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HOLDEN – Questions concerning SAD 63 Superintendent Louise Regan’s conduct are behind an emergency joint SAD 63-CSD 8 board meeting that was scheduled for Wednesday, but her lawyer says some of the board members should recuse themselves.
Wednesday’s meeting was postponed until 7 p.m. Feb. 21 due to inclement weather. The meeting is being held at the Holbrook Middle School.
Bangor lawyer Thad Zmistowski, who is representing Regan, said that since she is planning to sue five members of the SAD 63 board, they should not be allowed to investigate her conduct.
“There is a clear conflict of interest,” he said Wednesday.
Melissa Hewey, a lawyer representing the SAD 63 board, strongly opposes Zmistowski’s opinion.
“I don’t agree there would be a conflict of interest,” she said. “I don’t think you can force disqualification of board members by filing a claim against them.”
Regan plans to sue SAD 63 board members Therese Anderson, Karen Clark, Linda Goodrich, Robert Kiah and Dion Seymour, according to certified letters sent out by her lawyer on Nov. 7, and is asking for the statutory maximum of $400,000.
The next week, she also filed a Maine Human Rights Commission complaint against SAD 63 claiming she was discriminated against for being a whistle-blower.
Both legal claims are based on actions that took place in October involving recorded minutes of previous SAD 63 meetings, which Regan reported to police had been removed improperly from the central office. During SAD 63’s Oct. 22 meeting, Seymour read a letter of concern that basically stated that Regan told lies about him concerning the meeting tapes to three other board members.
In the emergency joint meeting announcement letter to Regan, issued Monday and acquired by the Bangor Daily News, Karen Clark, joint board chairwoman, stated that the superintendent “contacted several Airline CSD 8 board members and discouraged them from attending the [joint] meeting by indicating that doing so would involve them in your legal claims against SAD 63 and its board members.”
The letter also said that during the Jan. 30 CSD 8 meeting, Regan continued to discourage CSD 8 members from attending the joint meeting.
“We are very concerned that these reports, if accurate, indicate that you have deliberately interfered with the operations of the joint board in pursuit of your own self-interest,” Clark stated. “The joint board may consider whether to conduct an investigation to determine whether cause exists to terminate your contract as superintendent and whether to place you on administrative leave pending the completion of the investigation.”
In Regan’s response letter to Clark on Tuesday, also acquired by the Bangor Daily News, the superintendent stated that it’s part of her duties as an employee of the joint board to educate both groups about the pending lawsuits.
“As you are aware, SAD 63 has taken the position in certain legal proceedings that my claims may not go forward unless I first include the joint boards of SAD 63 and CSD 8,” she stated.
Those “certain legal proceedings” do not include the legal claims against the individual board members, Hewey said.
“She has tort claims going against individuals, so I don’t know how they could include the joint board,” she said.
That leaves the Maine Human Rights claim against the entire SAD 63 system, which if the state’s whistle-blower investigation proves is worthy of pursuing in the courts, could involve CSD 8, since Regan is an employee of the joint board.
“The way we see it is SAD 63, as a board, is going to do what is best as a board,” Hewey said. “They’ll be addressing [Regan’s conduct] without concern of whether or not there was a lawsuit [pending].”
CSD 8 and SAD 63 split the cost of the shared central office budget, which includes the salary of Regan. CSD 8 includes the communities of Amherst, Aurora, Great Pond and Osborn, and SAD 63 is composed of Holden, Eddington and Clifton.
CSD 8 school officials, saying they don’t want to be involved with any possible lawsuits involving Regan, voted not to attend the originally scheduled joint meeting in January, which was rescheduled for Wednesday, and now Feb. 21.
The joint board gathers every year to discuss the central office budget and evaluate the superintendent. The joint board only requires a quorum to make decision, Hewey said.
Zmistowski said when the five SAD 63 board members allowed Seymour to read his letter of concern, they created a Catch-22, basically tying their hands legally.
“It would be a violation of her [Regan’s] constitutional rights to due process to have them sit in judgment regarding her conduct in explaining her claims to her employer,” he said. “It is a Catch-22, but they put themselves there.”
nricker@bangordailynews.net
990-8190
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