Montville — With a judge granting another month-long continuance in the case against school administrators accused of failing to report classroom slapboxing last fall, their attorneys pledged to take the fight before a jury if necessary and school officials buckled down for what could be months without a resolution.
State police in April arrested Superintendent Brian Levesque, 46, high school Principal Jeffrey Theodoss, 64, and Assistant Principal Tatiana Patten, 59, charging each with failing to report suspected abuse according to the state’s mandated reporter law.
The charges followed investigations by the Department of Children and Families and the State’s Attorney’s office, and came a week after the arrest of 23-year-old Ryan Fish, a former substitute teacher who is accused of supervising a handful of slapboxing matches in his class last fall.
The administrators pleaded not guilty in June and are due back in court Aug. 22. They all declined to comment on the record before their court appearances Monday.
The administrators’ attorneys argue the cases should be dismissed, noting no student was severely injured in the fights.
“From our standpoint, we don’t feel a crime was committed,” said Dado Coric, Patten’s lawyer, outside the Norwich Superior Court room on Monday. “Either we come to some resolution with prosecutors and get a dismissal, or we have a trial and let the jury decide.”
Coric added the case could take several months.
Coric and Theodoss’ attorney, Richard Brown, say the administrators would rather fight their cases than file for the state’s Accelerated Rehabilitation program, which is available to defendants of certain crimes if the court believes it’s unlikely they’ll commit crimes in the future. AR requires no admission of guilt but typically includes conditions such as counseling or community service. While completing AR dismisses all charges, attorneys say it wouldn’t help the administrators’ job prospects because their reputations have been tarnished online.
Meanwhile, the administrators remain on paid leave. Their salaries, combined with the salary of a potential assistant principal the Board of Education might hire to alleviate staffing concerns created by the situation, total more than half a million dollars.
School officials say Levesque is in the second year of a three-year contract with a salary of $178,231. Theodoss’s 2018-19 salary is $157,551 and Patten’s is $129,666.
Board of Education Chairman Robert Mitchell indicated that if the cases were dismissed, it’s likely the administrators could keep their jobs.
“It’s something we’d have to talk over with our attorney,” he said. “We will do what is legally required of us. We have to be careful not to open the board up to improper termination. Plus, these are good people.”
Mitchell described the continuance as frustrating, saying school officials are “hoping for a resolution.”
“But the schools will open and we’ll take care of the students,” he said. “We have great staff in place. We’ll survive this.”
Levesque, who has maintained he was only aware of one incident at the time of Fish’s firing, tried to terminate Patten this spring. Levesque claimed Patten, who was placed on leave in January, learned of the classroom fighting before he did and “failed to act on it in a timely way.”
Patten’s labor attorney, Jim Parenteau, responded that the attempted firing was “mired in illegal gender discrimination,” and an arbitration hearing before the Board of Education was called off in May.
The school board, which postponed its regular meeting last week to await Monday’s court appearance, will meet at Montville High School at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 31.
Mitchell and acting Superintendent Laurie Pallin noted the school board recently discussed potentially hiring an assistant principal, at a salary of more than $100,000, to serve as an administrator at the high school’s Palmer Building. Palmer offers project-based learning, internships and special education services.
The previous principal at Palmer, Heather Sangermano, currently serves as high school principal in place of Theodoss. The situation leaves Palmer with a “teacher in charge” who’s occasionally assisted by Sangermano, but the building has no full-time trained administrator, Pallin said.
Fish, who is due back in court Wednesday, was fired in October a few days after cellphone videos of a classroom fight were emailed to Levesque. Attorneys say students involved were disciplined. But state police said the administrators should have reported the fighting to authorities, who started investigating the case in December when a student told a DCF social worker he was beaten up at the high school.
Coric, Brown, Levesque’s lawyer Christian Sarantopoulos and the State’s Attorney’s office said the case was put on hold Monday as Norwich-based prosecutor Christa Baker is working on the murder trial of Dante A. Hughes.
Brown noted defense lawyers requested copies of the fighting videos and he expected prosecutors to provide them by the defendants’ next court appearances.