The Agency of Education will undertake a review of the troubled Kurn Hattin Homes for Children, the private residential school in Westminster that faces allegations of decades of abuse.
Dan French, the secretary of education, asked the State Board of Education last month to review the school, citing a recent licensing report from the Department for Children and Families that found the school wasn’t conducting proper background checks and hadn’t reported abuse allegations promptly.
The school recently relinquished its residential treatment license with DCF, but is still allowed to operate a general education program for K-8 students under regulatory approval granted by the State Board of Education. About 60 children were enrolled, the state said in October.
Early this month, state board members punted the review back to the agency, saying that while it did indeed have the power to hold a hearing and reconsider the school’s approval, it could do so only after a probe had been conducted by the agency itself.
That argument was initially raised by Kurn Hattin’s attorneys, who said the board’s rules required the agency to conduct its own investigation before the board could hold a hearing allowing the body to consider evidence and rebuttals from both sides.
The school’s attorneys also argued that the concerns raised by French had been “properly and timely addressed” and did not warrant a formal review.
French, speaking at a board meeting Wednesday, said the agency had “worked through some issues internally” and now has a “greater sense of clarity” about its role in the process for independent school investigations.
“We definitely affirm and understand our responsibility, and my responsibility as secretary, to conduct those reviews and investigations. So the ball is in our court, so to speak,” he said.
And the agency will in fact conduct a review, Suzanne Sprague, a spokesperson for the agency, wrote in an email later Wednesday.
“The secretary is in the process of identifying someone from the Council of Independent Schools to participate in the process,” she wrote.