The ACLU of New Hampshire filed a notice in court Monday requesting the Concord School District to release without further delay a 100-page report about the school district’s handling of sexual misconduct complaints.
The notice, filed in Merrimack Superior Court by attorney Gilles Bissonnette on behalf of the ACLU, the Concord Monitor and Concord parent Dellie Champagne, is part of a lawsuit to compel the district to release a September 2019 report by Massachusetts attorney Djuna Perkins, that contains details about the District’s response to complaints of inappropriate behavior by former teacher Howie Leung.
On Friday, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that records related to “internal personnel practices” are not categorically exempt from the state’s right-to-know law. The Concord School Board had argued no portion of the report could be made public because it involved “internal personnel practices.”
“The remaining portions of the district’s report are clearly public records now in light of the Supreme Court decision, and the court should take all steps to ensure that it is released,” Bissonnette said. “Ideally the district itself would agree as quickly as possible due to the change in the law.”
The attorney for the Concord School District did not reply to a request for comment.
Leung, who taught in the District for 13 years, was arrested in April 2019 and charged with sexually assaulting a Concord student at a summer program at the Fessenden School in Massachusetts in 2015 and 2016 when she was 13 and 14 years old.
Following Leung’s arrest, the school board hired Perkins to examine the district’s response to complaints made about Leung’s conduct from 2014 and 2018.
In 2014, a middle school student was suspended by former Principal Tom Sica for “spreading gossip” after she said that Leung’s behavior toward female students made her uncomfortable.
In 2018, several female students reported seeing Leung kiss a female classmate in a car outside the high school, and two school employees, acting as union representatives, tried to discredited their account during the ensuing investigation, arguing that eyewitness testimony is unreliable.
The contents of Perkins’s report may answer questions about whether other complaints were made about Leung or if district officials investigated any complaints about him in the past. School officials have refused to answer those questions, saying it is a personnel matter.
Once the school board received the 100-page report, members voted to fire Sica and former Superintendent Terri Forsten.
The petitioners are not asking for any information that would seek to identify any individual students, their families and non-governmental witnesses who may be involved, Bissonnette said. The report, if released, may be redacted to exclude people’s names.
A judge will now review the ACLU’s petition.
“We have a pending case and we are going to keep pushing that case as long as the district keeps the public in the dark,” Bissonnette said.