Many times people avoid difficult decisions saying it is legal, but the greater question is "is it moral?" Such should be the issue facing Hartford's Superintendent of Schools Beth Schiavino-Narvaez.
Schiavino-Narvaez faced off with an angry crowd of parents last night at a budget hearing. Narvaez is spearheading the effort to lay off close to 250 Hartford Schools employees, including teachers and other professionals. All of this at a time when Narvaez is greedily accepting her 3% raise , potentially increasing her salary to $270,000 next year. Narvaez's salary is currently about $257.500.
Even Mayor Luke Bronin gave back $20,000 of his salary after taking office and realizing the City was in dire financial condition. Narvaez continues to take and take, giving nothing back from her salary and at the same time willing to lay people off.
Legally, she may be entitled by her contract, but where does the morality enter in. Superintendent Narvaez, you have failed every child and parent in the Hartford School System by your handling of the Eduardo Genao matter. Not just in your handling of the situation after his arrest became public knowledge, but even prior to his arrest.
I have a hard time believing that you had no knowledge or had any indication of his pattern of predatory behavior prior to April. You promoted him and if you were doing your job you would have reviewed his personnel file and seen the previous allegations.
The fact that my FOI requests for those same documents have sat in your office for over a month indicates to me that you do not want this situation exposed further. May it be that you realize you are part of a cover up that allowed one of your immediate subordinates to prey on innocent children?
Even the e-mails I requested to and from Dr. Ngoudou through an FOI request have met a brick wall. Why? What are you hiding?
How you can morally think about laying off teachers and the "worker bees" in our schools when you keep an over priced Chief of Staff sitting next to you. The same Chief of Staff who also failed very child and parent in the Hartford Schools when she was "too busy" to look into allegations of Eduardo Genao preying on a child.
Several of those teachers could continue teaching if we got rid of an ineffective Chief Of Staff at $170,000 a year in salary plus close to another $100,000 in benefits
You should both be ashamed of yourselves every time you look in the mirror and realize the reflection looking back at you enabled a predator . And every member of the Board of Education that allows this behavior to go on hoping it will just go away should also be ashamed of themselves for violating the trust that has been placed in them..
In the meantime, the cover up continues as documents are destroyed and kept secret. A source of mine in the Superintendent's Office has advised me that Eduardo Genao's personnel folder is half as thick as it was before his arrest as documents are purged to avoid any implication or knowledge by the "higher-ups".
Dr. Narvaez and Dr Ngoudou should both be looking for alternative employment where they don't need to worry about the "moral" decisions they need to make to protect children. They clearly are not up to the job requirements
You can see more on Genao, including allegations by employees that Genao's behavior went on for years, at WVIT NBC Connecticut Troubleshooter Jill Konopka
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