The Derby Board of Education hired the son of chairman Ken Marcucio Sr. Wednesday, in direct violation of the board’s own nepotism policy.
Scott Marcucio will make $44,575 as a social studies teacher for Derby High School in the 2015 – 16 school year.
The board’s nepotism policy states “no member of the immediate family of a Board of Education member shall be appointed to a full-time position in the school district.”
But school board members said this week their nepotism policy is “archaic.”
The motion to hire Scott Marcucio, along with 32 other new employees, passed 5 to 1.
Jim Gildea voted no. There was no discussion during the vote and Ken Marcucio Sr. was not present at the meeting.
In an email Thursday, Ken Marcucio Sr. said he had “divorced himself from (the hiring) process entirely.”
He said he had even offered to resign from the board in an effort to eliminate any conflict of interest. He referred additional questions to Superintendent Matthew Conway.
Nepotism policies exist to reassure the public that public employees aren’t hired based on their relatives.
It’s different than the private sector.
Anti-nepotism policies exist to prevent a public official from using the position for personal benefit or for the financial gain of his or her family.
Nepotism policies differ from district to district in Connecticut. The Derby school district has one of the tougher anti-nepotism policies.
The Derby policy allows the district to hire relatives of school board members on a short-term basis, but that is not applicable in this case.
The policy is embedded below and the article continues after the document.
Reaction
After the meeting Wednesday, two school board members said their nepotism policy was out-dated.
They said following their own written policy would have prevented the best candidate, in this case, Scott Marcucio, from being hired.
“I think we should get the best qualified people,” school board vice-chairman Andrew Mancini said.
When asked if violating the policy concerned him, Mancini said: “It’s just a policy that should be reviewed. It’s an archaic policy.”
Mancini noted that the nepotism policy doesn’t prevent a board member’s best friend from applying and getting a job in the district.
Gildea, a former chairman of the Derby school board for more than a decade, was the lone vote against the appointment.
He said Thursday his vote wasn’t based on the candidate, but rather on the violation of the board’s policy.
“I don’t think we should violate them (policies) or create special exemptions because they work for us at this time,” Gildea said. “It creates confusion for the staff, administration and students on which policies are real and which ones need to be followed.”
School board member Laura Harris said Wednesday she thinks the board’s nepotism policy needs to be less restrictive.
“It’s a very old policy,” Harris said, noting that she thinks it was drafted initially in 2001. “I think that should be looked at.”
However, the school board’s anti-nepotism policy was updated less than two years ago.
Minutes from the Sept. 26, 2013 board meeting indicate Harris made the motion to accept revisions to the board’s Personnel Policies, which include the nepotism policy.
Board members Christine Robinson and Rebecca O’Hara declined to comment on the vote. School board member Dan Foley was not available for comment.
The New Hire
Scott Marcucio, a teacher and softball coach at Wamogo Regional High School, was one of five candidates for the social studies job, according to Superintendent Conway.
Three of those candidates were brought in for interviews, which were conducted by a team of high school officials and one Board of Education member.
Marcucio’s LinkedIn profile says he is a graduate of Derby High School and the University of Connecticut, with a teaching certificate from Southern Connecticut State University.
He has eight years experience as a certified social studies teacher and is working toward his master’s degree in school administration, according to the superintendent.
“Bottom line, what they looked at was the best qualified individual to be with our children,” Conway said. “We looked at the best candidate as the primary goal.”
Superintendent’s Spouse An Employee, Too
This is the second time in two years a high-ranking school official’s immediate family member has been hired by the Derby Board of Education.
The Derby school board voted in June 2014 to hire Alison Conway, the superintendent’s wife, as the district’s early childhood education director.
Alison Conway runs Little Raiders University, the district’s new preschool program. She is paid $75,000 per year, which Matthew Conway said was “solely supported by grant funds.”
Meeting minutes from last year state the school board met for 34 minutes in a private executive session before calling for a vote.
School board members Craig Drezek and James Stadt voted against the appointment.
Drezek cited “policy concerns,” that had nothing to do with Conway personally, according to the minutes. Drezek is no longer on the school board.
Matthew Conway, Ken Marcucio and Gildea each said Alison Conway’s hiring did not violate the board’s nepotism policy.
That’s because the school board’s anti-nepotism policy applies only to members of the school board.
The Derby nepotism policy also stipulates that immediate family members should not be hired for positions where a family member is “in a line relationship involving supervision and evaluation.”
Alison Conway reports to Irving School Principal Jennifer Olsen, not Superintendent Conway, Marcucio said in an email.
Common Sense
Kelly Donnelly, a spokesperson for the state education department, said her department has no authority over anti-nepotism policies.
It is up to local school boards to set the policies, Donnelly said in an email.
“With that said, good human resource practices incorporates anti-nepotism protocols,” Donnelly said.
The state last year enacted anti-nepotism policies for charter schools after “rampant nepotism” was revealed in a Hartford charter school. Charter schools fall under state jurisdiction.
Derby’s anti-nepotism policy comes from the Connecticut Association for Boards of Education, and at least 11 other school districts follow the same policy, some of them word-for-word.
Transparency
The hiring of the school board chairman’s son was not a simple issue for the public to follow.
That’s because unlike neighboring school districts in Ansonia and Seymour, the Derby school board does not publish the names of new hires on their meeting agendas.
Instead, an appointment list is taken into a school board executive session, a type of meeting closed to the general public.
After a private discussion, the school board then votes on the list in public.
Derby’s procedure is not a violation of the state’s Freedom of Information Act, and Conway gave the list to a reporter immediately after Wednesday’s meeting.
However, the end result of the board’s procedure is that the general public did not know the school board was considering hiring the chairman’s son until after the chairman’s son was hired.
Along with Marcucio, the Board of Education Wednesday also hired Michelle Springer as Bradley School’s Behavioral Learning Center Director. The hires also included summer school teachers, extended school-year teachers and paraprofessionals, six summer custodian helpers, and interns in the IT department.
Eugene Driscoll contributed to this report.
