Concord School District’s acting superintendent Donna Palley is not credentialed with the Department of Education to serve as a top administrator, which is a problem, a state official said.
Palley was elevated to acting superintendent Friday evening following the school board’s announcement that superintendent Terri Forsten was being placed on paid administrative leave. Palley does not possess credentials to serve as superintendent, or even as assistant superintendent, a role she has held in the district for at least eight years. Educators are required to have their certification renewed every three years, according to DOE bylaws.
“If someone were in that a role for that long, and they were never certified, that’s a problem,” said Stephen Appleby, administrator of the Department of Education bureau of credentialing. “If you’re going to call yourself a superintendent or assistant superintendent, you need a license.”
Appleby said that there can be “severe” consequences when educators in the state are not properly credentialed for the jobs they are performing in schools.
A district’s superintendent, who is in charge of verifying that all the certifications of educators in the district are up to date, can lose his or her educator’s license, Appleby said. There also could be disciplinary action taken for educators who are not properly credentialed by way of code of conduct and ethics violations.
Appleby could not comment on Palley’s specific case, but said the Department of Education is aware of it.
On Sunday, Concord School Board President Jennifer Patterson said Palley is working to address the situation.
“I have discussed the certification situation with Donna Palley,” Patterson wrote Sunday afternoon. “She has been working to address this for some time, including meeting with DOE, and she expects to be in good standing shortly.”
School Board Vice President Tom Croteau echoed Patterson’s comments on Monday and said that Palley was confident her credentials will be up-to-date soon. “We are assured Donna is getting paperwork to forward to them,” he said.
“If for some reason Donna Palley can not be the acting Superintendent, the board would most likely discuss an approach, confer with council and then the DOE seeking further advice,” he added.
Palley was unavailable for comment.
The state licenses assistant superintendents initially for a three-year period. It is a temporary status that an educator holds while completing a Ph.D. program or obtaining a certificate of advanced study. Once the three-year period is up and the necessary training and education is obtained, the employee will receive his or her superintendent certification, which is the appropriate credential an educator must obtain, even if his or her official title is assistant superintendent, Appleby said.
For Palley, the deadline expired in 2014.
Palley stepped into her role as assistant superintendent in the Concord School District in 2011 after working in various roles, including in special education, for more than 20 years. She is the winner of the 2018 “Outstanding Service Award” from the New Hampshire School Administrators Association (NHSAA), according to Monitor archives.
Palley is credentialed as a special education administrator, elementary education (K-8) teacher, general special education teacher and specific learning disabilities teacher, according to a Department of Education database.
Appleby said there are avenues educators can take to continue working on their superintendent certification if they don’t think they will complete it within the required three years.
“If they had been properly licensed and they didn’t finish at the end of the three years, I think they could go under the state board and ask for an exception. That would be assuming they were properly licensed for three years,” he said. “They would have to have it first for it to expire.”
When asked if Palley ever had assistant superintendent credentials, Appleby said he couldn’t speak about the specifics of her case.
“I think I just hinted at that in my last answer,” he said.
Patterson announced Palley would be stepping in as superintendent on Friday, when she sent a message out to the Concord School District community saying that Superintendent Terri Forsten was out on paid administrative leave. The move followed a report delivered to the school board Monday by an investigator hired to examine the district’s response to complaints of inappropriate behavior by former teacher Howie Leung, who was arrested in April on rape charges.
Although they would not comment on the board’s decision to place Forsten and Sica on leave, the news of Palley taking authority over the district was a surprise to at least two school board members.
“I found out last night probably five minutes before everyone else,” school board member Chuck Crush said Saturday. “I was somewhat shocked. I had no idea that Donna Palley was going to be the interim superintendent.”
Fellow board member Barb Higgins said, “the Donna Palley thing was a big surprise.”
Patterson said in an interview with the Monitor on Thursday that the board was beginning to consider whether to discipline any staff members after it received the first portion of the two-part report, which focuses on how staff responded to allegations of sexual misconduct brought forward by students. Part of that process will include reviewing the actions of every staff member who was involved with investigations into Leung.
In an email to the Monitor, Patterson wrote on Saturday night that she included the information about Palley’s new role in her message to the community because she felt it would be important to let residents know who would be taking over Forsten’s duties in her absence.
“While perhaps I could have worded the statement more clearly, I did not intend to surprise anyone. The role of the assistant superintendent includes acting as superintendent in the absence of the superintendent, so this would seem a natural announcement,” she added.
Patterson said on Sunday that Palley’s status as acting superintendent is governed by district policy which states that “in the event of the absence of the superintendent, the assistant superintendent will assume the duties of the superintendent.”
The policy also states that if the assistant superintendent is not able to step in, the district’s business administrator must fill in. Concord School District’s business administrator is Jack Dunn.
Appleby said he’s not sure who Department of Education would contact if it had to get in touch with the Concord School District superintendent today.
“It certainly does present a conundrum, doesn’t it?” he said. “I don’t know to be honest. This is such a new, developing situation. I’m not sure if we’ve even been notified by the school board that the individual in question is the acting superintendent. Right now, they would reach out to the previous superintendent or the school board.”
“In the next day or so, we’ll sort it out,” he added.
In 2018, Palley earned $131,758 as assistant superintendent.