When incoming Scranton school Director Tara Yanni called Director Greg Popil in the summer seeking help to get her husband a coaching job, Popil told her no and never to speak about it again. Instead, she called the human resources office and asked that her husband get an interview, district officials said Friday.
The day after Yanni’s attorney called allegations prompting a school district investigation “false and frivolous,” members of the board’s personnel committee and chief human resource officer provided details about the conversations.
“It’s very upsetting,” Popil said. “If this is what she did as a board member-to-be, what will she do when she has real power?”
Attorney Richard Fanucci,
who is representing Yanni, disputes the claims.
Outgoing directors Popil and Tom Borthwick
, the two members of the personnel committee, said Yanni contacted them in August seeking help getting her husband’s application for West Scranton High School assistant baseball coach accepted after the deadline passed.
Popil said he could not help, and Borthwick reached out to human resources and learned that interviews were already scheduled, the directors said. Both of them said there was nothing they could do, and Popil said he advised Yanni that such inquiries could get her in trouble as a board member.
Yanni called the personnel office on Aug. 13 and asked Chief Human Resource Officer John Castrovinci
to interview her husband for the coaching job, although the deadline to apply had passed two weeks prior, Castrovinci said. He denied her request.
Castrovinci said on Friday that it would have been unfair and unethical to accept the application, “especially when it’s for the spouse of an incoming board member.”
“If she’s denied all of this, it’s concerning,” Castrovinci said
When she didn’t receive any assistance, Yanni reached out to Borthwick via text message. In text messages, which he showed The Times-Tribune on Friday, Yanni wrote that Castrovinci was “condescending” to her and then, “I will be applying for personnel committee” and included a smiley face. Borthwick apologized for the administrator being “rude.”
“She got very upset,” Borthwick said. “She said she would remember he did this to her.”
Fanucci said Yanni’s husband had originally put his application for a coaching job in before the May primary — long before the district posted the job in July. Yanni only called to inquire whether her husband could get an interview, Fanucci said.
“She never threatened people,” he said.
The position, which the board filled in September, pays $2,853 per year.
District policy prohibits nepotism in the selection, hiring and assignment process. Under the state’s Ethics Act, a conflict of interest exists when people use the authority of their public offices for the financial benefit of themselves or their immediate family members.
Popil said he told then-Superintendent Alexis Kirijan, Ed.D.
, about Yanni’s inquiry, and also spoke to solicitor John Audi.
Kirijan resigned from the district shortly after that conversation. Popil and Borthwick said they spoke to current administrators and Audi last week, after Yanni sent an email to directors asking the board to delay the vote for superintendent until new directors took their seats. In her email, Yanni said that while she had nothing against Melissa McTiernan
, she asked that the district conduct a search for a superintendent. The board voted 9-0 this week to appoint McTiernan as superintendent.
Audi, who said he had no comment, is conducting the investigation.
Yanni is one of four newcomers set to take seats on the board Dec. 3. Running with the promise of being a financial watchdog, Yanni beat both Borthwick and Popil in May’s primary election.
Fanucci accused the “lame duck board members” of politics and only bringing the issue up again in retaliation to the email his client sent.
“I will take substance over fiction any day and truth over allegations any time,” Fanucci said. “She asked questions. There is no harm in doing that. That’s all she did.”
Fanucci also questioned why the district waited until now to investigate an incident that allegedly happened in August.
Borthwick and Popil said Yanni’s email prompted them to follow up with the issue.
“I don’t care about politics,” Borthwick said. “I care about ethics.”
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