by Steve Reinbrecht
If Wilson School District’s last superintendent, Rudy Ruth,
was a paragon of longevity, working for the district for more than 30 years, the
new one is a job changer, working at four districts in the last 10 years.
I’m glad newspapers have reported about this important man, the new Wilson schools chief, Curtis Baker. I’m
betting he might like to stay in Wilson and has answers to our questions.
Baker worked at his
last job, as superintendent of the Moon School District, near Pittsburgh, for two
years.
The Moon School Board voted to put him on paid leave in December.
Funny the Reading Eagle hasn’t mentioned that.
In any case, reading between the lines of coverage by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, it seems a newly elected majority tossed Baker out
because they didn’t like his ideas.
In response, Baker has sued the district and seven school
board members, claiming a broken contract.
“Curtis Baker claimed "he has been subjected to verbal
abuse, sabotage of district image and administration performance, and
micromanagement by members of the School Board of Directors and the Board as a
whole,"” according to the Post-Gazette.
“Mr. Baker also said in the lawsuit that he had done nothing
to warrant termination, was not given written notice of the allegations against
him and was not granted a due process hearing, in violation of the Pennsylvania
School Code.
“In addition to breach of contract and violation of due process,
Mr. Baker is alleging a violation of the state Sunshine Act, tortious
interference with contract and wrongful use of civil proceedings.”
That Baker carried out a decision by the previous board to
close an elementary school was “a major flash point,” the Pittsburgh paper
said.
The Moon district had hired Baker in December 2013 from the
Roanoke School District, where he was deputy superintendent for operations,
according to an article in the Roanoke Times.
Discussing the re-organization in the Virginia district as Baker and others departed, the article said that Margaret Lindsay would
become executive director for fiscal services in Roanoke as the district
reorganized as Baker left.
But it appears she followed Baker to Moon – the Post-Gazette says she resigned as that district’s chief financial and operating
officer in December.
And here we are almost one year later and Mr Baker has resigned thanks to a critical report from the PA Auditor General related to issues from his past role in his former district.
ReplyDeleteAs you stated so well back then, not one local press outlet covered these issues at the time. And now they all seem shocked (Reading Eagle, WFMZ, etc) we're looking at this result. The press in Berks County is nearly useless as a reporting or investigative entity.
None of the information re: Mr Baker should be all that shocking to anyone as it was all publicly available back in 2016. I recall (before finding your blog) looking him up myself using simple internet searching and finding all of the controversial information regarding his dismall in Western PA.
How any of this was missed and or ignored by the press or school board is a disgrace. In fact, if the Reading Eagle was worth anything as a reporting or investigating body it would now look into the WSD Board itself to see how this even happened.
Thanks for reporting on this back in the day. I wish I'd seen it then as I thought I was the only person in the WSD who even had a clue about this issue. I hope you update your blog with more around this recent development.
A couple of years ago we moved to the area and chose Wilson School district for our child thinking it would be much better because we were fleeing a corrupt superintendent in another school system in another state. When that former superintendent made decisions that had a very negative impact on our child's well being and was not receptive to our concerns after proclaiming at parent meetings that they would always talk to parents unless they were "at church", my spouse did a simple internet search and found pretty quickly that the superintendent was associated with a "human trafficking" case. There was one incident in another district as well involving the misuse of a school vehicle to move their personal belongings that showed up even easier, but the school board paid no attention to that red flag and failed to scroll down on the internet just a little further...I guess? I do not know why school systems/school boards that have so many options for candidates even consider hiring these people who display at least subtle hints of impropriety. Well, you obviously picked up on some red flags that any responsible hiring entity would note! Before this happened, we did not stay in the WSD because it did not turn out to be what we hoped, but it is much better for our child in another district here so it was worth moving. Glad we missed out on this deja vu!
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