Previously undisclosed records show that Tacoma schools leaders admit a hasty and incomplete investigation led to Ken Wilson’s termination
by Sean Robinson
Three years ago, in the midst of a public outcry over lead-tainted water, Tacoma Schools leaders fired Ken Wilson in public.
The district’s longtime safety and environmental health manager was blamed for overlooking reports of unsafe lead levels in drinking water at a pair of elementary schools.
A year later, school administrators reinstated Wilson in private and paid him $250,000 to settle a wrongful termination lawsuit. The agreement included a letter admitting that the process leading to Wilson’s firing was flawed, and that he was given no opportunity to defend himself. Court records show the case ended in March 2018 with an order of dismissal. (Read the PDF of the settlement agreement and the letter.)
The public never knew. School leaders didn’t announce Wilson’s reinstatement, or the payout he received. They did not disclose or publish the letter clearing his name.
“The District acknowledges that Mr. Wilson did not get an opportunity to participate in the investigation surrounding water quality, and that Mr. Wilson may have been able to provide mitigating information if he had been allowed to participate,” states the letter signed by Lisa Nolan, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources, obtained via public disclosure.
School board members took no public vote to approve the agreement with Wilson because the amount fell below $300,000: the threshold set by district rules that would have required public approval.
Wilson, now working for a private environmental company, declined to comment for this story. His attorney, Mary Ruth Mann, spoke on his behalf.
“It was really a bad firing,” she said in a recent interview. “The injustice was obvious once the right people looked at it.”
Records obtained from the school district and Pierce County Superior Court show that Wilson sought a hearing before his termination and requested time to explain himself. He received medical treatment for stress-related issues following adverse publicity. The same records show that his requests for additional time were denied, and that he was fired without a full investigation, before receiving the records he sought.
On May 12, 2016, the day of Wilson’s firing, school board members had plenty of information to go on. News of unsafe lead levels at Mann and Reed elementary schools had emerged in late April. One sample from Reed revealed lead levels of 2,330 parts per billion (ppb), exponentially higher than the recommended federal standard of 20 ppb for school drinking water.
The reports also revealed that the associated test results were 11 months old. The district had taken no action to correct the problem.
The resulting pressure and scrutiny fell on Wilson, who had worked for the district since 2002. He had a child attending Tacoma schools when the news broke.
Public records indicate that he discovered the test results on April 22, 2016. Compiling data in response to a public records request, Wilson realized that the information appeared in a set of paper reports he had overlooked.
The reaction from school leaders was swift and severe. Wilson was placed on administrative leave April 25, three days after he spotted the “outlier” test results. On May 10, Superintendent Carla Santorno sent a letter to Wilson, saying he did not take any steps to address the problem.
At the time, Mann told a Tacoma News Tribune reporter that Wilson didn’t see the test results because they weren’t delivered in the standard email reports he was accustomed to receiving from an outside lab that conducted water testing for the district.
Instead, Mann said in 2016, the reports were buried in hundreds of pages of printed spreadsheets that came with the lab’s invoice for payment. Wilson spotted the paper records, delivered them to his supervisors immediately, and conducted personal water tests at Mann and Reed.
It didn’t matter; Wilson was fired on May 12, 2016, at a tense school board meeting, three weeks after the test results were uncovered.
The action appeared in a set of personnel recommendations from Santorno, listed on the board’s consent agenda for that day.
During public comment before the board vote, Wilson’s wife, Lorraine, tried to speak against the firing. Board president Karen Vialle told her she wasn’t allowed to speak. The moment is preserved in the video of the meeting, still publicly accessible (the relevant portion begins at minute 16:08).
“I am speaking against the board approving the board’s recommendations,” Lorraine Wilson said. “My husband is ill and under a doctor’s care.”
Vialle stopped her, indicating that the comments were out of order.
“My husband is searching for due process,” Lorraine Wilson continued.
Vialle stopped her again.
“Mrs. Wilson, I’m sorry, you’re out of order,” she said. “Thank you.”
Another commenter, unidentified, also suggested that board members should seek all information before voting to terminate Wilson. Before she could continue, she was told the comments were inappropriate.
The final vote was 3-1. Board member Debbie Winskill cast the sole no-vote. She explained her reasons in a recent interview.
“It was punitive,” she said. “I asked for the report. It was 700 pages of numbers. It’s like, how do you discern? There was nothing highlighted, there was nothing showing the lead was high. It all had come on so quickly. How do we expect him to know this? And he had another job. I mean, there’s questions to be asked before you jump to a conclusion.”
Winskill said she was vaguely aware of the subsequent settlement with Wilson and his reinstatement, but did not know the amount of the payout, which was never shown to the board.
Her mention of “another job” referred to an argument Wilson made in his lawsuit; he contended district leaders had saddled him with various duties unrelated to environmental safety. Coordinating active shooter drills was one example, according to court records, which also accused district leaders of rushing to judgment.
“It appears that the district wants to prevent (Wilson) from having a fair hearing and to get political advantage by unfairly making him a scapegoat in the media while forbidding him time or resources to defend himself,” Mann wrote in court filings.
Asked recently about the settlement and the agreement with Wilson, district spokesman Dan Voelpel said, “the district made a business decision to resolve the case based on the likely costs involved and because Mr. Wilson did not get to fully tell his side of the story before he was terminated. Since this incident, the district has changed the process for termination of administrative employees.”
How has the process changed? Voelpel said that the district has since added a review step for administrative terminations, involving consultation with the legal division and the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources.
Mann, Wilson’s attorney, declined to comment on the actions of specific district leaders. She added that Wilson isn’t interested in revisiting the issue.
“It’s a long way in the past now to cast blame,” she said. “People were legitimately concerned and were not properly educated at that time. It was resolved and he’s moved on.”
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