Farrell principal to tell his side during hearing

By Jeanne Starmack

The dismissal hearing will likely continue in mid-April.

FARRELL, Pa. — The suspended Farrell High School principal, who’s fighting for his job, will give his side of the story in a hearing that will likely continue in mid-April, his lawyer said.

Lee McFerren, who has 45 allegations against him, went through two days of a dismissal hearing last week. McFerren has been suspended without pay since early February.

McFerren was presented with a notice of charges against him March 1, which began the series of events that could lead to his dismissal, said his attorney, Barbara Seman Ochs.

Ochs said the charges allege he’s short-tempered and did not perform a variety of administrative duties.

“Mr. McFerren disputes all that,” she said.

During last week’s hearing, which began Monday night and continued into Tuesday, attorneys for the school district presented testimony.

One of the odder stories, Ochs said, was that at a senior breakfast last June, he joked with students — saying, for instance, “hello, govna,” to them in a British accent.

An allegation that he then appeared drunk or high at a graduation practice is unsubstantiated, she said. Many of the complaints against him that led to the dismissal hearing, she said, are hearsay reports, gossip, rumors and innuendo collected from unnamed sources.

Ochs presented a picture of a man who tried to improve the high school, which had descended into “chaos.” But in trying to make those changes, she said, he encountered resistance from people who didn’t want to accept them.

She said that McFerren was hired in the 2005-06 school year to restore discipline at the school, where students pretty much did as they pleased.

Students walked out of classes if they wanted to, or came in when they pleased, she said. If they were disruptive in class, they were just told to get out. Then they roamed the halls, she said.

Teachers began to lock their doors and tape paper over door windows to keep roaming students from entering their classes or making faces at the windows, she said.

Some teachers weren’t teaching, she said. Some drank coffee and read newspapers. There were microwaves and refrigerators in classrooms. Some faculty members came to school late and left early, she said.

The school’s state-mandated test scores were also very low, she said.

The former principal was retiring, and McFerren “was hired to clean all that up,” she said.

She said that within a week, students were no longer roaming the halls. Microwaves and refrigerators were banned. Classroom doors had to be unlocked.

McFerren developed a motto: Academics first, athletics second, she said. He also asserted that “black kids can do more than jump, run and dunk,” she said.

He got the discipline under control very quickly, she said, while meeting with some resistance. But it wasn’t until his second year at the school that conflicts began in earnest, she said. That’s when McFerren changed the academic eligibility policy for sports participation. Students had to have at least C’s, up from D’s, to participate in a sport. That met with great resistance from staff, she said.

Ochs will present McFerren’s defense to the school board when the hearing resumes. That will be as soon as the attorneys for both sides can coordinate their schedules, she said.

The school board will act as a jury after the hearing, and will deliberate to decide whether McFerren should be dismissed, she said.

McFerren could not be reached to comment.

The school district’s solicitor, James Nevant II, refused to comment, saying it’s inappropriate because the school board is judge and jury in the proceeding.

Ochs said McFerren has many supporters in the community, and some have questioned why the school board gets to act as jury when it presented him with the charges in the first place.

She said all she can tell them is that it’s procedure under the public school code.

A dismissal will require six votes from the nine-member school board, she said.

Ochs said that McFerren wanted the hearing to be open to the public. Monday’s session was in the city council’s meeting room, and not everyone could get in because the room was too small. Tuesday’s session was during the day, when most people had to work.

Ochs said she hopes the school board sets the next sessions in the evening and in a venue that can accommodate everyone who wants to attend.