Mayor Orders Suspended BOE Employees Back To Work

On Friday, two Board of Education employees, a cafe worker and a custodian, were put on paid adminstrative leave by the BOE.

Monday, Mayor Sebastian Giuliano sent a letter to Superintendent of Schools Michael Frechette informing him that the suspensions were outside of regulations.

"No supervisor of the City has any authority to place an employee our of work on any type of leave, especially discipline, without approval from the Mayor.  In fact a supervisor only has the authority to administer an oral or written warning on their own accord.  While a supervisor may administer up to a two (2) day suspension, they may only do so after consultation with the Personnel Director."

According to Giuliano, paid administrative leave is reserved for serious workplace violations leading to termination.

"When we asked, we were told they were stealing," Giuliano said in a phone interview Thursday.  "The police were not notified.  They have nothing in their reports.  If it's a crime, they should have been arrested."

On Thursday (June 10) the city Personnel Director and the mayor advised the Board of Education to return to work.

"We told them if anyone interferes with them trying to do their job, they (the person or persons preventing them from working) would be arrested," Giuliano said.  "I heard that initially they were advised to leave school property, but were eventually allowed to do their jobs."

Giuliano has not spoken with Superintendent Michael Frechette or Business Manager Nancy Haynes who is reported to be the central office employee who issued the suspensions.  The Eye has a call into the Superintendent's office but at the time of this report, the call has not been returned.

Attorneys for the city and for the BOE are currently in negotiations to attempt to reach a settlement about who is in charge of payroll for non-certified employees hired through the city but reporting to the BOE.

"Our attorneys spend hours in meetings hashing these very things out," Giuliano said.  "Then we come out of the meeting to find out they've pulled another boneheaded stunt.  I try not to be cynical, but I wonder if they do these things so we have to spend hours talking about a specific incident so we never get around to anything substantive.

"These are classified employees, with certain rights," Giuliano said.  "They have due process rights, they have property rights when it comes to their jobs and they have rights under the contracts we've signed with them."

Giuliano called these incidents "a distraction" and likened them to peace negotiations during the Vietnamese war.

"They called us to Paris and spent months talking about the shape of the table to be used during the talks," Giuliano said.  "All the while we stopped bombing, they were regrouping to attack us.  I think the same thing's going on here."