NORWALK, Conn. – The standoff continues between the Board of Education and the Norwalk Branch NAACP, as Deputy Corporation Counsel Jeffry Spahr is demandiing evidence to back up a claim of racial discrimination against three board members and Norwalk NAACP President Darnell Crosland is demanding more time.
Spahr’s last comment in the exchange is to suggest that Crosland is engaged in stalling tactics after speaking to the Board of Education on Tuesday in support of the NAACP’s request to have a meeting with BoE Chairman Mike Lyons. Crosland’s comments to the board came after Norwalk Branch NAACP Second Vice President Brenda Penn-Williams announced that the Legal Redress Committee was in receipt of a complaint from BoE member Shirley Mosby.
“She alleges that the African-American and Hispanic female board members are subject to continual intimidation, harassment, disrespect, exclusion, discrimination, lack of transparency and not being informed, and subject to disparate treatment,” Penn-Williams said to the board, reading a letter sent June 22 to BoE Chairman Mike Lyons.
Lyons said he would not be meeting with the NAACP unless and until there was evidence produced to support the complaint. He said Spahr had sent a letter to Penn-Williams.
In the first of three letters attached below, dated July 2, Spahr tells Penn-Williams that the city takes the complaint very seriously, and strives to make sure that all board members have the right to have their voices heard. He then makes reference to recent charges levied against the board that are “devoid of any factual support,” “baseless,” and, in some cases, filed on behalf of various groups without authorization. In the wake of this onslaught the city believes a “best practice” that any association “promoting the broad, sweeping and unsubstantiated charges of an individual to have that individual produce the supporting facts and information, if any” in order to the complaint to be investigated.
Spahr requested evidence to support the accusation of racial discrimination, including correspondence, emails, documents, records and minutes, as well as video segments that would show the “disparate treatment” alleged in Penn-Williams letter. Spahr gave her seven days, the same amount of time that she had requested for a response.
“It is assumed that before your letter was sent you would have already assembled the supporting documents, information and evidence,” Spahr wrote to Penn-Williams. “Thus, turning them over would just be a ministerial matter of document/evidence transferal.”
Crosland wrote back to Spahr that day. He asked who Spahr was representing – Lyons or the board? The reference to recent “baseless claims” was irrelevant, Crosland wrote. The request for evidence was “tantamount to a request for production/discovery,” Crosland wrote, and therefore “highly unreasonable” to suggest that it could be done in seven days. Crosland also asked if Spahr was acting at the direction of Mayor Harry Rilling.
The response is cutting.
Spahr first wrote that while it is clear that the city provides legal representation to board members it is not clear who Mosby was accusing.
The letter from Penn-Williams was “vague in the extreme and totally devoid of factual content,” Spahr wrote. The complaint from Mosby was “not even” attached with the letter, Spahr wrote.
“I believe that it is appropriate for us to ask for the immediate exchange of these documents and materials – that is, if any such materials exist,” Spahr wrote. “For example, it should represent no hardship to turn over to us immediately all materials and proof that Ms. Mosby presented to your organization (including a copy of her ‘complaint’).”
The charge is serious, Spahr wrote. “I can only conclude that your organization (if it were acting responsibly) would have accumulated all the facts, evidence and materials that are supportive of these charges before making these accusations. With that being the case, it should merely be a matter of turning over to us what you have already gathered,” he wrote. “On the other hand, if you do NOT have any supporting materials, kindly admit to this. Raising procedural questions, as you have, can only be considered a stalling tactic. For now, just turn over whatever materials that you have that are supportive of the accusations that have been leveled. If you have no evidence in your possession, just say so.”
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