Resigned Meridian School District Administrators Have Checkered Past

STILLMAN VALLEY - The Meridian 223 CUSD has named an interim superintendent to replace Dr. Robert Morelan who recently resigned from the position.  The resignation comes on the heels of a federal civil lawsuit.  Stillman Valley High School Principal Michael Mandzen will act as the district's superintendent until a permanent replacement is found.

But the resignation of Dr. Robert Morelan and his counterpart, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Thomas Gaudreau, is leaving a lot of questions still unanswered.  Both have checkered pasts involving sexual allegations, so why would the school district hire them knowing that?

"We were more or less flabbergasted about everything," said Melissa Lewis, secretary of the Meridian 223 PTO. 

Lewis says she and other parents were caught off guard after finding out that a lawsuit has been filed against the former Meridian Schools administrator.  The lawsuit alleges gender discrimination and a violation of the Americans with Disability Act.

"He's a great person, just a great man as far as I could tell," said Lewis.

But a 2003 article in the Kenosha News describes Morelan as otherwise.  The article reads that Morelan was fired from his position as principal at a Kenosha Unified school district middle school.  The firing came after he was issued a restraining order by a former employee who accused him of sexual harassment.  Post his dismissal from Kenosha, Morelan took a job in the Ashland, Wisconsin school district.  It was there that he worked with Meridian Schools' former assistant superintendent Tom Gaudreau.  Gaudreau checkered past makes a stop there.

"I remember just getting this very thick and often times heavily redacted packet of papers from his personnel file that contains just a number of shocking allegations against him," said Karen Hollish, a former reporter from the Ashland Daily Press.

Hollish published an article, post Gaudreau's resignation from the Ashland School District, titling allegations that he inappropriately touched co-workers, make inappropriate comments toward both co-workers and even students, and even discriminated against American Indian students.  And the article claims that these allegations in Ashland weren't the first against Gaudreau.

"The papers I received from the Ashland School District alluded to the management of the Ashland School District finding out that something similar had happened with Mr. Gaudreau in a previous district," said Hollish.

The situation in Ashland is similar to that in the Meridian School district.  Even though background checks were probably performed on both Morelan and Gaudreau, since neither was convicted on these allegations, a background check without use of the internet would turn up nothing.

"You can Google anything and you may find stuff that might be bogus online, so what do you believe?" said Lewis. 

Lewis says she wouldn't want to place blame on the school district since she doesn't know how the decision to hire the two was made.

The Meridian 223 School Board held a special meeting Wednesday night at their headquarters in Stillman Valley.  The meeting was in closed session for most of the evening.  No word on if a permanent replacement for Dr. Morelan was discussed.