Board spends big bucks to punish for $63 time sheet error
TRENTON » Michael Coe went through the ringer for $63.
That’s the short of a complicated and nuanced tale involving Trenton’s tenured teacher, rung up on fabricated time theft charges and exonerated by an arbitrator, and one of his former students whose family is suing the state Department of Education and Trenton Board of Education because their sick son wasn’t given a proper education and “fell through the cracks.”
The boy, identified only by his initials, S.B., in documents, suffered from Proteus Syndrome, a rare disorder that causes disfiguring tissue overgrowth, which often landed him at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The condition sometimes made the boy home-bound and required him to receive home instruction. The boy grew attached to Coe, who was his home instructor for five years until he was reassigned without explanation.
The 16-year-old boy died in May, and his family filed a federal lawsuit against Trenton’s BOE, accusing it of violating the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — concerns that had previously been raised by two local groups.
The boy’s situation is intimately connected to the travails of Coe, a teacher who has been with the Trenton school district for 17 years. He was suspended without pay in February following an internal audit that uncovered alleged time theft.
The school board tried to fire Coe over more than three dozen instances over two years in which it claimed there were inconsistencies in his timesheets.
The board said the longtime teacher, who was assigned extra-duty assignments, had “failed to account” for breaks and was double dipping by getting paid for multiple assignments at once.
His timesheets appeared to show he was either lying to school officials or had cloned himself, appearing to be in two places at once, the school district said. But basic facts were missing from the 47-page decision, such as how much time and money the district alleged Coe stole.
An arbitrator cleared Coe of the charges in November and ruled he be reinstated with “full back pay, benefits, and emoluments.”
“The Board has not sustained the tenure charges of conduct unbecoming and/ or other just cause against Respondent Michael Coe. The charges are dismissed in their entirety,” arbitrator Robert C. Gifford wrote.
Coe offered to repay the board $63 for “errors” he admitted he had made on timesheets in August 2015 and March and October 2016.
Trenton school union officials criticized the district for going after Coe and noted the windfall for the law firm that represented the school district in the Coe matter is more than $63.
“That’s all the board does is waste money,” Trenton Education Association President Naomi Johnson-Lafleur said.
The district refused to answer questions about Coe, who is back at work but still waiting for his payout.
“I have been informed the case is still in active litigation,” spokeswoman Ali Robinson-Rogers said. “Out of respect for the confidentiality of our employees, we will not be discussing the details of the case at this time.”
Robbing the District
The $63 decision was a costly one for the school district, which had to tap the law firm of school district general counsel Perry Lattiboudere to litigate the Coe matter.
Teaching union officials called it a “conflict of interest” for Lattiboudere, a named partner at Newarkbased Adams, Gutierrez & Lattiboudere, to serve as the district’s general counsel.
School officials couldn’t provide a figure of how much the district spent on the Coe matter but records reviewed by The Trentonian show a steady stream of money being funneled to Lattiboudere’s firm.
The newspaper found payments totaling at least $169,182 in legal fees to Lattiboudere’s firm since May 31, according to online records.
That may not be a comprehensive snapshot of all the money paid to the firm.
The total bill for the Coe matter has not been tabulated. The district still must pay Coe, who makes $85,065 as a teacher for the school district, according to online records.
His attorney, Arnold M. Mellk, didn’t know exactly how much the school owes his client in back pay, outof-pocket insurance costs and other compensation.
But he said it was at least “four months’ worth.”
“The arbitrator, in a thoughtful and comprehensive decision, determined the charges brought by the board were untenable and unsubstantiated,” the attorney said.
Coe makes roughly $7,088 a month before taxes. Multiplying that by the unpaid four months, the payout owed to Coe is at least $28,355 and likely more.
Johnson-Lafleur said the school district took a financial bloodbath to pursue a “frivolous and retaliatory” case.
“Over $63, how much do you think they spent?” she asked. “It’s crazy what they do.”
When asked about the legal fees paid to Lattiboudere’s law firm, the TEA president said the firm was “robbing the district blind.”
Coe’s attorney said the board should be spending money on the students of Trenton rather than legal fees.
“You’re not going to get an argument from me,” he said. “I can’t get into the mind of the board decision makers.”
The Decision
The district threw the book at Coe, accusing him of “willful and intentional conduct” of submitting made-up payroll records. They used words like “falsified timesheets,” “committed theft of time, services and public funds.” The district said Coe engaged in “inappropriate and unprofessional conduct” that violated law and board policy.
Looking to fire him, the board said the teacher’s actions were “sufficiently flagrant and egregious” and he was unfit to be a teacher.
Coe, a special education teacher at Joyce Kilmer Middle School, was suspended without pay a day after the board voted at a closed-door meeting Feb. 27 6-0 that there was probable cause to support tenure charges.
Before the charges, Coe had never received a negative performance evaluation, had been rated highly and was well-liked by students, including the boy whose parents are suing the school district.
The boy’s mother testified about the impact Coe had on her son at the hearing before the arbitrator.
“My son had a great deal of love for Mr. Coe,” she said. “So did we. He counted on Mr. Coe to come every Monday through Friday to teach him. … They even named each other nicknames. When Mr. Coe didn’t come, he got into depression because he couldn’t get next to him. He couldn’t call him. He couldn’t see him. So he questioned us but we couldn’t tell him. Trying to protect his feelings. Before my son died he wanted Mr. Coe — he got his allowance and he wanted Mr. Coe to come — or us to call him so he could come and take him to lunch. We told Mr. Coe couldn’t come. He got mad. He went in his room and a week later he died.”
The school district was concerned about Coe’s alleged actions because a previous audit from the 2007 and 2008 school years had revealed “home instructors were basically frauding the district with false documentation and timesheets,” Jayne Howard, the board’s business administrator and secretary, testified at the hearing.
The audit revealed duplicated and inflated hours submitted by several home instructors. Disciplinary actions were initiated against some of the home instructors, Howard said.
Coe was not among home instructors targeted by the previous audit, the arbitrator said.
Howard felt the state would audit the school district again soon so she had
the comptroller do an internal audit which uncovered problems with 39 of Coe’s payroll submissions.
Chief talent officer Lissa Johnson sat down with Coe to go over the discrepancies one by one to get an explanation.
Coe, who had been doing home instruction for about a decade, listened but did not respond to the allegations on advice of his attorney.
He offered explanations for the first time at the hearing. In some instances, he claimed he had rounded hours up to the nearest quarter hour, misremembered dates or made “typographical errors.” Coe was asked why he didn’t bring mistakes to the board’s attention.
“I did not recognize that mistake until it was brought to my attention,” he said. “It was not done intentionally.”
Coe insisted he never snubbed students out of home instruction and went “over the call of duty,” staying late on some nights.
S.B.’s parents backed him up, saying he always arrived on time, promptly began teaching and never “shortchanged” the student.
The board’s attorneys took the position that “whether [Coe] stole $1 or $1,000 or $10,000 or $100,000, he has demonstrated that he is not fit to serve as a teaching staff member for the District.”
Slamming any evidence as “scant” and “nonexistent,” Coe’s attorneys pointed to the words of the boy’s parents as proof he was not “disserved by his teacher.”
The arbitrator wrote, “I am persuaded that the grievant was forthright in his testimony notwithstanding the fact that his explanations for some inconsistencies in his timesheets were not clear or consistent. Given this record, the evidence does not establish that the respondent deliberately falsified his timesheets which, if proven, would reasonably provide the Board with a basis for his termination. The respondent calculated his time in a substantially similar manner for several years without written notification, review or determination from the Administration that his methodology was inconsistent with the manner expected by the Board. … I am not persuaded that the respondent’s actions were a deliberate, willful attempt to falsify his timesheets.”
Retaliation?
The Trentonian learned from union officials that Coe had filed a grievance against special education supervisor Monique Harvey in the months before tenure charges were brought against him.
Coe, who declined to comment and referred questions to his attorney, was concerned about how the district’s special education program was being run.
Trenton Public Schools has been under the supervision of a state monitor since 2010.
Last year, the Trenton chapter of the NAACP and Special Parent Advocacy Group (SPAG) filed civil rights complaints with the U.S. Department of Education over concerns about deficiencies in the special education program.
Calling it a systemic issue, SPAG alleged the district failed to provide the required speech, occupational therapy and physical therapy to students with disabilities as mandated in Individualized Education Programs (IEP), which is a legal plan schools must abide by to meet the needs of a special education student.
The group claimed there was no physical therapist in the district and some students weren’t receiving required speech and occupational therapy services.
The problem arose over a budget crisis when the district decided to lay off all of its therapists and 92 paraprofessionals, opting instead to outsource the services to Source4Teachers.
Nicole Whitfield, of SPAG, didn’t respond to a message seeking comment on the status of the civil rights complaints.
The TEA president said the allegations against Coe were trumped up to silence him from speaking out about problems in the district.
“I knew they were going to lose,” Johnson-Lafleur said. “It was frivolous. It was based on a grudge.”
Lawsuit
The voice in the school district’s automated message assured callers “children come first” in Trenton Public Schools.
The boy’s lawsuit, targeting the school board and NJDOE, casts doubt on the “children come first” claim and paints a picture of deeply entrenched issues with the special education program in which a disabled child went years without an education as officials ignored his parents’ pleas to find him a school or hammer out an educational plan that accommodated his needs.
He was put on, and then inexplicably yanked from, home instruction.
The problems started for the boy’s parents in 2004, when they began the process of figuring out how to make sure the school district could accommodate their disabled son when he started kindergarten.
The boy was attending kindergarten at the Parker Annex School but stopped going when he fell ill. He was transitioned to special education and shifted schools as his parents met with officials to develop the boy’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP).
He attended Cappello School for a day but it was decided that wasn’t a good fit.
The lawsuit said the boy’s parents spent the next three years trying to track down BOE officials on the phone and in person about a proper placement.
The boy received no educational services over those three years.
Meanwhile, a truant officer left notes at the wrong address saying the boy needed to attend school, the lawsuit said. His siblings were students in the school district but the boy’s whereabouts were listed as “unknown,” the lawsuit said.
The boy’s mom finally got ahold of someone in May 2009 and was told to re-register her son for school. The boy’s IEP claimed he hadn’t been in school for almost four years but had falsely claimed the boy received home instruction during that time, the lawsuit said.
He began receiving home instruction again for the first time in years in June 2009, the lawsuit said.
When the school year ended weeks later, the boy’s home instructor — at that time it wasn’t Coe — said he would return in September 2009, but he didn’t.
The mom spent another two years trying to get educational services for her son.
Child welfare officials got involved in 2011 on a complaint related to the boy’s sibling.
While investigating that, officials learned the boy’s formal education consisted of three weeks of home instruction.
After that, two BOE officials called the family and told the mother to re-register her son.
The boy was registered for school a third time in February 2012.
As a fifth-grader, he was evaluated and it was determined he was “far below” fifth-grade educational benchmarks.
Following the evaluation, in March 2012, the boy began receiving 10 hours of home instruction from Coe.
Coe issued a report that stated the boy was operating at a pre-kindergarten level.
The boy was psychologically examined and it was determined his cognitive deficits were due “in large part to his total lack of formal education experiences.” The report concluded that if the boy had received proper instruction throughout the years “his cognitive function and intelligence would be largely normal.
The boy’s home instruction was upped to 15 hours following another meeting with his parents, their attorney and board officials.
He was eventually placed at Kinsbury Learning Center, while still receiving 10 hours of home instruction from Coe.
The lawsuit said he was “making strides.”
The boy’s parents encountered blowback from school officials when they sought services for another child in 2015.
The lawsuit said Harvey, the special education supervisor, derided the couple for trying to get special education services for their children.
The conversation, in which Harvey said, “What do they want, everything?” was between Harvey and a member of the law firm representing the couple, their lawyer Linda Niedweske told The Trentonian.
“I haven’t seen anything remotely like this,” she said. “He fell through the cracks.”
Harvey complained to Coe about the “extent of services” the couple sought for their children, the lawsuit said.
The board “unilaterally” discontinued home instruction and sent a case manager to the couple’s home to try to get them to sign off on a revised IEP that authorized discontinuing home instruction.
Coe was told in June 2016 he wasn’t to return to the boy’s home to provide home instruction, contrary to what he was told by the superintendent who informed the teacher the boy should continue getting home instruction.
However, that didn’t happen, the lawsuit said, because Harvey didn’t include home instruction for the boy into the budget.
The boy’s parents filed a due process petition attempting to halt the boy’s withdrawal from home instruction. The issue appeared resolved in November 2016, and an agreement was signed a few months later, in January 2017.
That same day, without explanation, Coe was removed as the boy’s home instructor, devastating the boy, who later suffered a leg injury that left him unable to attend Kinsbury.
By February, the school still hadn’t assigned a new home instructor.
The boy left Coe a voicemail in April saying he missed him and was depressed he was no longer his teacher.
The lawsuit said that by the time he died in May, the school board “had yet to find” him an appropriate educational placement or resume home instruction.
The lawsuit chalked it up to the board’s “animosity” toward the couple for enforcing their child’s rights.
The school district, meanwhile, has asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit. A hearing has been set for early next year.
“They didn’t really want to educate him because of his disabilities,” Niedweske said. “It was tragic.”
Staff writer David Foster contributed to this report