A law firm tasked with investigating misconduct allegations against Pittsfield, Massachusetts school district employees has been given another month to complete its work. After Pittsfield High School Dean of Students Lavante Wiggins was arrested on federal charges of alleged large-scale cocaine trafficking in December, rumors and claims about other administrators at the school exploded on social media. Public outcry triggered the school committee to launch its own investigation into the matter. So far, at least one of the five past and present staffers under scrutiny has been fully cleared and since returned to work at the high school. The city’s school committee voted Wednesday to extend its contract with Springfield’s Bulkley Richardson & Gelinas through the end of April. Committee Chair Dr. William Cameron spoke with WAMC about his faith in the investigation and why he does not intend to make its findings public once it’s completed.
CAMERON: Well, the investigators are not telling us what they're going to conclude in advance of submitting the report. We have gotten the one for one of the positions at Pittsfield High School. I'm not going to mention whose it was, it's been printed in the press, and I think we've had enough people's names smeared so that I don't want to continue that practice by mentioning whom we were investigating, but we have not received final word on others. But I expect that that will be the case within the next- Well, it'll certainly be the case by April 30th, and I anticipate it'll be the case much sooner than that.
WAMC: Now, as far as messaging to the community, there's been obviously a lot of ongoing- A sense of frustration with this process, and I think you guys have weathered a lot of negative criticism. Do you feel like this process is going as well as it could go?
Yes, I do. We secured the services of an outside firm, a firm that has had no prior relationship either with the city of Pittsfield – that's with the capital C, that is the government – or with the Pittsfield public schools in order to have an objective review of what evidence there was for the allegations that were being made. And this has been a very thorough review, and I'm satisfied that this is as good as we would get. Frankly, I think that these employees have been vetted better than some who've been appointed to cabinet positions in the US government. So, I'm satisfied with the work that we've seen so far.
Now, as far as whatever final delivery comes out of this investigation, will they be released publicly once they're finalized?
No, they will not. This is on the advice of legal counsel. The information that we have based on the one on the first report that we received has unedited comments by people who were interviewed, and I believe that we would- There would be no good purpose served by seeing what people think about other people, or anything of that sort. I think it would be an invitation to further conflict and controversy. So, we are not going to release the reports, but the outcomes, where there is an outcome to be released will, in fact, be made known.
Are you concerned at all about fairly foreseeable concerns about the legitimacy of the reports, if they're not going to be released publicly?
Sure. We're being attacked by people all the time, people who have- I don't know, there's a reluctance by many people to be objective about this, and if what we're doing is not satisfactory, then I'm sorry, but that's the way, that's- We're acting, as I said, on the advice of legal counsel here.
Are you hopeful that at the end of this process next month, this will close the door on these conversations for the foreseeable future?
Well, I would hope so. I mean, there are people who keep appearing at school committee meetings saying that it doesn't matter whether the charges were unsubstantiated, we still should have taken draconian action. It's rather like ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ where the Red Queen says, sentence first, verdict later. I'm not convinced that this will satisfy a certain segment of the population. I think that people are simply mistrustful of the entire enterprise, and the fact that there was so much credence given to initial reports made on – I don't know what the platform was, Instagram, I guess – where the person who was making those allegations has now admitted she had no evidence for it whatsoever, she just overheard it from other people- And the fact that that's been taken as significant evidence of wrongdoing, that speaks for itself, it seems to me.
As far as concerns from current students at PHS about the first reinstatement- I mean, do you foresee this being a snowballing effect of other possible reinstatements generating similar concerns from students?
It's possible. I don't know. I don't know- We were never told what it is that's the basis of the of the concern. And as I said, we've had other we've had adults come to the microphone and basically make the same kinds of allegations. We were told by someone the other night that absence of evidence is effectively proof of guilt. So, with that frame of mind, I wouldn't be surprised at whatever happens.
