[T]he Agency of Education has filed six licensing charges against Burlington High School Guidance Director Mario Macias, and the secretary of education has recommended that his license be suspended for a year.
The agency opened an investigation into Macias after the Burlington Free Press and VTDigger reported last August that multiple employees in the high school’s counseling department had quit following Macias’ first year on the job. A report by an agency investigator, obtained by VTDigger, quotes multiple former and current district employees as well as students describing Macias as an incompetent, bullying manager who yelled at colleagues, bungled students’ college applications and transcripts, and made one student teacher feel like she was being repeatedly hitting on by him.
Macias’ behavior was so bad, the investigator’s report said, that the University of Vermont pulled its counseling interns from the high school’s guidance department after a 20-year partnership with Burlington High School.
“Mario Macias is still a licensed educator in the State of Vermont and remains employed by Burlington School District as the Director of Guidance at Burlington High School. We respect due process and believe everyone has a right to be heard before any conclusions are made,” superintendent Yaw Obeng said in a statement.
Burlington school board Chair Clare Wool said in a statement that the school board had asked Obeng in June to conduct a review of the BHS guidance department and Macias.
“At this time the Burlington School Board has directed Superintendent Obeng and our BSD Administration to cooperate fully with the Vermont Agency of Education in this proceeding. This matter is of great concern to the School Board, the BHS Faculty and Staff, students, families and the Burlington community,” Wool said.
Macias, who was hired by BHS in summer 2016, in a statement, slammed the charges against him as “baseless.”
“In my past home of New Jersey, I guided thousands of students — only in positive ways,” he wrote. “Here in Vermont, I continue the journey to impact children’s lives. Recently, I was notified that the Secretary of Education seeks to interfere with my dedication to Vermont’s children in publicizing baseless charges against my character. To the Secretary, I answer NO, but to Vermont’s children — I answer YES.”
The education agency is responsible for enforcing licensing rules. Any formal charges of misconduct it decides to bring forward are heard by the state’s Licensing Hearing Panel, a governor-appointed group of teachers, administrators and public members. The licensing panel can ultimately decide to take no action, issue a warning, issue a public reprimand, limit, suspend, or revoke licenses.
The agency is required by law to keep most information about educators facing misconduct allegations confidential, although it does list the names of educators who have concluded the disciplinary process and had their licenses suspended or revoked. But all formal charges brought before the Licensing Hearing Panel are subject to the public records act, and agency officials released information about Macias’ case in response to records request from a community member, AoE spokesperson Ted Fisher said.
Mary Markley, a 2018 BHS graduate headed to Stanford University, said Macias was her counselor her senior year of high school. Macias didn’t appear to understand what the National Merit Scholarship required, she said, and submitted incorrect information to colleges on her behalf.
“Working with him – it wasn’t just that he wasn’t able to complete these tasks, it was that he was dishonest and deceitful about his ability to complete the tasks and would claim that he had done things when he hadn’t,” she said.
Several veteran guidance employees left the department en masse before the start of last year and publicly complained to the school board. Many are quoted in the investigator’s report, describing how they went to top administrators several times about Macias’ behavior before finally leaving the school. Then-principal Tracy Racicot allegedly told Obeng Macias was not trainable, but the superintendent urged her to give him “one more year,” the report says.
Multiple guidance employees in particular worried about a special education student who had not received the proper services but was allowed to graduate despite not earning enough credits. The investigator found that Macias had falsified the student’s transcript.
One student teacher from UVM told the agency investigator that Macias unexpectedly asked for her cellphone number and then repeatedly texted her to ask her out to lunch or for drinks. She repeatedly declined his requests, she told the investigator, and felt uncomfortable because of the power he had. Macias “creeped” her out, she said.
The charges against Macias were first reported by Burlington’s high school paper, the BHS Register.
Student editors Julia Shannon-Grillo, Halle Newman, Nataleigh Noble and Jenna Peterson broke the story Monday night after receiving an anonymous tip but told VTDigger that the school’s principal, Noel Green, ordered their adviser, Beth Fialko-Casey, to have the students remove the story.
Peterson said that the editors had decided to temporarily take down the story Tuesday morning pending a meeting between Fialko-Casey and Green. In that meeting, the editors said, Green told Fialko-Casey that the story was creating a distraction and a hostile work environment for Macias.
“We all feel a little frustrated because we know it’s public information and we feel like it shouldn’t be censored,” Newman said.
Screenshot of the Register article before it was taken down Tuesday morning:
