Former Grand Forks Public Schools employee files complaint against Terry Brenner in 2015 – Grand Forks Herald

GRAND FORKS – Years before his principals and their deputies filed personnel complaints, Grand Forks Public Schools Superintendent Terry Brenner faced claims of unprofessional behavior by a subordinate he was trying to remove.

In 2015, Kathy Williams, then a district instructor, initiated a complaint after Brenner, her supervisor, included her in an “improvement plan” and tried to reassign her from the district office.

The professional conduct of the school district’s top employee has come under scrutiny since members of the Grand Forks Principals Association filed a complaint against Brenner in April over his conduct while planning budget cuts for the 2024-25 school year.

Grand Forks school board members are currently evaluating Brenner as part of the school’s regular, biennial principal review.

In May, board members voted to have the superintendent undergo a “360 evaluation,” which sought feedback from his subordinates.

However, the board committee last month

plans to enable admin login

into the fall evaluation process, instead instructing a “leadership coach” — paid by the district — to solicit information from the administrator about Brenner’s performance.

When asked for comment, board president Dave Berger wrote that “it would be inappropriate to comment on personnel matters” in an email to the Herald on Thursday. He cited two school board policies dealing with staff complaints and board-staff relations.

“All school board members are working diligently to complete an evaluation of the superintendent regarding his job description and the priorities and goals outlined in the district’s Strategic Plan,” Berger wrote.

Williams initiated the complaint against Brenner around July 2015, when Brenner was director of curriculum, instruction, assessment and professional development and Williams was an instructor in that department.

In June of this year, Brenner sought to reassign Williams from her position in the district office to a high school teacher.

A little more than a year earlier, in April 2014, he had assigned Williams an improvement plan, even though Brenner had given Williams mostly positive reviews over the previous five years they had worked together, according to her performance reviews.

Jane Rupprecht, who worked on grievances for the North Dakota United State Teachers union, said she recalled that Williams was very competent. Rupprecht could not understand why Williams was placed on the improvement plan.

“If an administrator is writing an improvement plan for somebody, I need to look at the documentation, I need to see concrete evidence that improvements are needed,” she said Wednesday.

The letter, signed by then-Grand Forks Education Association President Tom Young, claimed the improvement plan was created without merit and interfered with Williams’ ability to perform her duties by barring her from several task forces.

He also wrote that for nearly two years, there was “virtually no professional communication” between Williams and Brenner as a result of the plan, and Brenner instead tried to track Williams’ progress through anonymous surveys filled out by teachers, which he wrote Yang. intended to create a negative impression of Williams.

“The overall result is that this ‘plan’ hindered, rather than helped, Ms. Williams’ ability to improve her performance,” Young wrote at the time.

Brenner’s response to Young’s letter did not address Young’s claims or defend the improvement plan. He rejected the GFEA and North Dakota United’s recommendation to scrap the improvement plan and keep Williams where she was.

Williams and the teachers’ union apparently won: A rescinded transfer form in Williams’ personnel file shows her reassignment to Grand Forks Central High School was canceled and, aside from the GFEA letter and Brenner’s response, no record of the “improvement plan” remains. or the teacher interviews.

Speaking to the Herald in 2024, Williams said she believed Brenner’s actions were prompted by the April 2014 incident. She claims Brenner yelled as part of what she calls a “flow of anger” at her during a discussion in his office.

(This conflict is not documented in Brenner’s or Williams’ personal files. When asked by the Herald about the incident, Williams said she should have filed a complaint against Brenner but didn’t think to do so at the time.)

The improvement plan, she said, came soon after.

“For some reason, he’ll see that he needs to get rid of someone, and then he’ll come up with a reason to do it,” she said in August.

Brenner declined a request from the Herald to comment on the complaint.

“The district does not comment on personnel matters,” he wrote in an email Thursday.

Williams continued to serve as an instructor under Brenner until her retirement in 2017.

She told the Herald that her relationship with Brenner did not improve after the complaint, and Brenner shifted his responsibilities to other people.

“How to convey what it is like to live like this? It’s like he’s my ghost,” she said. “You sit in this chair and you’re allowed to come to department meetings, but you have no – I don’t want to say power, I’ve never had any power – but you have no role.”

Williams’ statement is somewhat similar to

personnel complaint filed in May by Assistant Superintendent Kathryn Gillach.

Both women had worked for Brenner for a long time and received positive reviews before the apparent falling out with Brenner, although Gillach’s actions prompted Brenner to issue a letter of reprimand against her in June 2023, nearly a year before her personnel complaint.

Both also alleged that Brenner used underhand tactics to remove them from their positions. In the Gillach case, Brenner drafted and then placed “on hold” a second letter of reprimand calling for her to be fired in April 2024 after Gillach refused a request to resign.

Gillach, according to transcripts of interviews during the investigation into her complaint, believed she was being “scapegoated” for the public’s negative reception of proposed budget cuts last year.

Brenner said he acted within his rights as superintendent and sought to remove Gillach for alleged insubordination and poor decision-making during the budget process.

Williams spoke out for the first time since Gillach’s complaint was made public, saying she did it to support a professional colleague. In 2018, she listed Gilach as a professional recommendation when she applied to be a substitute teacher in the district, but said she hadn’t spoken to Gilach in years before the latter’s personnel complaint.

Gillach told the Herald on Thursday that she and Gillach were “friendly” colleagues but not friends.

The school board declined to discipline Brenner based on the results of an investigation by former board president Amber Flynn; Gillach remains employed in the district.

The board also declined to discipline Brenner when the principals’ association filed a personnel complaint against him in April for “lack of cooperation and respect.”

However, the board

voted for Brenner’s new checks,

including a leadership coach and 360 evaluation, as well as a requirement for meetings between GFPA and Brenner every two weeks until next May and a requirement for the superintendent to visit every school in the district at least twice a year.