[B]URLINGTON — Former Burlington High School Guidance Director Mario Macias has filed an appeal with the state Agency of Education after the AOE revoked his educator’s license.
An AOE hearing panel found clear and convincing evidence to substantiate three of the seven charges against Macias in February. Macias’ attorney, Francisco Guzman, filed the notice of appeal with the AOE Thursday.
The panel ruled Macias had impaired colleagues’ ability to do their jobs, was unaware of the basic functions of the guidance department and had inappropriately engaged a student witness in a discussion about the charges against him.
Guzman told VTDigger that the appeal would center around what he is calling “irregularities” with some of the state’s witnesses and the lack of testimony from any expert witnesses on guidance counseling included in the hearing panel’s decision.
The Vermont State Board of Education will consider the appeal.
Macias was suspended by the school district in September after the high school’s student-run newspaper, the BHS Register, reported the AOE’s charges against him.
The Burlington school board fired Macias March 11 in a 10-0 vote after hearing an appeal of Macias’ suspension.
Macias is also considering other legal action. Guzman said Macias has filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and was considering litigation against the school district for breach of contract for firing him.
While the Agency of Education called longtime counselor Roger Forando as an expert witness during Macias’ hearing, the hearing panel did not cite Forando in its decision.
“If you want to revoke and you want to penalize him with the most draconian penalty, you would have to at least show how Mario Macias did not perform his duties, and you would need some expert testimony to do that,” Guzman said.
The decision cited testimony from a variety of sources, including former colleagues of Macias’ from the BHS guidance department, a former student who had Macias as her guidance counselor and employees of the University of Vermont and the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative.
Forando was hired by the district to evaluate Macias’ job performance and concluded that Macias should be fired.
Guzman said he believed Forando’s testimony was weak, and that the survey Forando used in his study of Macias asked questions that were biased against Macias.
Guzman also said his office had been getting “swamped” with calls about potential conflicts and other abnormalities with the state’s witnesses.
“A lot of those calls were anonymous, and I don’t tend to credit anonymous sources,” Guzman said. “On account of people coming forward and identifying themselves, I’ve identified one or two abnormalities.”
He said he was “still going through some things” and explain more during the appeal process.
The hearing panel found several of the charges against Macias to be unsubstantiated, including that Macias failed to provide adequate supervision of a standardized test and deliberately falsified information on a student transcript.
The panel determined that the charges that Macias failed to maintain a professional relationship with a college student who was a substitute teacher and that he revealed highly confidential information about a student to a third party were unsubstantiated, as well.
Guzman said that he was disappointed by the school board’s decision to fire Macias.
“I don’t think they took into account the student needs and the work that was done over the past two years,” he said.
Michael Fisher, the clerk of the school board, said in a statement Tuesday that the board decided to fire after considering the evidence and testimony provided at the March 11 meeting.
Fisher said the board would not comment further until the district’s legal counsel completed a document explaining the decision.
The AOE launched its investigation of Macias after two former BHS counselors told the school board in August 2017 they resigned because of Macias’ disrespectful treatment toward them. The AOE relied heavily on former colleagues in making their case against Macias.
Guzman and Macias had argued these former co-workers were unwilling to adjust to new leadership in the department.
