On Brookline

So, here I am thinking that the director of the town-run Soule Day Care Center was put on “administrative leave” out of concern for her safety/mental health following receipt of a racially-motivated death threat [see TAB story].

Not so. Administrative leave is invoked when an employee is suspected of misconduct or malfeasance. And it’s involuntary.

When a school department employee began raising questions on payroll accounting which involved a senior official, she was escorted from the premises and placed on administrative leave (still there as far as I know). In the school department case, the cover story was a harassment complaint filed by another employee. That complaint has vanquished.

The chain of events concerning the day care director is instructive. Prior to receiving the death threat, the director was involved in heated exchanges with parents over the departure of teachers from the center [apparently parents think they run the center]. The next day, the school was evacuated on fear of a bomb. And shortly thereafter the director was placed on administrative leave.

I mean, how bad does this look? What’s the misconduct involved? The director’s management style? You don’t resolve that through administrative leave.

Years of covering town government has taught me one thing — the truth lies somewhere in between. But it’s hard to see this as anything other than an example of town government falling over itself to boot someone not considered “one of Brookline’s own.”

I’ll have Part II to this story next week.

Update: A commenter below says that an e-mail sent to parents after the bomb threat was the reason behind the “timely administrative leave.” If you have the e-mail, forward it to me using the contact form to the left.

I know how I’d be after getting the $%#@ kicked out of me and then getting a bomb threat; but, then again, no one would put me in charge of a day care center.

Update (2): I’m hearing more about the wild parent’s meeting at the center; and I am especially surprised to hear that the shoutfest was chaired by Selectman Robert Allen, Recreation Commission Chair John Bain and Recreation Director Lisa Paradis. They had to know going in that a contingent of parents were going to demand that the center’s director be fired.

Why would they subject the woman to that treatment? I think it’s obvious. Deny it if you will, but there’s a problem in Brookline.  [I'm showing restraint by not using the incendiary term that fits to describe what this meeting was about. And the death threat that followed confirms it as such.]