The Burlington School District announced Friday that it will place guidance director Mario Macias on administrative leave pending the completion of a state investigation.
Following a yearlong inquiry, the Agency of Education cited Macias on September 7 with six counts of alleged professional misconduct. The Register, the high school’s student newspaper, broke the news of the allegations on Monday. Principal Noel Green ordered the newspaper to remove the story Tuesday, but not before other local media outlets verified and reported on the allegations. Green later agreed to allow the students to repost their story.
At a school board meeting Thursday night, residents berated Superintendent Yaw Obeng and the board for the handling of allegations levied against Macias. The board went into executive session for more than an hour to discuss a “personnel issue.”
The district released a statement about Macias’ leave at 5:13 p.m. Friday.
“This leave will ensure that all parties involved will have the opportunity to engage in this process without disruptions while maintaining the climate and positive learning and working environment at Burlington High School,” Obeng said in the statement.
It’s unclear if Macias will be paid while off the job. An email requesting clarification, and containing other follow-up questions, went unanswered.
The school board, meanwhile, said in a statement that the law prohibits it “from taking any direct employment action against Mr. Macias.”
“Such action is under the authority of Superintendent Obeng, and the board endorses Superintendent Obeng’s decision to place Mario Macias on administrative leave,” the statement read.
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If he used false information then he should be fired and not just be put on paid administrative leave, that’s ridiculous!
Q: is the leave paid or unpaid ?
please revise to report this – it’s an important part of the story
if it’s paid it’s a slap in the face to the community
it says that you can screw up, do your job so badly the state files charges against you
you can falsify a student’s transcript –
and get a paid leave
how charming – essentially an extended vacation
and likely a nice exit package and letter of recommendation if we do fire you
The school board is prohibited from taking any direct employment action against Macias? That responsibility is solely the purview of Obeng?!?! That is insane! Obeng and Green have been Macias-enablers!
But for the students revealing creepy Macias misdeeds in the student paper, taxpayers and parents might never have known about this potentially dangerous situation.
I feel like this is an altrnate universe. The reluctant school administration is shamed into putting someone on leave who is charged by the state of Vermont with sexual harassment and dishonesty. Their next response: censor the school newspaper which blew their cover up. And they choose this moment to ask is to trust them with 70 million dollars. If the school board doesnt get rid of these folks we need to get rid of the half of the board we didnt get rid of last March. This is truly awful and incredibly inept.
Athough I’m outraged by the whole mess, I do have to defend paid leave. Until this is adjudicated, you can’t fire him. Paid leave is the right tool to get him out of the school asap without violating due process.
No matter what the charges are, this is a union shop and you cannot just fire someone except for a very few items. So Gi Grape, are you suggesting teachers should not be allowed to be union members?
Oblong was shady from Day One, and aggressively anti-white racist. He was only hired because he was black, probably just like this Macias creep, who also had major aggression/morality issues.
Hello, Howard Dean. Did you move from South Burlington to Burlington at some point? Reminds me of the Polish saying: not my circus, not my monkeys.
NEA further showing it is all about protecting teachers pay and amazing cherry benefits for its members…not about what is best for the students (students are not union members). If you suck at your job, your fired for good cause …not paid an additional 6 months for sitting on your ass at home with benefits covering your whole family. Why was this guy hired in the first place?