RUMFORD – A veteran educator now serving in northern Maine is facing problems similar to those he and the SAD 43 school board faced a few years ago.
The teachers union at the Madawaska School Department overwhelmingly voted no confidence in Superintendent Danny R.P. Michaud earlier this month.
Michaud served as SAD 43’s superintendent from 1995 to 2003, and as principal of Mountain Valley High School for a year before that.
Vicki Amoroso, co-president of the Mountain Valley Teachers Association, said several grievances were filed against Michaud during his tenure. Four have been filed by the northern Maine teachers association, according to the Bangor Daily News. She said the local teachers association also voted no confidence in Michaud in March 1998.
At that time, the teachers association charged Michaud with creating an environment of mistrust and fear and had asked the board to remove him from office.
She said she has been in close contact with Colin Jandreau, president of the Madawaska Education Association, who had asked her about SAD 43’s experiences with Michaud.
“It’s a difficult situation for them,” she said.
Without being explicit, she said Michaud’s management style involved communication issues.
“Some people now have to relive that history,” she said. “His management style was difficult to deal with.”
Communication issues figured heavily in several years of turmoil in SAD 43, when the school board held numerous closed-door sessions.
According to a story in Thursday’s Bangor Daily News, the Madawaska School Board held a five-hour closed session to hear comments about Michaud.
This came on the heels of the resignation of Madawaska High School Principal Conrad Cyr after serving for less than one year. A similar situation occurred in SAD 43 when two principals resigned at one meeting. They later returned to the district.
Former SAD 43 board member Marlene Gile agreed that Michaud’s communication skills were lacking. She said he often appeared intimidating to some people.
In 1998, after numerous closed-door sessions, the resignations of the two SAD 43 principals who were eventually reinstated, and several contentious meetings with allegations that the district’s leadership was ruling with intimidation and fear, the SAD 43 board called in a team from the state’s Department of Education to conduct a study of residents’ perceptions of the school system.
In August 1998, the six-member Department of Education team presented a report confirming perceptions that the superintendent and board weren’t always forthright, that the superintendent was considered unapproachable, an ineffective communicator and too authoritarian, and that many district employees did not feel valued or respected.
Michaud was eventually directed to enroll in communication-building classes, said longtime SAD 43 board member Betty Barrett. Michaud was a good educator, she added.
When Michaud left the district in 2003, he went to the Eastport School Department for one year, then to Madawaska in July 2004.
SAD 43 had 1,650 students in 2003. The Madawaska School Department has 815, including 74 from nearby Grand Isle who pay tuition.
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