Barrington schools don’t know what suspension case has cost

School department says it does not know what it has spent on legal services in 18-month battle with student

By Scott Pickering
Posted 11/21/19

The Barrington School Committee has been in a legal battle with the family of one student for 18 months, but does not know how much it has spent on that battle. Separately, the Rhode Island chapter …

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Barrington schools don’t know what suspension case has cost

School department says it does not know what it has spent on legal services in 18-month battle with student

Posted

The Barrington School Committee has been in a legal battle with the family of one student for 18 months, but does not know how much it has spent on that battle. Separately, the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Barrington Times each requested information about the legal costs of the ongoing case and each was told that the school department has no detail regarding its legal bills.

Director of Finance and Administration Doug Fiore wrote to the Times and stated that the school department receives only generalized bills, with descriptions like “Labor” or “Grievances” to describe the services rendered. “Discrete bills for the student matter do not exist,” Mr. Fiore wrote.

The “student matter” involves a group of boys who were suspended from Barrington Middle School for three days in March of 2018, after they took part in a lunchroom discussion about school shootings. That conversation was overheard by one girl, who told her parents, who called police, who investigated thoroughly and found no threat from any of the students.

Nonetheless, middle school Principal Andy Anderson suspended the boys, and one of them later appealed the suspension. His appeal has been upheld by both the Rhode Island Department of Education and the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, which both told the school department to vacate the suspension and remove all documentation from the student's record, but the Barrington School Committee decided to push the case further. It recently filed suit in Rhode Island Superior Court, against both the education department and the boy, seeking to have the suspension upheld.

The ACLU has been representing the family through much of the case and is continuing to represent them now. After being denied any records of the town's legal services, ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown, a Barrington resident and taxpayer, sent a follow-up letter to the school committee on Monday. Mr. Brown, who is no stranger to requesting public records from cities and towns, wrote “I cannot recall another instance where the bills were provided in such an opaque manner.”

He also questioned the school committee's attention to its fiduciary duties. 

“The school committee’s failure to ensure transparency and accountability by requiring even minimal specificity in the bills it pays is, in our view, an abdication of its fiduciary duty to the taxpayers of Barrington and an abandonment of basic financial stewardship. Frankly, we fail to comprehend a public body’s lack of interest in giving any consideration to the financial costs of the litigation it decides to pursue.”

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A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.