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A former Newark school board member and a current member may have to pay their own attorneys fees in their fight against a school ethics complaint over their efforts to investigate allegations of racial bias at a city high school.
Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer denied the requests of board member Crystal Williams and former member A’Dorian Murray-Thomas to force the district to resume payments of their attorneys fees. The Newark Board of Education approved a resolution last November to stop them.
Newark School of Global Studies principal Nelson Ruiz filed the ethics complaint against the women, according to Dehmer’s Monday decision. The complaint remains under review by the state’s School Ethics Commission.
The commission has to determine if the women were acting under their duties as board members during their investigation of racial bias at Global Studies, which a state judge found in an initial ruling, according to Dehmer’s decision. Williams and Murray-Thomas filed separate requests to the state education department in December. Those were sent to the New Jersey Office of Administrative Law, which reviews contested cases for state agencies and issues initial decisions.
Further details about the ethics complaint have not been made public.
In its argument to the state, the Newark Board of Education wrote that it is “no longer obligated to pay” Williams' and Murray-Thomas’ attorneys fees because they both acted against the district’s legal interest when their attorney subpoenaed a consultant to obtain a report the district had previously deemed privileged.
The Newark school board originally approved four resolutions in which the board agreed to pay $285 per hour in attorneys fees for four unnamed board members at the center of ethics complaints in February 2023. At the time, the district did not release details about the complaints. During that meeting, board member Hasani Council abstained from voting on all four motions. Board members Dawn Haynes, Murray-Thomas, and Williams each abstained from one of the four motions.
The Newark school board rescinded three resolutions that authorized the payment of Williams’ and Murray-Thomas’ attorneys fees in November, according to the state’s decision. That resolution did not include the names of board members or other details about the board’s action at the time, other than noting it was being done “to protect the interests of the Board of Education.”
In her petition to the state, Janelle Edwards-Stewart of Porzio, Bromberg, and Newman, the attorney representing Williams and Murray-Thomas, wrote that both women were not informed of the district’s action to rescind the payments and on more than one occasion, Williams was “physically barred by Board staff members” from participating in parts of at least two meetings at the direction of Superintendent Roger Leon and the district’s attorney Brenda Liss.
On Wednesday, the district’s communications director Paul Brubaker did not respond to emailed questions asking why Global Studies principal Ruiz filed a school ethics complaint against Williams and Murray-Thomas and why the board approved a resolution to rescind the payment of attorneys fees. Williams and Murray-Thomas declined to comment.
Dehmer’s decision goes against state Administrative Law Judge Andrew Baron’s initial decision issued last month, which partially sided with Williams and Murray-Thomas. Baron agreed that the district should resume payment of their attorneys fees except for the portion that pertains to the subpoena of the “privileged” document.
Baron wrote that “while the District may have unclean hands” for ending its agreement to pay for attorneys fees, Williams, Murray-Thomas, and their attorney “also have unclean hands” because of their action to send a subpoena to a “district consultant for a document they knew had already been classified as confidential.”
“Clearly, when the district agreed to pay petitioner’s reasonable counsel fees, they did not contemplate paying additional fees for a separate action which would permit petitioner to obtain a confidential document it had retained an outside consultant to prepare,” Baron’s Jan. 8 decision read.
The state’s decision marks the latest development in the fight by community leaders to push León to address complaints of racism and religious harassment at Global Studies. Last month, Chalkbeat obtained a copy of a scathing draft report, conducted by the consulting firm Creed Strategies and deemed as privileged by the district, that detailed harrowing examples of how Black students and teachers at Global Studies were “subjected to acts of anti-Blackness and anti-Black racism.”
The Newark school board commissioned the consultant’s report in January 2023 after students and teachers first described a pattern of racist harassment at the high school in 2022. But in June 2023, León said that report was meant to inform the district’s strategy on race and would remain internal.
Neither Newark Public Schools nor the state’s School Ethics Commission have released the details about the ethics complaints against the board members. Under New Jersey law, the commission cannot publicly release information about a complaint until a public meeting is held to determine probable cause or violation or until the matter is settled, withdrawn, or dismissed.
Dehmer’s Monday decision also comes after his decision last month denying Newark Public Schools’ request to unseat board member Haynes over a conflict of interest after her daughter filed a legal claim against the district alleging that she experienced religious, racial, and gender discrimination and other harassment during her time as a Global Studies student.
Williams and Murray-Thomas have 20 days to appeal Dehmer’s decision.
Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.
