Defense Rests in Final Day of Wollkind Hearing

The final open hearing in the termination case against suspended Brookfield High School (BHS) math teacher Dr. Robert “Doc” Wollkind was held Wednesday night, April 13, with Wollkind’s attorney, Randy DiBella, calling two more witnesses before resting for the defense.

With the end of the hearing proceedings, DiBella and Brookfield School District attorney Patrick McHale will prepare briefs, to be submitted by May 20, and reply briefs, due June 6. The three-member impartial panel, made up of a mediator chosen by each of the parties — Wollkind and the district — and a third chosen by those representatives, will then consider the arguments and render an opinion by June 19.

That opinion will be relayed to the Board of Education (BOE), which will have to make the final decision within 15 days, or July 4.

For the last day of the hearings, DiBella called former BOE Chairman and BHS graduate Matt Grimes, who was a student of Wollkind’s during the 1995-96 academic year.

“I was an A-student in math up until eighth grade,” Grimes said, whereupon his grades in math began to slip. He requested Wollkind as a teacher his junior year at BHS in the hopes of turning that around and was able to complete Algebra II with a 90-average.

Grimes testified that Wollkind had used sarcasm during his time at BHS, but that it was often for the better of the class.

Grimes recalled a class during his junior year when two students began to get into a heated argument while the rest of the class was working on an assignment.

As the situation seemed about to erupt, “One kid told the other to, ‘Go to Hell,’ and Doc says he’s been there and doesn’t appreciate your mother’s cooking,” Grimes said. “The kids laughed, everyone laughed — he was the only one who could have defused that situation.”

After the hearing, Grimes, who served as the BOE chair from 2001 to 2005, said that during his time on the board the issues with Wollkind “never hit the board level.”

During the early months of Grimes’ first term, Wollkind was on suspension during an evaluation at Four Winds Hospital in Cross River, N.Y., .

According to Grimes, the BOE was not informed that Wollkind was not teaching until parents started writing to the board asking why their child’s teacher was out. The BOE called an executive session to get updated on the reason for Wollkind’s leave, which was short, as he was back in school the next day.

Wollkind does not have another incident in his personnel file until 2006,  after Grimes’ tenure.

As a final witness, DiBella called BHS senior Austin Foulds, who spoke to Wollkind’s character and teaching methods, as well as the climate in the school during some of the more recent incidents.

“He was very, very open, very outgoing,” Foulds, who had Wollkind for pre-calculus his junior year, testified. “He’d make sure everyone was on the same page before continuing. He was very thorough. He would ask, ‘Is everyone OK with that?’ and then proceed.”

Wollkind attorney Kent Mancini asked Foulds whether his client was “respectful of all his students?”

“Yes, he put us on an adult level that he should,” said Foulds. “We were 16/17, one year away from being an adult.”

When asked if he had ever seen Wollkind demean a student, Foulds referenced an incident where a female student with a hearing disability asked Wollkind to wear a microphone apparatus, which he refused to do.

“I was two rows over from this girl and it was, I’d say, somewhere in the first month of school and we knew Doc’s condition,” he said. “And she approached him in the middle of the class, just randomly, and asked him, ‘Can you wear this?’”

“You could tell he was just uncomfortable wearing anything,” Foulds testified. “He doesn’t wear any jewelry, he always has the same polos [shirts] on. He doesn’t like change… His cloths are from the 1970s,” he said, getting a laugh out of Wollkind.

“So Doc said, ‘I’m not going to wear this.’ He wasn’t aware, no one told him,” Foulds said. “The class did laugh, but we laughed at Doc,” and not at the student’s expense.

According to Foulds, that student now has a good relationship with Wollkind and requested to be placed in his AP Calculus class in her senior year, however there was a scheduling conflict.

“This girl and Doc actually grew closer because of their disabilities,” he said.

“So you all knew how Doc was?” Manici asked.

“We knew he was unique and he let us know he had Asperger’s Syndrome,” Foulds said. “So all the students knew that and as we had him we got to understand his methods,” namely humor. “That’s how we would get by in pre-calculus — it’s a pretty dry subject.”

At the end of the open hearings, Wollkind was not fully relieved, as the final decision was still a long way off and it was clear that he would not be teaching again this year.

“The whole thing should have been handled much differently,” he said of the hearing process. “It all could have been smoothed over with ease.”

According to DiBella, Wollkind is only asking to return to teaching at BHS. (He also continues to teach at Western Connecticut State University.)

Wollkind stated that, once his job is restored, he is not very concerned about being in this position again, as errant or sarcastic comments “won’t happen again,” he assured.

Superintendent Anthony Bivona declined to comment for the district at the end of the proceedings.

The total cost to the district has yet to be tallied, however it will include attorney’s fees and half the expense for the services of the tribunal.

The school district does not put away a lot of contingency funding in any given year, according to Director of Business and Technology Art Colley, though adjustments are being made in the current-year budget to cover the expense of legal and arbitrator fees.

“The district is not in danger of going over budget,” he assured. “We’ll be making some adjustments internally, as we have throughout the year and as we always do.”