Parent In Long-Running Dispute

Responds To School Board

By Eliza Hallabeck

While resident Susan McGuinness Getzinger said she gave the Board of Education permission last Tuesday, October 11, to announce costs associated with issues she has brought before the board, she said this week she did not give the board members permission to discuss specifics of her case, including her child’s health.

“We need a Board of Ed that knows the policies and doesn’t get walked over by attorneys and the administration that they are supposed to be watching to make sure that they go by the policies and laws that are already set up,” said Ms Getzinger this week. “I have all the laws working for me, all the policies working for me, but because of the setup, truth is not getting out there.”

At the Board of Education’s regular meeting October 4, Ms Getzinger asked the board to disclose the costs associated with multiple issues she has brought before it since 2009 during public participation. Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson supplied the number later during the meeting as roughly $42,000.

Ms Getzinger left the meeting early to take care of her children at home, and was not at the meeting when the school board took up the topic of the costs.

This week, Ms Getzinger described how in September of 2009 she started the process that would lead her to where she is now with the board. That school year her family was relatively new in town, and she had children attending multiple schools, which meant different bus schedules. A week before her kindergartener began attending St Rose of Lima School, she had an older child attending a local public school, which began classes at an earlier date. Ms Getzinger said she asked the bus driver on that route to pick her child up in their driveway instead of at the end of the street, where Ms Getzinger would later argue before the school board it was unsafe for her children and the other neighborhood students to wait for school transportation.

After speaking with a neighbor, Ms Getzinger called the school district to verify her kindergartener would be riding the school bus the following week, and while on the phone Ms Getzinger asked when her child would be picked up in her driveway. Then-transportation director Tony DiLonardo, whose position in the district has since been cut, said her child would not be picked up in the driveway.

“That’s when I said, ‘Well the other bus does it.’ And he got all mad and hung up and told the other bus driver not to do it,” said Ms Getzinger.

Then Ms Getzinger said she called to speak to the superintendent to ask for a meeting at the bus stop to review the conditions where the children stand for the bus.

“To this day, we have not had a meeting with them at the bus stop,” said Ms Getzinger.

She later called the Newtown Police Department to ask for a meeting to have the police look at the bus stop and asked Dr Robinson to attend.

Later, Ms Getzinger said Dr Robinson allowed for the bus to stop backing up at the bus stop and instead to turn around in the cul-de-sac of Little Brook Lane, but the bus stop was never moved.

“They refused to pick up our kids as they passed our homes,” Ms Getzinger said.

Ms Getzinger said she then contacted Dr Robinson to ask why the bus stop was not added, and Dr Robinson said it would not be added without giving reason, according to Ms Getzinger.

Hearing

Ms Getzinger then requested a transportation hearing with the district.

In January 2010, then-school board chair Lillian Bittman and members Richard Gaines and William Hart, the current school board chair, presided over a transportation hearing between Ms Getzinger and the district’s Transportation Department, represented by Mr DiLonardo, Dr Robinson, and Kathy Hydeck, who works in the Transportation Department.

Ms Getzinger attended the meeting with a signed petition from her neighbors to move the bus stop for safety reasons to her driveway, which would also accommodate a doctor’s wishes related to her then 1-year-old son, on Little Brook Lane.

The district, Ms Getzinger explained this week, has a safety walking policy that allows students to walk up to one mile to a bus stop, and has exceptions listed for hazardous road conditions and for disability.

With a big puddle that freezes over at the bus stop at the end of Little Brook Lane, Ms Getzinger approached the transportation hearing asking the board members to consider safety.

After hearing from both sides, the school board members ruled the bus stop would not be moved, and said no buses in Newtown are permitted to drive down cul-de-sacs, like Little Brook Lane.

Following the hearing, Ms Getzinger appealed to the State Board of Education on her case. The state board sided with Newtown’s BOE.

Ms Getzinger explained that she then attempted to file a disability claim for one of her children, and said she has “sufficient medical evidence” of her child’s needs.

As Dr Robinson explained during last Tuesday’s Board of Ed meeting, after a 504 hearing was held in the district, Ms Getzinger’s claim to having her child picked up at her driveway was dismissed by the state.

Throughout the process, Ms Getzinger said she has noticed partial responses from attorneys, including not allowing her safety hazards to be heard at the state level of the transportation hearing. She also said she has become aware of personal relationships between attorneys in her cases.

Ms Getzinger said she has never sued the district, and asked for the costs associated with her complaints to be made public at the board’s meeting last week.

Adding Up The Costs

Dr Robinson listed the district responses and Ms Getzinger’s claims during the meeting, and said costs associated with those claims since 2009 add up to roughly $42,000. While the school board never discussed specific medical issues during the meeting, Dr Robinson listed the 504 hearing as a cost within the $42,000 and said, “That was found to have no basis of fact.”

“These legal fees were occasioned because they were in reaction to the various complaints that were brought by [Ms Getzinger], and therefore,” Dr Robinson said last week, “we had to respond. It began with a transportation hearing that was held at the board level.”

Ms Getzinger also made Freedom of Information requests that, according to Dr Robinson, the district needed legal advice on, and, finally, Ms Getzinger made a complaint to the bar association “regarding the attorney and one of the hearing officers. And that was recently dismissed also,” said Dr Robinson.

This week Ms Getzinger questioned why the school board and superintendent disclosed medical issues surrounding her child along with the costs she asked to be made public.

“I only allowed my bills to be discussed,” she said, “not my children’s medical records.”

During the meeting, Dr Robinson also said she authorized a van to pick up Ms Getzinger’s one child from the home. Ms Getzinger said this week that she refused that ride in order to save taxpayer money.

Speaking to what the superintendent said during last week’s meeting that her case had no basis of fact, Ms Getzinger said she is seeking one percent of Newtown’s electorate to sign a petition to have her entire case brought to a hearing.

“You want to see basis of fact?” said Ms Getzinger. “Let’s get all the paperwork out there and read through it shall we?”

Ms Getzinger said anyone interested in signing her petition can contact her by e-mail at spinash135@gmail.com.

“The system is not set up well,” said Ms Getzinger. “It is an incentive for possible corruption to seed and grow, and I think that is what I have stumbled on — for asking for a bus stop for $42,000. Do you think that was my intent? That was not my intent. I want to keep kids safe. That was my intention.”