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

GRAND FORKS – Years before his principals and deputies filed personnel complaints against him, Grand Forks Public Schools Superintendent Terry Brenner faced allegations of unprofessional conduct by a subordinate he wanted removed.

In 2015, Cathy Williams, then an instructional coach for the district, initiated a grievance investigation after Brenner, her supervisor, placed her on an “improvement plan” and tried to transfer her out of the district office.

The professional conduct of the school district’s most senior 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 2024-2025 school year.

Grand Forks School Board members currently evaluate Brenner as part of the superintendent’s regular twice-yearly review.

In May, board members voted to subject the superintendent to a “360-degree review” that asked for feedback from his subordinates.

However, the board committee last month

we have withdrawn plans to include admin input

into the fall evaluation process, instead having a “leadership coach” – paid by the district – ask the administrator for feedback on Brenner’s performance.

Asked for comment, board chairman Dave Berger wrote in an email to the Herald on Thursday that “it would be inappropriate to comment on personnel matters.” He cited two School Board policies regarding staff grievances and the relationship between the board and staff.

“All School Board members are working diligently to complete an assessment of the superintendent based on his or her responsibilities and the priorities and goals outlined in the District Strategic Plan,” Berger wrote.

Williams initiated the complaint investigation against Brenner around July 2015, when Brenner was director of curriculum, instruction, assessments and professional development and Williams was an instructional coach for that department.

In June, Brenner sought to have Williams transferred from her position at the district office to a high school teaching position.

Just over a year earlier, in April 2014, he had placed Williams on an improvement plan, even though, according to her performance review, Brenner had given her overwhelmingly positive evaluations over the past five years of their work together.

Jane Rupprecht, who worked on grievance proceedings for the North Dakota United state teachers union, said she recalled Williams being very competent. Rupprecht didn’t understand why Williams was being offered an improvement plan.

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

The letter, signed by then-President of the Grand Forks Educational Association, Tom Young, argued that the improvement plan came without cause and interfered with Williams’ ability to perform her duties by excluding her from several work groups.

He further wrote that as a result of the plan, there was “virtually no substantive professional communication” between Williams and Brenner for almost two years, and that Brenner instead sought to track Williams’ progress through anonymous surveys completed by teachers, which Young wrote were intended to trigger negative opinions about Williams.

“The overall result is that rather than helping Ms. Williams, this ‘plan’ hindered her improvement,” 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 recommendation of GFEA and North Dakota United to remove the improvement plan and keep Williams at its current level.

Williams and the teachers union appear to have won the case: a voided transfer form in Williams’ personnel file shows that her transfer to Grand Forks Central High School was canceled, and no mention of an “improvement plan” remains beyond the GFEA letter and Brenner’s response. or surveys for teachers.

In a 2024 interview with The Herald, Williams stated that she believed Brenner’s actions were caused by an incident in April 2014. She claims that Brenner shouted in what she calls a “torrent of anger” at her during a discussion in his office.

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

She added that an improvement plan was created shortly afterwards.

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

Brenner declined the Herald’s request to talk about the complaint investigation.

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

Williams continued to coach under Brenner until her retirement in 2017.

She told The Herald that her relationship with Brenner did not improve after she filed the complaint and Brenner transferred her responsibilities to other people.

“How can I convey what it is like to live this way? It’s like he’s scaring me,” she said. “You sit in this chair and you can 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’ claims are somewhat similar to

a staffing complaint filed in May by Assistant Superintendent Catherine Gillach.

Both women worked for Brenner for an extended period of time and received positive evaluations before apparently falling out with Brenner – although Gillach’s actions prompted Brenner to file a letter of reprimand against her in June 2023, almost a year before her personnel complaint.

The two also asserted that Brenner used underhand tactics to remove them from their positions. In Gillach’s case, Brenner prepared and then “withheld” a second letter of reprimand calling for her dismissal in April 2024, after Gillach rejected her request to resign.

Interview notes taken during the investigation of the complaint show that Gillach believed she had been “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 due to perceived insubordination and poor decision-making during the budget process.

Williams first came forward after the complaint about Gillach’s staff went public, saying she did so to support a colleague. She listed Gillach as a professional reference when applying for a substitute teaching position in the district in 2018, but said she had not spoken to Gillach in years before he filed his personnel complaint.

On Thursday, Gillach told The Herald that she and Gillach were “friendly” colleagues but not friends.

The school board declined to discipline Brenner based on the findings of an investigation led by former board chairwoman Amber Flynn; Gillach remains employed by the district.

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

However, the management

I voted for new controls on the Brenner,

including a leadership coach and 360-degree feedback, as well as requiring biweekly meetings between GFPA and Brenner through May of next year and requiring the superintendent to visit every school in the district at least twice a year.