Pennsylvania Department of Education has dropped an Educator Misconduct Complaint filed against Unionville-Chadds Ford School Superintendent John Sanville. That word came in an email from the school district on April 29, but the person who filed the complaint, Chad Williams of Birmingham Township, is challenging the district’s reaction.

(The educator misconduct complaint pertained to the district’s COVID policies. See story here.)

Sanville, who announced on Jan. 31 that he is retiring at the end of the school year, said in a separate email: “I wanted to take this opportunity to personally express my gratitude to the Board of Directors, our administrative team, faculty, staff, and families, all of whom have demonstrated tremendous faith in my leadership throughout this long process. I am deeply appreciative.”

Sanville also said to district residents, “What you may not be aware of is that this complaint was one of several filed by the same individual with multiple agencies, all of which have been dismissed after thorough review.”

Williams said that’s just not true.

“[Your statements] are intentionally, materially and provably false and misleading,” Williams said in a May 1 email addressed primarily to Sanville, but also to school board members and other members of the administration.

Williams has filed several complaints, and a fourth is being prepared, he said. Only one has been dismissed, and he is challenging the validity of the dismissal.

In another email, he said, “I’m not at all surprised that John Sanville would send an email to the entire school community that is blatantly, and provably, false. There still has not been a ‘thorough’ investigation by any state agency. The fact is, the Pennsylvania Department of Education sat on my complaint for over a year and only made its determination after the federal government initiated its investigation into the district.”

He continued, saying, “The PDE made its determination without ever interviewing me or giving me an opportunity to present evidence. There remain two open federal investigations regarding the same set of facts, which Sanville and the board are well aware of because they requested an extension until the end of May to respond to one of them. I am patient and will wait for the federal investigations to play out.”

To further is point, Williams forwarded an April 29 email sent to his attorney, Janice Lorrah, from Bernie Cieplak of the U.S. Department of Education, in which Cieplak said the district had requested an extension through the end of May to respond to one of Williams’ complaints about the previously reported sex survey that violated district policy. However, the Student Privacy Policy Office of the U.S. Department of Education only granted the extension to April 30.

“The point is, both the district and Sanville state that my complaints had been ‘thoroughly investigated’ and dismissed by multiple agencies, but when they made that statement, they knew that they still haven’t even responded to the initial inquiry from the DoE in connection with one of my two pending federal complaints,” Williams said. “They lied, and it is obvious based on the email from the DoE.

Williams still has two pending complaints filed with the federal government. One pertains to the violation of student privacy rights involved with the sex survey, and the other is a civil rights complaint, which is pending before the Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Justice based on religious discrimination and a violation of due process.

There is also another complaint that has yet to be filed, he said. That one is against the state Department of Education because, he asserts, it denied him the opportunity to present testimony and evidence in support of his Educator Misconduct Complaint against Sanville.

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