School district appeals labor board's decision about vacation payout

LACONIA — The Laconia School District has filed an appeal in a wage claim decision by the state Department of Labor. In late December, the DOL ruled in favor of former business administrator Christine Blouin, a decision the district is asking the court to overturn or direct the department to reconsider. A hearing on the appeal in Belknap Superior Court is set for April 10.

According to the DOL decision, Superintendent Steve Tucker relieved Blouin of her duties at the beginning of March 2022. The school board voted April 5 not to renew her contract with the district, and then to terminate it. The school board found Blouin to be in material breach of her contract and therefore was not entitled to a cash-out of her accumulated vacation time. Blouin’s counsel was notified of her nonrenewal on April 14, and of her termination for breach five days later.

Blouin maintained that the district did not have grounds for breach and only furnished allegations after the fact to justify her dismissal. She filed a wage claim for both her vacation pay and damages, because she felt the district had knowingly ended her contract without proof of breach and deprived her of that sum — more than $32,000 plus matching damages.

The Department of Labor sided with Blouin in December, ruling that she is owed more than $68,000, and the district filed an appeal last month.

Blouin asserted that her termination, and the resulting withholding of vacation pay, was retaliation for her participation in an investigation into employee complaints against Tucker and that she had not breached her employment contract.

In response to an interview request, Tucker gave a written statement. “The case is in litigation and we look forward to the court’s review,” it reads in full. 

“The case we presented to the Hearing Officer was that this all stemmed from Christine doing her job as the HR Administrator: she reported complaints about the Superintendent to the Board. His response was to retaliate,” read a written statement from Blouin’s attorney, Peter Callaghan. “The evidence the District presented was not true, it was unsupported and designed to falsely portray Christine. But the Hearing Officer did not believe it after observing the witnesses testify ... The District’s conduct and its treatment of Christine was so bad the Hearing Officer awarded double damages under the statute.”

The wage claim

The crux of the case is not whether the behaviors the district used to ground its termination took place, the DOL framed in its ruling, but to what extent her employer rationally concluded at the time that she did them. The framing raises questions about what the superintendent and the school board actually knew before dismissing Blouin and then terminating her contract, and whether the knowledge they had at the time justified finding her in breach.

“The question is not whether Claimant actually committed a material breach of the employment contract, but rather, whether Employer reasonably determined that she did so,” the decision states.

“The issue in this context is whether the Employer had reasonable grounds to believe the claimant was in material breach of the contract when it terminated her,” it emphasizes with the final phrase underlined. 

Such a reasonable determination, the DOL ruled, didn’t happen. 

The ruling notes that, based on documents and testimony from three witnesses at two hearings during the fall of 2022, several of the key points the district used as evidence of Blouin’s misconduct and immorality were lacking proof, not known to Tucker when she was dismissed or were found in a district investigation conducted after her termination. 

Timeline and testimony 

Blouin was informed in a letter that her contract was terminated because she had failed to comply with the rules and regulations of the state board of education and/or the Laconia School Board. The letter, quoted below, gave a list of alleged misconduct, citing her:

• Attempt to use her position to encourage at least one district employee to work with her to have the superintendent discharged by the school board; 

• Failure to prepare employment evaluations for her reports and then, when the superintendent took on this responsibility, insisting on preparing her own evaluations despite the superintendent's instruction that she not do so; 

• Expenditure of significant time on personal issues during work hours; diversion of her work to others; abusive treatment of some of those reporting to her; 

• Conduct of a romantic relationship with at least one teenage boy; 

• Creation of a hostile work environment for the district's facility director;

• Misrepresentation of material facts to the LEA in negotiations; 

• Taking vacation time without first notifying her supervisor and seeking approval; 

• Failure to meet with the superintendent to review her conduct when he requested that she do so; and, 

• Leaving work without notice and the misrepresentation of her whereabouts.

In hearings, two of Blouin’s former coworkers testified to that misconduct. 

Diane Clary, the district’s current business administrator, testified at the labor board hearing that Blouin often shifted her own work onto Clary, then a payroll accounting specialist, and that Blouin was often unduly harsh on another of her own direct reports. According to Clary’s testimony, a district audit found that “grant requirements were not being closely followed,” though “the audits did not reveal any misuse, defalcation, loss, or theft of funds.” 

The DOL report notes that “Clary was asked whether she reported to the superintendent or his assistant any of her concerns regarding Claimant's work habits, time away from work, and communications with staff. She said she did not.”

The report also describes testimony from Tami Horan, the district’s current human resource coordinator. Horan testified that Blouin “spent a lot of time in her office planning vacations” and “talking on her cellphone on personal matters,” and that she “was often out of the office without explanation, and told employees to cover for her and do work that Claimant was supposed to do.”

Horan notably testified that Blouin, while hosting some foreign exchange students playing in a local hockey league, whom Horan believed were between the ages of 16 and 18, “talked a lot about the boys in an off-color manner, suggesting that she was intimately involved with one or more of them” and that she “talked about their private parts.” 

According to Horan’s testimony, Blouin showed her cellphone pictures of “herself with one or more boys in inappropriate settings, such as in a hot tub with drinks” and “other photos showing the private parts of one or more of the hockey players.” Horan said Blouin had an affair with one of the players which precipitated a divorce from her then-husband, and that Blouin later married the player after he turned 19.

Horan stated that she did inform Tucker and Assistant Superintendent Amy Hinds that Blouin was misrepresenting her absences from work and misreporting vacation time, but never made a formal complaint because “she was my boss.”

Horan also testified that she told the superintendent that Blouin “was partying with the hockey players,” but that she did not share her concerns with him about Blouin’s alleged intimate relationship, discussion of genitals or facilitation of underage drinking.

Tucker and Blouin were the only others who testified at the hearing. 

Retaliation

Blouin had been an employee of the district since 2016, and Tucker joined in 2019. Because of the pandemic, Tucker testified she did not receive her first formal evaluation until early 2021. Her next formal evaluation occurred that fall.

Blouin recounted in her testimony that she had a lengthy verbal evaluation from Tucker on Oct. 6 that was largely positive, including some constructive criticism that she described as fair and accurate.

On Oct. 28, she received a written evaluation dated Oct. 14 which admonished Blouin for taking a belittling tone with staff and being a poor communicator. Blouin refused to sign the evaluation, because, as she wrote to Tucker in a letter, it was in “absolute contrast” to the content of its accompanying verbal review, where the issues of the written review were not raised. She also took issue with an abrupt change in their working relationship: “Your behavior over the past few weeks has changed dramatically towards me in a negative way. ... My working environment with you and the Assistant Superintendent have come to feel hostile and antagonistic,” she wrote. 

“I cannot in good faith sign a written evaluation that feels targeted, unsupported, and riddled with false accusations,” Blouin concluded. 

Blouin testified that she felt this pivot was due to her participation in an investigation into the superintendent.

According to the DOL report, nine employees made complaints that Tucker had engaged in “intimidation, fear, microaggressions, retaliation, discrimination, harassment, false representation, favoritism, double standards, and intentional acts to push out staff, punish staff, and make their working environment uncomfortable to the point of being unbearable.” 

Blouin passed on complaints to the district’s attorney, Debra Weiss-Ford, who led an investigation in the fall of 2021 that concluded in November. The investigation found that the complaints against Tucker were unfounded, but that he did engage in retaliatory behavior toward two participating administrators.

A letter Blouin received in January 2022 from the school board’s counsel said that “With regard to the retaliation complaint concerning the evaluation performed this Fall, the Board has determined that the document will not be grounds for any adverse action against Ms. Blouin,” and that the board had “clearly directed that he is not to retaliate for Christine Blouin's participation in Attorney Weiss-Ford's investigation.”

During testimony, Tucker said that, when he was hired, the school board tasked him with unifying the district and resolving issues of individual "fiefdoms” and a lack of cooperation.

Tucker testified that he had heard complaints about Blouin being difficult to work with and regularly absent. He stated that he had given her repeated verbal appraisals about ways to improve, including her disappearances from work and doing her share.

Tucker testified to hearing about behavior between Blouin and a hockey player in public, which she denied when he asked her about it. Tucker continued to testify that “no one came to him with eyewitness knowledge of sexual misconduct or a sexual relationship between Claimant and any hockey boy.” Until Horan’s testimony at the hearing, Tucker said he “was unaware of the details, including the allegations of graphic photographs.”

Tucker also testified that the school board had not found that he retaliated against Blouin. 

Labor department ruling

Siding with Blouin, the DOL hearing officer’s ruling stated that “Mr. Tucker's testimony that the school board determined that he did not retaliate against Claimant is at odds with the documentary evidence,” and affirmed Blouin’s accusation that he treated her differently after she participated in the investigation.

Additionally, claims about her shortcomings at work were ruled insufficient to qualify as breach of contract. The report also notes the district initiated an investigation into Blouin after her contract was terminated.

Regarding Blouin’s alleged romantic immorality, the hearing officer noted that, if Blouin’s coworkers “believed that Claimant actually engaged in illegal activity,” such as sharing nude photos of minors or providing them with alcohol, “it is found that they or Employer would have made a criminal referral as required by law,” and any report would have been included in the case. District employees are mandated reporters. 

The school district’s appeal

The district’s appeal emphasizes Blouin’s romantic immorality as a primary, though not the only, reason for her being found in breach of contract. The appeal describes specific details of her alleged sexual misconduct and narration to her coworkers, including details which Tucker testified to not knowing until the DOL hearing.

The district also takes issue with what it describes as the DOL hearing officer arbitrarily placing a time limit on the hearings, resulting in few of the potential witnesses being able to testify, including those who could have testified to claims made by Tucker that the DOL found unsubstantiated. Notably, Aaron Hayward, then-chair of the Laconia School Board, who was present at the hearings, was not able to testify. There is no evidence included about exactly what the board knew in April 2022 and what information led to its finding of material breach.

The appeal emphasizes that it was the school board, not the superintendent, that actually terminated Blouin’s contract, making any retaliatory sentiments by the superintendent irrelevant.

“Setting aside for the moment that Ms. Blouin offered no evidence that the Board was motivated by retaliatory animus — the Board, not the Superintendent, fired her — she has not negated the fact that her conduct was immoral or that her many other material failures constitute her material breach of her contract with the District,” the appeal states.

Current board Chair Jennifer Anderson declined to comment because the matter is ongoing litigation.

The appeal was highlighted by Board Member Laura Dunn at a Feb. 7 meeting. Dunn, who also chairs the board’s budget and personnel committee, noted that the district has spent more than $215,000 on legal fees since September of 2021, and more than $50,000 since August of last year.