Report: Stamford Public Administration Failed in High School Teacher Sex Case

A five-month investigation into the circumstances of how the administration of Stamford Public Schools and Stamford High School handled reports that a teacher was having an affair with a student has concluded with a 136-page report that describes massive administrative failures in handling the situation.

The investigation was conducted by a six-member team from the Hartford law firm of Pullman & Comley after some school and city officials said they were uncertain whether Schools Superintendent Winifred Hamilton was able to conduct impartial review of her office.

The review stems from the conviction of former Stamford High English teacher Danielle Watkins on sexual assault charges stemming from a school year long relationship with one student and her providing marijuana to that student and another. She is now serving a five-year prison term. Two school administrators former principal Donna Valentine and former assistant principal Roth Nordin were granted accelerate rehabilitation for failing to report the incident to police, as required by state law.

The investigation included the obtaining of records from the school district, the state’s Department of Children and Families, the Stamford Police Department and the school board’s law firm of Shipman & Goodwin.

The investigative team reviewed more than 400,000 emails from the accounts of staff, teachers and administrators who the team determined were relevant to the investigation. The team also interviewed or spoke with 48 persons who had either direct or indirect knowledge of the events in this case including superintendent Hamilton; Dr. Michael Fernandes, the Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education; Dr. Stephen Falcone, the Executive Director of Human Resources; Dr. Donna Valentine, the SHS Principal; Matthew Forker, Angela Thomas-Graves and Roth Nordin, all SHS assistant principals and SHS teachers, staff and security personnel, according to the report.

The report describes failures at every level -- the Stamford High administration, Hamilton’s office and the board attorneys at Shipman & Goodwin. It identifies “systemic failures” against the background of a school and district suffering from significant administrative turnover, inadequate training and a widely held belief that dissent or criticism was not tolerated by the district’s senior administrators.

The report concluded that school administrators were aware of suspicions that Watkins was engaged in a relationship with the student in 2013; that the mother of one of the victims complained to school administrators that her son was frequently absent from class and smoking pot in school; that students alerted a school security guard of the relationship, who in turn notified school administrators; and that administrators failed to properly review and investigate the many allegations of inappropriate behavior on the part of Watkins.

The team concluded that failures were, according to the report, due to:

“(1) continual administrative turnover and leadership that was repeatedly characterized by staff and administrators as “dysfunctional;”

(2) a confusing and inconsistent chain of command that allows SHS administrators to claim that responsibility for responding to, and correcting teacher or pupil misconduct, rests with other administrators;

(3) a strained and confusing relationship with the Superintendent’s Office with respect to teacher discipline which allows both the School and District administration to claim that the other is responsible for failure to respond properly to the allegations of misconduct;

(4) a pervasive attitude that the issues giving rise to this investigation involved questions of “teacher performance” and not student safety;

(5) a dedicated and committed faculty that is still troubled by the after-effects of the 2011 SHS administrative shakeup that resulted in the involuntary transfer of three assistant principals; and

(6) the failure of certain staff, teachers and key administrators to fully understand and appreciate and discharge their obligations as mandated reporters; and

(7) the insistence on using euphemisms such as “inappropriate relationship” or “relationship irregularity” to describe the misconduct, thereby failing to explicitly confront or acknowledge the gravity of the allegations and harm to the victim. “

The report also concluded that those failures were coupled with continual turnover in the central office administration and the perception that any criticism would not be tolerated.

The full report can be found here.

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Photo: Stamford High School. Credit: Stamford Public Schools.