NORWALK, Conn. – Norwalk Board of Education Chairman Mike Barbis has reversed course and refused to meet with Norwalk Branch NAACP President Brenda Penn-Williams to discuss their differences.
“An unfortunate series of events created more of a problem in trying to arrange a meeting,” Mayor Harry Rilling said Thursday. “I am hoping that with a little bit of a cooling off period that I would be able to, once again, encourage Brenda and Mike to sit down at the table and have a conversation about working together and moving forward in a cohesive manner.”
Penn-Williams and NAACP leaders have called for Barbis to resign, after NancyOnNorwalk revealed an email, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, in which Barbis urged fellow BoE members not to attend the NAACP Freedom Fund banquet in October, because NAACP “leadership continuously slanders our school system, the Board and its employees,” Barbis wrote. NAACP leaders expressed outrage, and Barbis and Penn-Williams subsequently agreed to meet, at Rilling’s request.
Emails obtained from a more recent FOI request reveal Barbis’ change of heart regarding a meeting with Penn-Williams.
NoN received these emails on April 4:
From: Mike Barbis [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2019 5:51 PM
To: Rilling, Harry <[email protected]>
Subject: BPW meetingHi Harry
I’m back from this funeral in California … I’ve thought things over… and I would really like for you to host a meeting with {Brenda Penn-Williams}. I think it would be very productive.
We could get all of the facts out in the open and correct the misinformation. I really don’t want the public to start believing that there is any truth to these allegations — and I am ready to correct all of them with facts (as has previously been done with High Roads and Briggs for example).
Would you still be able to arrange and host such a meeting?
Thanks,
Mike
From: Rilling, Harry
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2019 2:27 PM
To: Barbis, Mike {and Penn-Williams}
Subject: Meeting
Thank you both for agreeing to meet for a discussion on how to move forward in a cohesive manner and in the best interest of our student body.
Please send me some dates and times when you, and those you are bringing, are available to meet.
From: {Mike Barbis}
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2019 8:42 AM
To: Rilling, Harry <[email protected]>
Subject: Follow up
Harry
Does BPW and the rest of her team really think I would go to a meeting after their comments on NON this morning?
And Lindsay Curtis? I will not show up at a meeting with someone who made those comments. And you can tell him that.
The comments he made show his bias, his anger and his prejudice.
Mike
The day that Barbis rejected the meeting, NancyOnNorwalk published a story in which the Rev. Lindsay Curtis is quoted as saying, “It’s just a travesty where our Board is right now.”
In that story, Curtis said he was upset that Barbis and BoE member Mike Lyons hadn’t looked Penn-Williams or NAACP Board member Eric Fischman in the eye when the two criticized the board during the public comment portion of the March 5 Board meeting. Eye contact is a “basic element of respect,” Curtis said. “They are so disrespectful, they are so arrogant, that it’s hurtful and I don’t think it’s good for our city.”
The report also quoted former BoE member Sherelle Harris calling for unnamed board members to “grow up and get rid of the ego-grabbing, gang mentality.”
Curtis expressed surprise last week when told by NancyOnNorwalk that his comments had inspired Barbis to drop his willingness to meet with Penn-Williams.
“If that’s how he feels, then how are {we} ever going to find common ground?” Curtis asked. “I was speaking to his unwillingness to sit down and meet. Because of his unwillingness, how does one categorize it other than arrogance?”
NancyOnNorwalk also received a copy of a text from Penn-Williams to Rilling, announcing that she would meet with him and Barbis “anytime during the week of March 25.”
Penn-Williams had requested that Curtis attend her sit-down with Barbis.
“I am not really interested in going back and forth with Mike, but I am interested in being able to have an adult conversation,” Curtis said. “ … I have always tried to be objective in my approach in anything I put my hand on and my voice to in our fair city and it is extremely discouraging that someone who has not only access but has the authority and governance over all children has an attitude like this. If he finds my comments bad, he should go back and look at some of his own previous emails which have already been made public.”
The solution is to get different people on the Board of Education, he said.
“What we are doing is trying to find candidates that have an interest, and go that route, the route of the ballot box,” Curtis said. “… When you have the attitude that we have seen of late, by members of the Board of Education, the concern is, do they have even the slightest of concerns that we have? If you are going to be in charge of policy, then the policy should be reflective of all people. When you have that kind of attitude in the background, with emails that have to be unearthed, that speaks to character, that speaks to integrity, that speaks to modeling good behavior, so that the very children we are trying to educate can see what character and integrity looks like.”
The behavior is like that displayed by President Donald Trump, he said.
“We have never seen to the degree that we are seeing the lack of character, the lack of integrity, lie like a waterfall, I hate to say it, but this is some of that same type of character,” Curtis said. “Everybody talks about how diverse Norwalk is and we should be civil with each other. When you don’t even want to sit down and talk, how are you supposed to reach a resolution of civility?”
“Rev. Curtis is not biased, prejudiced,” Penn-Williams said last week. “I don’t think he has it in his DNA.”
Barbis is “cocky and he has no respect,” Penn-Williams said. “He doesn’t care what he says in emails. He is a very cocky.”
She wasn’t at the April 2 BoE meeting because she was sick, she said.
NoN contacted Barbis on Thursday and asked why he would change his mind about a meeting he had said would be “very productive,” due to comments made by Curtis.
He did not respond to that question.
NoN asked other Board members for comment; none responded.
Curtis on Thursday said, “I have always lived with the simple edict: that the right people having the right conversation about the right subjects can always find a resolution. If there’s no meeting, then I guess there’s no resolution and that’s unfortunate…. We have opportunity to model what resolution is and what it can do for the community but if he doesn’t want to meet, he doesn’t want to meet. I wake up in the morning and I embrace the day.”
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