The editors of the Burlington High School newspaper, the BHS Register, say they have reached out to a legal nonprofit after being told to take down a story about a series licensing charges against Mario Macias, the director of the school’s guidance department. The interaction may test the state’s New Voices law, signed into law by Gov. Phil Scott in May 2017, which restricts prior restraint of high school publications and protects advisers and journalists from being disciplined over the publication of sensitive stories. Get all of VTDigger's daily news. You'll never miss a story with our daily headlines in your inbox. Student editors Julia Shannon-Grillo, Halle Newman, Nataleigh Noble and Jenna Peterson broke the story Monday night after receiving an anonymous tip (the reporting has since been confirmed by VTDigger and other media outlets). The article was taken down Tuesday morning after the school’s principal, Noel Green, ordered the Register’s staff adviser, Beth Fialko-Casey, to have the students remove the story, according to the editors. “We all feel a little frustrated because we know it’s public information and we feel like it shouldn’t be censored,” Newman said. Peterson said the editors decided to temporarily take down the story pending a meeting between Fialko-Casey and Green. In that meeting, the editors said, Green told Fialko-Casey that the story was creating a distraction and a hostile work environment for Macias. The Register article quotes a report from the Agency of Education accusing Macias of creating a hostile and and offensive working environment himself. It also lists accusations by the agency that he failed to maintain a professional relationship with a substitute teacher; deliberately falsified a student transcript; bullied employees and “was unaware of the basic functions of the guidance department.” The editors said they have reached out to the Student Press Law Center, a nonprofit that provides legal information to student journalists, and are deciding what their next steps should be. Green and Fialko-Casey did not respond to a request for comment. But Superintendent Yaw Obeng said in an emailed statement that Green had acted within his charge. “Principals have the responsibility to manage the climate of the school and have the authority to regulate manners which they deem to be affecting that climate,” Obeng said. In 1988, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier that school administrators could limit the First Amendment rights of high school newspapers if the school has a legitimate pedagogical concern in regulating the speech. But Vermont is one of more than a dozen states with the “New Voices” legislation meant to give student journalists protections not afforded to them under Hazelwood. “Content shall not be suppressed solely because it involves political or controversial subject matter, or is critical of the school or its administration,” Vermont’s law states. Mike Hiestand, a senior legal consultant for the Student Press Law Center, said the legality of the school’s actions depends on what specifically the school asked the students to do. “If this was a request, there isn’t a violation, but if this was an order, it clearly was,” he said. Heistand added that students are often in the best position to break stories about their schools. “Assuming the facts are correct, this is the sort of story that the law was intended to protect,” he said. Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, introduced the legislation in Vermont and said that she believes the principal made the wrong decision in telling the Register to take the story down. “I think that that flies in the face of the law,” she said. “The students have the right to know that and the right to publish that.” White said student media outlets gives young journalists the chance to learn how to have civil discourse on important issues. “Students don’t give up their First Amendment rights when they walk through the doors of the high school,” she said. The law does not protect stories that contain speech that is deemed libelous or slanderous, an invasion of privacy, obscene, bullying, or potentially violates federal or state law. In 2017, the Register published an editorial arguing that Burlington High School had a problem with “oppressive” censorship of the student newspaper. The editorial said the school’s administration had ordered the student editors “countless times” to change headlines, remove published stories and not publish certain facts and images that painted the school in a negative light. “The Burlington School District is a politically active community, a value that should be viewed as an asset in an educational environment,” the Register wrote at the time. “Instead, this civic engagement has prompted worry from administration about the image of our school that the Register creates.” At the time, the BHS administration demanded that the editors send them all of their content 48 hours before publication for its approval. It is unclear if this remains the current policy. Chris Evans, a lecturer and student media adviser at the University of Vermont who advocated for the New Voices legislation, said it strongly protects the students’ right to publish what they see fit. “Can the school ask them to take it down? I suppose they could express their displeasure and say that’s not a good story to have up,” he said, “but they can’t order them to take it down unless they have evidence it is breaking the law in some way.” Screenshot of the Register article before it was taken down Tuesday morning:<doc-sep>click to enlarge File: Oliver Parini Burlington High School click to enlarge Screenshot The Register's site Tuesday After a yearlong investigation, the Vermont Agency of Education alleges that Burlington High School guidance director Mario Macias faked a transcript so a student could graduate, behaved unprofessionally with a college student who was substitute teaching and demonstrated incompetence by being unaware of the basic functions of the guidance department.On September 7, the Agency cited Macias with six counts of alleged unprofessional conduct. He remains on the job and will have the right to respond to the allegations at a hearing to be scheduled within 60 days. Vermont Education Secretary Daniel French recommended that Macias' license be suspended for 364 days if the allegations are proven.Macias did not respond to messages seeking comment Tuesday.Noel Green, interim BHS principal, toldthat he continues to have confidence in Macias.“He has been reliable, he's been a team player and he serves students to the best of his ability," Green said Tuesday. "I have nothing but, like I said, a stellar evaluation of him up to this point. "Green said he had not participated in the investigation so far but planned to attend the hearing. He expressed doubt about whether it would be fair but declined to elaborate.“I will say that I do not have confidence in due process in regards to this situation,” Green said. Asked why, he stated: “I don’t really think I can get into that.”Macias was not at school Tuesday, but remains employed full time and is not on leave, Green confirmed.The BHS student newspaper, thefirst broke the news about the case against Macias. The story appeared online Monday, but by midmorning Tuesday, it was gone. Green said he toldstaff to remove the story from the website.“In my opinion, it created a hostile work environment for one of my employees,” Green said. “I would react the same way for any of my employees.”The personnel tempest has been brewing for more than a year. Several guidance counselors left their jobs last summer and spoke out at a Burlington School Board meeting. They said Macias was demeaning to staff, not performing his duties and was often out of the office.After news reports about the controversy, the Vermont Agency of Education opened an investigation last September into possible licensing sanctions involving Macias.A nine-page affidavit from the investigator, Robert B. Stafford Jr., alleges a number of licensing violations. Stafford wrote the affidavit after interviewing current and former guidance counselors, students, teachers and other Burlington School District administrators.According to the affidavit, Macias fabricated a transcript for a person identified as "Student 1" so the student could graduate in June 2017. Stafford investigated the matter after former guidance counselor Yvette Amblo-Bose, former BHS registrar Colleen McSweeney, and Lynn Kennedy, the retired director of alternative school program Horizons, told him they had warned Macias that the student in question had not completed the necessary credits to graduate. The student was also supposed to have received special education services but did not for a period of 18 months, according to the affidavit.Stafford went to BHS on September 21, 2017 to request a copy of Student 1's transcript from then-principal Tracy Racicot. She could not immediately locate it, and suggested Stafford return a short time later after a guidance department meeting had concluded.Stafford returned and eventually was given the transcript, but learned "that Macias had in-putted data that morning to complete Student 1's transcript, nearly three months after the student had graduated from BHS," according to the affidavit. "After reviewing what was purported to be Student 1's final transcript, this writer determined that the transcript was inaccurate, manufactured and did not provide enough credits for Student 1 to graduate from BHS," Stafford wrote.Macias also allegedly behaved unprofessionally with a student teacher who was hired as a substitute. He texted and emailed the woman multiple times, asked her out for a drink, and visited her classroom for no reason, according to the affidavit. "She said his behavior was inappropriate for someone in his position and who was married. She said Macias 'creeped' her out," Stafford wrote in the affidavit.The document goes on to recount interactions Macias had with BHS senior Mary Markley, who was applying to college during the 2017-2018 school year. Macias was her guidance counselor and failed to submit some of the records she needed for college applications, and in other instances submitted inaccurate records, it says. He was not familiar with the National Merit Scholarship Program, and when Markley asked that he submit midyear transcripts to colleges that required them, he emailed her that BHS did not send midyear transcripts. She "eventually requested to not have Macias as her guidance counselor," the affidavit says.Markley, now 18, graduated in June and is starting at Stanford University this month. In an interview with, she said it took intervention from her parents and other guidance counselors to get transcripts and other forms out to colleges because Macias failed to send them or sent them late.Not every student would have that kind of support and it's unfair to put them in a position where they don't have confidence in their guidance director, she said. "I've never felt so disillusioned in my school," said Markley, who graduated in June with one of the three highest GPAs in her class and was named a Presidential Scholar.The affidavit also makes clear that staff in the guidance office sought help from Racicot to assist with the situation. She initially urged them to work it out, and then went to Superintendent Yaw Obeng, who told her to give Macias one more year.Racicot eventually put Macias on an improvement plan and placed a letter in his file about the inappropriate interactions with the substitute teacher, according to the affidavit.This summer, Racicot moved out of the BHS principalship to return to her previous job in the district as director of the Burlington Technical Center.Reaction to the allegations seemed to suggest a difference of opinion among the leaders of the Burlington School District.Current principal Green defended Macias. Obeng declined to comment but released a statement about the matter. "Mario Macias is still a licensed educator in the State of Vermont and remains employed by Burlington School District as the Director of Guidance at Burlington High School," it reads. "We respect due process and believe everyone has a right to be heard before any conclusions are made. We await the process to be put forth by the Agency of Education. "A statement Tuesday from school board chair Clare Wool sounded a more critical note. "This matter is of great concern to the School Board, the BHS Faculty and Staff, students, families and the Burlington community," it reads.The board has been aware of the investigation and directed Obeng to conduct a review of the BHS guidance department and BHS guidance director in June, according to Wool's statement.The topic could come up for discussion at the school board's regularly scheduled meeting Thursday. The agenda includes a request to go into executive session to discuss a personnel matter.<doc-sep>
The Agency of Education has filed six licensing charges against Burlington High School Guidance Director Mario Macias, and the secretary of education has recommended that his license be suspended for a year. The agency opened an investigation into Macias after the Burlington Free Press and VTDigger reported last August that multiple employees in the high school’s counseling department had quit following Macias’ first year on the job. A report by an agency investigator, obtained by VTDigger, quotes multiple former and current district employees as well as students describing Macias as an incompetent, bullying manager who yelled at colleagues, bungled students’ college applications and transcripts, and made one student teacher feel like she was being repeatedly hitting on by him. Get all of VTDigger's daily news. You'll never miss a story with our daily headlines in your inbox. Macias’ behavior was so bad, the investigator’s report said, that the University of Vermont pulled its counseling interns from the high school’s guidance department after a 20-year partnership with Burlington High School. “Mario Macias is still a licensed educator in the State of Vermont and remains employed by Burlington School District as the Director of Guidance at Burlington High School. We respect due process and believe everyone has a right to be heard before any conclusions are made,” superintendent Yaw Obeng said in a statement. Burlington school board Chair Clare Wool said in a statement that the school board had asked Obeng in June to conduct a review of the BHS guidance department and Macias. “At this time the Burlington School Board has directed Superintendent Obeng and our BSD Administration to cooperate fully with the Vermont Agency of Education in this proceeding. This matter is of great concern to the School Board, the BHS Faculty and Staff, students, families and the Burlington community,” Wool said. Macias, who was hired by BHS in summer 2016, in a statement, slammed the charges against him as “baseless.” “In my past home of New Jersey, I guided thousands of students — only in positive ways,” he wrote. “Here in Vermont, I continue the journey to impact children’s lives. Recently, I was notified that the Secretary of Education seeks to interfere with my dedication to Vermont’s children in publicizing baseless charges against my character. To the Secretary, I answer NO, but to Vermont’s children — I answer YES.” The education agency is responsible for enforcing licensing rules. Any formal charges of misconduct it decides to bring forward are heard by the state’s Licensing Hearing Panel, a governor-appointed group of teachers, administrators and public members. The licensing panel can ultimately decide to take no action, issue a warning, issue a public reprimand, limit, suspend, or revoke licenses. The agency is required by law to keep most information about educators facing misconduct allegations confidential, although it does list the names of educators who have concluded the disciplinary process and had their licenses suspended or revoked. But all formal charges brought before the Licensing Hearing Panel are subject to the public records act, and agency officials released information about Macias’ case in response to records request from a community member, AoE spokesperson Ted Fisher said. Mary Markley, a 2018 BHS graduate headed to Stanford University, said Macias was her counselor her senior year of high school. Macias didn’t appear to understand what the National Merit Scholarship required, she said, and submitted incorrect information to colleges on her behalf. “Working with him – it wasn’t just that he wasn’t able to complete these tasks, it was that he was dishonest and deceitful about his ability to complete the tasks and would claim that he had done things when he hadn’t,” she said. Several veteran guidance employees left the department en masse before the start of last year and publicly complained to the school board. Many are quoted in the investigator’s report, describing how they went to top administrators several times about Macias’ behavior before finally leaving the school. Then-principal Tracy Racicot allegedly told Obeng Macias was not trainable, but the superintendent urged her to give him “one more year,” the report says. Multiple guidance employees in particular worried about a special education student who had not received the proper services but was allowed to graduate despite not earning enough credits. The investigator found that Macias had falsified the student’s transcript. One student teacher from UVM told the agency investigator that Macias unexpectedly asked for her cellphone number and then repeatedly texted her to ask her out to lunch or for drinks.