On September 1, the Gazette received the following anonymous request in the mail.
Dear Hampton Gazette:
In reading the August minutes from the Parish Hill Board of Education meeting, I am writing asking that you follow up with a possible ethics concern. I was surprised to read in those minutes that Board member Stephanie Harrington is a Parish Hill Head Coach, I assume paid. This appears to be in direct violation of CGS 10-232 which states that a board member may not be compensated by the board upon which they sit. I believe the statute also states that if a board member is employed in violation of this statute, then their seat becomes automatically vacated.
If indeed Ns. Harrington is being paid to be a coach and also a Board of Education member, this appears to be a conflict of interest and should not be allowed. I wonder how long this has been going on for and why was this not caught and addressed by current administration and remaining board members.
I hope the Gazette will do due diligence in investigating this possible breach of ethics.
Thank you,
A Concerned Citizen
The Gazette did exercise due diligence and the Editor attended the September meeting of the Regional District #11 Board of Education to ask the question, fully expecting that the answer would be – no. But it wasn’t. After several attempts to elicit a response, the question – have you ever been compensated for any position at Parish Hill while serving on the school board? – was answered in the affirmative.
Though Ms. Harrington stated she no longer served as a coach, a claim Superintendent Ken Henrici later confirmed, the website on the night of the meeting, September 18, listed her as the Middle School Boys and Girls Cross Country Head Coach, and the August 21 Minutes of the Board of Education congratulated “Head Coach Stephanie Harrington for being awarded the Robert Ford Athletic Grant for $1,000.”
Elected to the Chaplin Elementary School Board of Education in 2003, Ms. Harrington has served simultaneously on the RD #11 Board of Education since 2012. She has also served on tri-town committees, including the Central Office Committee and the recent committee which was formed to study the advisability of dissolving the regional school district after the majority vote of a tri-town referendum mandated a study of district dissolution. It was Ms. Harrington who provided the financial information to the committee which became the major impetus for their decision against district dissolution. Though residents questioned the accuracy of the calculations, the committee in their written explanation of their recommendation stated “there is insufficient evidence of cost savings presented to justify dissolution of the district”.
The anonymous author of the letter was also correct in the language of the statute. CGS 10-232 does indeed stipulate that “no member of the board of education shall be employed for compensation by the board of which he or she is a member in any position in the school system. If any member of such board is employed contrary to the provisions of this section, the office to which he or she was elected or appointed shall become vacant.”
Though the Gazette has been unable to obtain information on when Ms. Harrington resigned from the position, how long she served as a Coach, or how much she was paid, the specifics of her employment will be pursued and reported in a subsequent article.
Dayna McDermott