen, and others will also be held personally liable for punitive damages under a Section 1983 claim. Oddly enough, basic incompetence is essentially a legal defense for an attorney so Jeffers will escape while the board goes down.

As that record becomes clearer to the public, people will be even more amazed not only by the details but by the supreme incompetence that will be revealed on behalf Fredericksen, Jeffers, and the board. Those two women wrote to the board through a series of letters and begged and pleaded for the board to appropriately investigate their discrimination complaint, to stop the retaliation, and to seek advice from an actual labor attorney who is current on school and labor law. At one point, Moses and Messick even cited large sections of the EEOC guidance manual for employers on processing and investigating discrimination claims. They begged in about four different letters for the board to handle it so that they would not have to go to outside agencies. The board arrogantly refused. As you know, I don’t write anything to you that I can’t prove through documents. Some of this sequence will be attached below.

As the first view of incredible incompetence let’s stick with a few more examples from their case for now. Who other than Fredericksen, having had a gender discrimination complaint filed against him, would proceed to retaliate by searching computers, then cook up a lie with his only pal Dave White to fire the two complaining women, and then replace them with two male acting substitutes in Middleton and Greenwood? As if that’s not enough, who other than Fredericksen would take those steps and then pay the two men more than the two women he wrongly terminated? Then again, if you need some expert advice on dangerous liaisons and sticky relationships at the board office, who better to have at your side than Middleton?

As for the board, or at least Willey? I told you before that Willey initially wrote a response to Moses and Messick representing a board decision from a board meeting that never occurred and that Willey ordered the board clerk to keep their complaint from the rest of the board. It gets better. When Jeffers finally wrote a letter on behalf of the whole board instead of just Willey acting in cahoots with Fredericksen and Jeffers, he, the attorney, mischaracterized their complaint as sexual harassment instead of gender discrimination. The two women actually had to write back, essentially to the board’s attorney, and explain discrimination law categories for complaint. At that point, Jeffers wrote a new letter for Willey to sign simultaneously thanking them for clarifying their discrimination complaint and refusing to receive it for not following the board’s complaint procedure (enclosed). From there it gets even more amazing.

Moses and Messick then had to write back to Willey (Jeffers by extension) and explain that the board’s discrimination procedure requires that the complaint be filed with either the board’s Title VII or Title IX coordinator or with the supervisor of the alleged discriminator. Guess who were the board’s Title VII and Title IX coordinators? You got it; Moses and Messick. Since Fredericksen was the alleged abuser as superintendent and everyone else reports to him, they had written to his supervisor, which is the board. Jeffers actually wrote another letter for Willey to sign thanking the two women for clarifying and explaining their own policy to them, but then assigning Townsend to investigate, even though she is Fredericksen’s subordinate and under his control (enclosed). The women protested that Townsend was an inappropriate investigator and again provided EEOC guidance and it was at that point that suddenly Jeffers and the board stopped taking their free legal advice, dug in around Fredericksen, and ultimately dismissed their claim without ever conducting an investigation.

So how about Townsend? She also is not clean in this whole thing. Moses and Messick reported directly to her and they made a point to keep her updated and to appeal to her for help. They provided her the same EEOC guidance that the board received. Her initial reaction was that she agreed and would go to Willey. Then, suddenly Fredericksen was in China, because if our school system is failing under his leadership and the board’s governance, it makes sense to dash off to China. The board brought in Townsend to private session to fill in for him while they discussed the complaint. This violates ex parte communication rules for administrative procedures. Moses and Messick raised this concern to the board and from that point on Townsend lost her sense of right and joined the board. She too will be personally liable when this ugly mess makes it to court someday.

For those now anointing Handy in their posts, her integrity perhaps is even more questionable than Townsend’s. Handy observed and was subject to as many of the demeaning gender remarks from Fredericksen as anyone. She complained throughout his four years about his sick array of derogatory statements about women in general, his treatment of women, and his comments about him being privileged as a tall, white man. She sat in the room with him on more than one occasion where he attacked Messick’s gender and age, and when he left the room commented about how awful it was and how she would testify when needed. Instead she was right at the table with Fredericksen at the end as he was creating his Dave White lie for termination.

Not that Fitzgerald needs more for his own indictment but he also was well tuned in to Fredericksen’s treatment of women, if not from firsthand observation than from Townsend (more below). In September and October of 2011, Fitzgerald who was fed up with Frederiscksen’s treatment of female employees personally met with and interviewed four secretaries with whom Fredericksen had regular contact. Two were employees in the central office and two were recently retired. Based on that information in October, 2011 Fitzgerald met personally with Fredericksen and chewed him out for his treatment of women. When the Moses and Messick case broke the very next month and their gender discrimination complaint was filed, Fitzgerald was one of the leading votes in violating the EEOC guidance and ultimately dismissing the complaint without investigation.

And that’s not all for Townsend. Townsend’s family has a lifelong relationship with Fitzgerald. Therefore, it will be no surprise that it was Townsend who personally took over the job creation and special hiring for Fitzgerald’s future son-in-law. It was Townsend who took it upon herself to personally meet with the boy, give him his special job created just for him, let him know they would give him priority for future openings over any other candidates, and authorize the budget adjustment necessary to create a non-budgeted job for him out of thin air. As always, if it’s not true and provable, it doesn’t get shared with you. Enclosed is Townsend’s personal email confirming all of these details. She even makes a cute little joke at the end about making sure he gets paid the right amount so that it doesn’t “open another can of worms! :-)”

For some other examples that shed some broader light on Fredericksen and his board that go way beyond the Moses and Messick case, here’s an extreme case of incompetence. Enclosed is a letter from the State Superintendent to Fredericksen, which Fredericksen actually emailed out to about 20 people. Fredericksen asked about reducing the school week to four days and the State Superintendent wrote back to point out to him that the school system is failing and that perhaps he and the board might spend some time focusing on instruction. It’s remarkable. As if it’s not bad enough to get a letter like that from the State Superintendent, he is actually abnormal enough to email it out. The most damning quote is “it would be incumbent on the local board to review all the research on this topic and ensure themselves that (it) does not shortchange students.” Or, “I am sure you and the local board will consider paramount the instructional needs of the students of Wicomico County when you make your decisions.” Wow, an admonishment from the State Superintendent and he not only doesn’t understand it as such, he circulates it.

Fredericksen’s extremely unusual relationship with Dave White, the union president, has already come up including their very strange trip to Denver where they shared a room and a rental car. If anyone is curious as to why the board was willing to back up his reliance on White when terminating Moses and Messick, despite White’s lack of credibility, it may be worth knowing that Wright was the other person who went on the Denver trip. For another glimpse at this bizarre relationship, Fredericksen met with White and at White’s request, actually agreed to prevent the central office staff from sitting in with principals at employee conferences where the union was present to represent the employee. Some things you just can’t close your eyes to so the administrator union immediately rose up and wrote to Fredericksen demanding that he reverse that decision and allow principals to have management with them in union-led conferences. The enclosed letter to Fredericksen is priceless in that it is about as nicely as you can write “have you completely lost your mind?” Interestingly, if the board wants a second opinion as to whether Fredericksen and White are more credible than Moses and Messick, it would seem that the administrator union has decided. “We recognize the value of representation by the Human Resources Department in such situations and appreciate all they do to protect us when faced with issues in which WCEA is involved.” Perhaps the fact that the superintendent is part of management and not part of the union was not covered at the Denver conference, or maybe that session was during a rental car trip.

Now, to get back to board member ethics let's take an example from the public responses to the blog that people are trying to figure out. That is the case of the employee on leave since September for mismanagement or possible theft of public funds. The situation makes more sense if you understand Willey’s connection. The program is not actually a school fund but a non-profit organization that for some reason the board runs the money through board accounts (but that’s a subject for a separate blog). Willey sits on the organization’s board of directors. The funds were discovered to be mismanaged with some money missing between September and November. The employee case was ready for action in the fall but at the point Willey exerted his influence on Fredericksen and it was pulled and has remained so with the employee on paid leave ever since.

And lastly a Wright story. This one is the situation where she lost it (that’s a theme) with a senior staff member over the decline in the number of field trips to the pumpkin patch at Wright’s family market. While there is certainly no ethics violation for field trips occurring to Wright's Market so long as it is one option for schools among others, her rant was about the decline in trips after Wright's Market had invested so much money into the setup and into adding educational components and how more schools needed to sign up. This is a clear line crossed under a conflict of interest in the Public Ethics Law. So, if Wright resigns it surely won’t be because of the ethics disclosure form.

For now let’s leave the other four board members alone. They still have a chance to try and salvage something of the school system. Let’s give them that chance. Make no mistake, they are not guiltless and they are complicit even if by their inaction. Some may cry in church and others may whisper in stores, but so far none have had the integrity, character, conscience, or will to do something right for the sake of the system. One theme in the blog that I whole-heartedly agree with is that someone should be looking at the end of this process and seeing 14,000 children. Obviously, that isn’t Fredericksen, Townsend, Handy, Willey, Wright, or Fitzgerald. They look around and see each other and I suppose maybe Dave White.

That leaves Elmore, Dodd, Bly, and Chase. Maybe they’ll surprise us and demonstrate a conscience, a sense of responsibility and leadership after all. Maybe they’ll vote no before March 1st. Maybe they’ll call for an external ethics investigation of board members. Maybe they’ll request the State Board to appoint an independent investigator to review the unheard discrimination complaint. Maybe they’ll seek a second opinion from Jeffers’ associated law office or another approved firm. Maybe they’ll write to the legal services administration for local boards of education, which is free, and ask about how to properly process discrimination complaints. Maybe they’ll join the State Superintendent in asking if anyone could spare a few moments from lying, conniving, getting rid of those willing to stand up, getting friends and family jobs, protecting their own interests, and floating stupid ideas, to consider the fact that our school system is one of five in the state designated as a failing school system. Maybe they’ll send an anonymous survey to employees in central office and ask about Fredericksen’s leadership and if they now live in a climate of fear each day. Maybe they’ll sit down with Fredericksen and ask about Minnesota, violations of the PIA (here and there), false statements in affidavits and letters he signed, emails and orders to search computers, and why no one except him and Wright, including the local and state unions, trusts White. Perhaps what happens in Denver, shouldn’t stay in Denver. Perhaps four board members with a chance at saving their own integrity and credibility as well as our school system will rise to the occasion and honor the oath they swore. Perhaps no one will use the lame excuse of an ethics disclosure form in order to escape their sworn responsibilities. A few of them might sleep better at night when they do.