{"id":7927,"date":"2013-09-29T14:04:28","date_gmt":"2013-09-29T18:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=7927"},"modified":"2013-09-29T19:54:49","modified_gmt":"2013-09-29T23:54:49","slug":"attorney-calls-for-romaniello-ellison-to-be-ousted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=7927","title":{"rendered":"Attorney calls for Romaniello, Ellison to be ousted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rep. for Hawa claims he was forced to ignore orders from DA<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"CampbellRomaniello\"<\/a>

Acting Coatesville Area School District Superintendent Angelo Romaniello (right) is facing allegations that he countermanded directives from Chester Couynty District Attorney Tom Hogan to keep the school district’s computer system locked down, pending an investigation.<\/p><\/div>\n

Updated, 7:30 p.m.:<\/strong> adds comments from school district, attorney Sam Stretton\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann and Kathleen Brady Shea<\/strong>, The Times<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

COATESVILLE \u2014An attorney representing Coatesville Area School District Information Technology Abdallah Hawa and CASD Director of Middle School Education Teresa Powell called for the removal of acting Superintendent of Schools Angelo Romaniello and District Solicitor James Ellison, Sunday, alleging that his clients are being harassed \u2014 and in one case were forced to ignore the directive of the county District Attorney.<\/p>\n

In a statement released Sunday night, the school district strongly disputed the accusations, stating that Powell and Hawa had retained counsel \u201cto explore legal action\u201d against the district.\u00a0 As a result, the district needed to \u201cretain all records that could be relevant to any litigation, including electronic records housed on the district\u2019s servers,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

Stretton\u2019s allegations come just days after the Board of Education moved to accept the resignations of Superintendent Richard Como and Coatesville Area High School Athletic Director James Donato in the wake of allegations that the two exchanged texts using racially and sexually offensive descriptions of staff and students. Powell and Hawa were the district employees who first brought the allegations to light last month.<\/p>\n

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\"Coatesville<\/a>

Coatesville Area School District Information Technology Abdallah Hawa and CASD Director of Middle School Education Teresa Powell look on during Tuesday night’s Board of Education meeting.<\/p><\/div>\n

In a letter sent to the entire Board of Education and copied to various county officials and media outlets Sunday afternoon, Stretton said that Romaniello had pressured Hawa Saturday night to give him \u201call passwords for the computer network,\u201d seemingly in conflict with instructions given to Hawa from Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan to \u201clock down\u201d the system while the DA\u2019s office continues to investigate the school district.<\/p>\n

Late Sunday afternoon, Hogan confirmed that he instructed Hawa to make sure that evidence was preserved. \u201cThis is an instruction that the solicitor (Ellison) should have given to the entire district,\u201d Hogan said, adding that anyone who tampers with evidence \u201cwill be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the letter, Stretton claimed that Romaniello instructed Hawa to \u201cignore the District Attorney and directed Mr. Hawa to provide the information \u2026 under the threat of insubordination.\u201d Hawa complied, Stretton said.<\/p>\n

The district statement said the board engaged the services of Reclamere, an IT firm that specializes in data security, to inventory and image all records on Sunday. \u201cThe goal was to ensure that no files had been or would be altered or deleted,\u201d the statement said, adding that accessing the servers required obtaining the passwords from Hawa.<\/p>\n

In his letter to the board, Stretton alleged that Romaniello \u201charassed\u201d Powell after she reportedly answered questions from two local ministers about the number of African-American faculty members in the district \u2014 and took issue with the official number provided by the\u00a0district\u2019s Director of Human Resources, Erika Zeigler, who allegedly reported that 10 percent of the faculty is African-American. Powell believes the number is 6.8 percent, Stretton said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny allegation that this board would harass or threaten any employee is ridiculous. We need to make sure we retain these records, and in fact we are required to maintain these records,\u201d said School Board President Neil Campbell in the statement. \u201cWe need to make sure that we protect all of the records housed on our servers, which include the Social Security numbers and other personal information of our employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stretton also alleged that Romaniello was already implicated with making demeaning comments about Powell in some of the same texting conversations that led to the departures of Como and Donato. Texting excerpts provided to The Times<\/i> would appear to confirm that claim, but the validity of the texting transcripts still has not been independently confirmed.<\/p>\n

Stretton asked the board to see to it that this behavior be immediately stopped \u2014 and then called for the ouster of both Romaniello and Ellison from their current positions, claiming both remain linked to Como.<\/p>\n

In an interview Sunday evening, Stretton said that after Hawa responded to Romaniello\u2019s \u201cunprecedented\u201d request for passwords, Hawa contacted Hogan and Stretton, both of whom told him not to comply. Hawa\u00a0 then received an intimidating email from Romaniello, Stretton said. \u00a0He said neither he nor his clients had threatened any legal action.<\/p>\n

In the email to Hawa, Romaniello wrote: \u201cThe directive that I have given to release the access information for the servers of the District which I have been appointed by the Board of School Directors is not subject to approval by you or the District attorney. As I am not aware of any court order which has been issued giving managerial authority of this District to Mr. Hogan or giving any employee the legal right to engage in insubordination by ignoring or interfering with an official directive of my office, I am directing you \u2026[and another employee copied on the email} to forward me the passwords to access our systems within the hour. Failure to do so will be considered insubordination for failure to comply with a directive of the Office of Superintendent regarding the management and operation of this District.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stretton, who said Hawa and Powell contacted him about a week ago because they feared they might be the target of retaliation from district officials, said he has grave concerns about what district officials plan to do with the information.<\/p>\n

Besides having ties to Como, Stretton said Ellison, \u201cwho has done nothing to resolve this matter,\u201d has an apparent conflict of interest since he might be called as a witness. Moreover, Stretton said Ellison\u2019s past brush with the Pennsylvania Ethics Commission suggests that he\u2019s not the best person to be giving advice to the district. \u201cBoth of these men need to go, or this is never going to be cleaned up,\u201d said Stretton, referencing Ellison and Romaniello.<\/p>\n

In April 2012, the State Ethics Commission fined Ellison, the former Harrisburg Authority board chairman, $2,297 for steering work to his law firm, Rhoads & Sinon, where he was a partner, state records said. A consent agreement said Ellison didn\u2019t seek board approval for the hiring of the firm for almost eight months while Rhoads & Sinon billed the authority more than $20,000.<\/p>\n

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C<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. for Hawa claims he was forced to ignore orders from DA Updated, 7:30 p.m.: adds comments from school district, attorney Sam Stretton\u00a0 By Mike McGann and Kathleen Brady Shea, The Times COATESVILLE \u2014An attorney representing Coatesville Area School District Information Technology Abdallah Hawa and CASD Director of Middle School Education Teresa Powell called for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2885,2886,29,2797,2601,362,2887,2888],"class_list":["post-7927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-abdallah-hawa","tag-angelo-romaniello","tag-coatesville-area-school-district","tag-james-donato","tag-james-ellison","tag-richard-como","tag-teresa-powell","tag-texts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}