Listed below is an overview of the Bill of Particulars presented to the KPTA membership (all units – teachers, teaching assistants, secretaries, and custodians). This Bill of Particulars considering the lack of leadership of Dr. Richard Robbat, superintendent of the King Philip School District was accepted through a unanimous vote on June 1, 2009.

Lack of Leadership in Maintaining a

Safe School Environment

• Dr. Robbat has repeatedly compromised the safety of students and staff. For example, in 2007 he replaced a protocol for emergency situations that had been developed by a committee consisting of local police and fire, school administration, teachers, and support staff that contained guidelines and procedures based upon current Federal standards with an outdated protocol that had been designed for another school system.

• The most recent example in which the safety of the children and staff was compromised occurred in April of 2009. A bomb threat for April 9, 2009 with a specific time of detonation was discovered and reported after school hours on April 8, 2009. A subsequent search of the building ensued and local police and fire secured the building. The superintendent chose not to notify parents and staff of the potential danger in advance of the April 9 school day; consequently, parents were denied the opportunity to make the decision to keep their children home that day. On April 9, 2009, all entrances were available for staff and students to enter with no security checks, i.e. backpacks and packages were allowed to be brought into the building without a search. This compromised the security of the building and potentially could have jeopardized the lives of children and staff on the actual day of the threat. Additionally, just prior to the posted time of detonation the superintendent ordered the evacuation of the building into unsecured outdoor areas via a fire alarm. This put the children and adults at risk for a potential outdoor attack, as is cautioned in the Federal guidelines. It was not until later in the day (after the fact) that parents and staff were notified of the situation via ConnectEd.

• Following the April 9, 2009 bomb threat, he rejected the request of KPTA leadership to meet with staff after school hours to explain and defend his actions, answer relevant questions, and dispel rumors relative to his handling of the bomb threat.

• Another example of his disregard for safety protocol occurred in 2008 when he violated protocol in a regional police-led lockdown drill at the high school by refusing to heed the directives of the Wrentham Police Department. By his actions, he jeopardized the integrity and purpose of this practice lockdown procedure necessary to ensure the coordinated response of all regional and state emergency teams in the event of a real emergency.

Lack of Leadership in Fiscal Responsibility

• While the mainstream teaching staff has been reduced through attrition and layoffs over the last few years, he has created new administrative and information technology positions. He has purchased and installed technology without including the faculty in a needs assessment. As a result, the equipment often sits idle.

• He eliminated the position of librarian; consequently, students have limited access to the libraries during the school day, no access before and after school, and no access to a certified librarian to assist them with researching school projects and accessing the electronic database.

• He has created classes consisting of only one or two students while some classes are in excess of 30 students, and in some cases he paid teachers an additional 20% of their salary in order to teach a sixth class consisting of one or two students. Because of the disparity in class sizes, the average student to teacher ratio is misleading. In addition to the educational ramifications of overenrolled classes, in some classrooms the overcrowding of the physical classroom space has impeded the access to emergency equipment and secondary emergency exits, compromising student safety.

• Despite the public outcry over the special deal providing health insurance to a former high school principal and his spouse after only five years of service to the district, the superintendent has arranged a similar deal for himself, the district’s business manager, and their spouses. By his actions, he shows total disregard for the taxpaying public’s concern that was expressed in 2005.

• He has neglected to provide an adequate number of substitute teachers, resulting in the frequent warehousing of students in the cafeteria where study halls with minimal supervision replace classes. Additionally, teacher reassignment from lavatory and corridor duties to cafeteria supervision limits student access to bathrooms and compromises the safety of the building.

• He has created special positions and/or situations that have relieved classroom teachers from teaching duties while hiring other professionals to replace these teachers in the classroom. For example, he currently has assigned a long-term substitute teacher to be in the classroom with a certified teacher who is already in place. In the past similar situations have occurred in which teachers have been reassigned to non-classroom duties while a permanent long-term substitute teacher was hired to replace them in the classroom.

• He has repeatedly allocated public funds for positions that were not posted and for which there are no apparent job descriptions or contracts – all of which were consummated behind closed doors and without public knowledge and did not appear in the line item budget.

• He adversely impacted the incomes and W2 statements of employees for individual health plans for their eligible children without sufficient notification and by using an improper formula for calculating the value of the benefit to the employee.

• He made a sudden, unexplained, and costly change in attendance and grading software without consulting administration, guidance, or faculty for the purposes of evaluation as to the effectiveness and usefulness of the program. This has resulted in a wasteful, inefficient, and cumbersome system that is vastly inferior to the program it replaced. Additionally, the removal of the Administrator’s Plus component of the previous software system led to errors in GPA calculations and problems with providing students their transcripts in a timely manner.

Lack of Leadership in Creating and Sustaining a Dynamic Learning Environment

• Due to his lack of follow through on the recommendations by the Department of Education following a site visit, he received a letter of reprimand from the DOE in March of 2005 outlining the serious deficiencies in the implementation of the Corrective Action Plan. The letter of reprimand and the implementation plan were posted on the DOE website.

• He has not met his responsibility to implement the school policy that calls for regular evaluations of all staff. He has not held administrators accountable for carrying out evaluations within the necessary timeframes.

• He has de-stabilized the high school by repeatedly driving out administrators, as is evidenced by the high turnover rate of principals and assistant principals during his tenure (six administrators in six years). He has fired administrators without due process, failing to provide them reasonable notice, adequate examples of their failure to perform their duties, or opportunities to improve their performance.

• He has repeatedly reversed his previous directions to staff regarding professional development time. For example, one school year he directed the faculty to devote their professional development days to work collaboratively to develop and utilize rubrics as an assessment tool. Then, at the last meeting of the year he revealed that he had changed his mind on the validity of rubrics and indicated that we were moving in the wrong direction. This essentially negated the time spent by faculty on professional development activities for that entire school year.

• He received notification from the College Board at least a year in advance of the requirement to complete audits for Advanced Placement courses. The AP teachers and the AP coordinator requested the opportunity to meet and discuss this mandatory required accreditation process in an effort to coordinate efforts and address the details of the process. This request was ignored until just prior to the deadline. Through his inaction, he put the accreditation of numerous AP programs in jeopardy.

• He has intimidated and demoralized the janitorial staff with lingering threats to privatize their services. Instead of negotiating in good faith, he held the threat of privatization over their heads at the bargaining table.

• He has repeatedly violated the Freedom of Information Act by neglecting to supply public information when requested by the KPTA regarding the expenditure of tens of thousands of dollars. This has led to the KPTA filing an unfair labor practice against him with the Office of the Attorney General.

• He has destroyed the collaborative environment of the school by engaging in activities such as eavesdropping on private conversations of faculty and staff, going through the school mailboxes, and failing to provide feedback on assignments completed during professional development activities, thereby resulting in the creation of a work environment that is governed by mistrust.

The King Philip Regional School District Faculty and Staff have attempted to address our concerns that were identified in two comprehensive staff surveys taken in May 2007 and in November 2007 regarding Dr. Robbat. KPTA leadership met with him on several occasions to address the details of the concerns identified in the surveys, but with no positive results. It is only after careful deliberation and accumulation of documented evidence that we have assembled a Bill of Particulars that was presented to the membership for their consideration on June 1, 2009.

Because of the grievances listed here and other evidence of his failure to provide the King Philip Regional School District with competent, principled, inspiring, and collaborative leadership, and following a unanimous vote of all units of the KPTA, we declare that the staff of the King Philip Regional School District no longer has confidence in Richard J. Robbat as Superintendent of Schools.

The information above is a partial list of the documented particulars that support the charges listed in the complete Bill of Particulars.