We, the concerned citizens of Brookfield, are requesting that the Board of Education remove Dr John Barile from his position as Superintendent of the Brookfield Public Schools.

Under the current Superintendent, the community has come to realize that Dr Barile is not performing adequately as required by law, the rules of the Brookfield Board of Education, in accordance with the reasonable expectations in the categories for which he is evaluated in his contract, and his poor performance greatly exceed the bar laid out in section 6.C. of his contract for termination for cause.

Dr. Barile’s poor performance and lack of leadership and personal attributes to continue as Brookfield’s Superintendent was greatly punctuated this past school year. Based on his complete mishandling of the Special Education administrative roles, Brookfield children suffered irreparable, immeasurable harm while greatly diminishing BPS’s organizational capability by losing long-term, valued, and beloved staff members.

Additionally, Dr. Barile acted reprehensibly by harassing children of parents that highlighted the emergency situation, as well as corrected his public lies and manipulations to attempt to hold him accountable and start doing his job and be honest.

Morale hit an all-time low. The district is currently acting unlawfully and unethically under his direction. The district needs major repair, restructuring and healing.

We have no confidence in Dr. John Barile has the capability, the moral authority, nor respect of staff and families to do the work and make the changes necessary to fix the mess he created.

A sampling of issues across important priorities are provide below:

Failure to Provide Sufficient Progress in Our Educational Program

• Brookfield test scores are stagnant. There are mixed results among grades, but overall are down a few points when compared to Dr. Barile’s first year in Brookfield, 2015-16.
• Brookfield test scores continue to be the lowest, or near lowest of our peer District Reference Group (DRG) of schools in towns with similar socio-economic factors, including SATs.
• Brookfield had the largest “COVID Dip” in test scores in our DRG and COVID disproportionately had a disproportionately negative impact on middle and high school girls.
• This year the Special Education (SPED) Program imploded overnight, primarily by the incompetent hiring, management, and refusal to fire two SPED administrators despite unlawful and continued harassing behavior.
•  Special Education employee flight led to paraeducator shortages, lack of Psychologist at Center School. Lack of employees as well as the turnover ramp-up resulted in IEPs not being met or followed. Dr. Barile also made no attempt to hold any of the special education teachers and/ or service providers accountable for non-delivery of service despite numerous parent’s continued pleas.
• Consistent, systematic, historic, and ongoing lack of respect for 504 disability accommodations at BHS teachers have not been addressed which in turn affects approximately 20% of the BHS population.

Failure to Provide Safe Schools and Environments

• The 2022 Student Attitudes & Behaviors Survey run by Brookfield Cares determined that there is significant gap between male and female students regarding their “Safety Asset.” Middle School girls report at 32% and high school girls at 43% versus boys at 52% and 64% respectively. The “Safety” Asset correlates to if students feel safe at school.
• There have been multiple issues of staff and coach abuse covered up and not adequately addressed over the past two years. Examples include:
  • Fall 2021 Cheer abuse case: Investigation covered up Barile’s failure to act timely to separate perpetrator from victims.
  • Winter 2021-22 Girls' Basketball abuse: Eight months to solve an issue of a coach using the “N-word” with students. Coach tried to justify the use of the word in writing. Barile argued with the parent of a victim that they were taking the Athletic Director’s “side” when the AD fired the coach.
  • BHS Honors and AP teacher bullying and refusal to follow 504 accommodations: Department Heads, SPED Administrator, BHS Principal have not effectively engaged to ensure BHS teachers follow the law, despite multiple requests from parents.
• BHS has not honored accommodations for students on 504 plans, exacerbating the underlying condition that drives 504’s, and likely elevating BHS girls not feeling safe in school.
• Dr. Barile has not properly managed teachers known to be mean to kids, including the abuse cases listed above. Both coaches have been rough as elementary school teachers but have no records of discipline such a letter in their file. Both abuse cases could have been avoided if Barile managed staff effectively, there were multiple opportunities for the district to have detected and correct such behavior over Dr. Barile’s tenure.

Poor Relations with Teachers and Staff

• Dr. Barile is largely not respected by the staff of Brookfield Public Schools and the staff would generally be happy if he left. Morale would be greatly improved by him leaving Brookfield.
• The situation with the Special Education new hires, Amy DeNicola-Hickman and Robin Riccitelli, greatly deteriorated staff morale and relations with personnel.
• Dr. Barile had four Special Education Directors in eight years. Two have stated they could not work under Dr. Barile any longer because of intense pressure to cut costs and the reality that needs were already not being met.
• This year over 20 Special Education and related staff left Brookfield. Many because of the SPED leadership. A long tenured psychologist left because he could no longer stand watching the SPED administration and the District fail children.
• Several long-term general education staff left Brookfield Public schools this year.
• Dr. Maureen Ruby shared with many people before she left severe concerns about the Brookfield School District did not like working for Dr. Barile.
• In 2021, the District lost Melissa Labrosciano and Mary Rose Dymond. At the time, Labrosciano and Dymond were two competent and respected building administrators.

Failure to Maintain Adequate Schools

• Dr. Barile focused on highlighting the progress of a new school's construction over the four years after the decision and vote while the middle and high schools deteriorated.
• The Whisconier exterior wall cracked and was about to fall down. No action was taken until a parent put in writing they were concerned it could fall on students or staff.
• BHS roof leaking for over eight years. It was highlighted as a priority in 2017, now finally just recently approved to fix. Water infiltration caused additional, costly damage.
• Under Dr. Barile’s leadership, the District prioritized the BHS Boy's Locker room and paving projects over weathertight integrity of buildings exacerbating issues.

Failure to Maintain Honest and Productive Community relations.

• Dr. Barile consistently manipulates, spins, and lies as a personality trait. This includes communications with the community. A memorable sampling of recent examples of Dr. Barile manipulative communications are:
• August 2022 School security town meeting: Selling Social Emotional Learning (SEL) initiative as well as Special Education as “investments in school security.” That is both untrue and offensive.
• December 16-17, 2021: the District sends out an email regarding a nationwide threat on Tik-Tok to parents and all students 5th grade and above. Parents are upset that informing 5th & 6th grade students were informed as it scared them. Dr. Barile sends a follow up email blaming "technology" versus the obvious human error, and vows to fix the "technology." In the first email, Barile promised increased police presence. Dr. Barile was confronted with the fact there was no visible police presence, he then claimed that they were present but inconspicuous after scaring 5th & 6th graders, promising them they would see police.
• November 2022 multiple lies to individual parents, the BOE, and the press and public regarding how many Special Education students had their student record information unlawfully shared with others.
  
  https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Brookfield-schools-admits-violations-in-self-17558029.php
  
  Several statements in the above article by both Dr. Barile and Ms. DeNicola-Hickman are knowingly false and manipulative. Some statements are virtually impossible (give a hard copy you say was redacted by a pen, but claim the parent saw the redactions when she printed them out at home, when she was not supplied a soft copy?).
• December 2022 to Present multiple instances at BOE meetings, Joint BOE and Boards of Selectman and Finance meetings, and emails to parents that a Special Education Program review's purpose, and expected output was to "show us where we could use a bit of help and highlight, of course, where we are doing well" despite a known systematic failure of the SPED leadership, including intentional violations of law.
• May 2022, an email regarding the Special Education review that slipped in a false statement that Special Education outplacement contracts routinely contain non-disclosure terms. This was when it was disclosed to the community via the press, he was harassing a family and utilizing an offer of a Special Education outplacement to obtain silence of his incompetence. The manner in which the outplacement was intended to be documented could not be lawful if it required non-disclosure terms.

Budgetary Management Failures and Waste

• The Superintendent is approximately $650k over budget this year and has repeatedly asked the BOS and BOF for additional funds.
• Dr. Barile has nearly doubled legal fees over his tenure, including known instances of covering the misdeeds of BOE members, staff, and himself. His growing legal budget funds harassing families and fight charges from ongoing investigations into District unlawful practices that would cost nothing but proper personnel management to fix.
• Barile is overspending with “Instructional Coaches” that are not improving results with no direct way to gauge how effective they are. This costs the district $500-750k per year.

We believe Superintendent Dr. John Barile has let our district deteriorate while he focused on getting his next job. This year exacerbated the fact he never adequately managed personnel. With our exceptional teachers, it was just a few that needed more guidance or managed out. We are years behind where we should be.

This is our town. These children are our future. Our teachers have helped raise our kids. You can see it if you are lucky enough to be at an end of year class party at Huckleberry during the graduation walk through. 

We are all invested.  Brookfield has always been a steppingstone for Dr. John Barile. Our problem now is, based on his performance, his multiple interviews with other districts, and his publicly available press clippings, no one wants to hire him away for us. Barile has no vested interest beyond his personal cashflow.

For the good of BPS staff, our children, the Town of Brookfield and for the future children that will attend Brookfield Public schools, we request that the Brookfield Board of Education manage a separation of Dr. John Barile’s employment with the Brookfield Board of Education.

Sincerely,

The undersigned constituents of Brookfield Public Schools, including Parent, Students, Staff and Residents.