The Central Bucks school board put Superintendent Steve Yanni on leave at Thursday after an independent investigation found that he and other administrators had misled police and parents about child abuse allegations at Jamison Elementary.
School board President Susan Gibson announced that Yanni was put on leave as of 5 p.m. Thursday. Assistant Superintendent Charles Malone will take over as acting superintendent, Gibson said.
A three-month investigation by Disability Rights Pennsylvania, a nonprofit with federal access authority to investigate public agencies on behalf of people with disabilities, concluded in a report published Wednesday that a teaacher and an aide had abused and neglected nonverbal children with autism in an elementary special education classroom. Investigators also found that Central Bucks administrators, including Yanni, had failed to provide relevant information to police and parents about the allegations.
Although the district’s own internal investigation had found evidence of abuse in the classroom, Central Bucks “erroneously informed parents of students … and the local police conducting the ChildLine investigation that the District’s investigation found no evidence of abuse,” investigators wrote. ChildLine is Pennsylvania’s child abuse hotline.
Warwick police and the Bucks County District attorney declined to press charges after a criminal investigation late last year.
“Thus, it was just a self-fulfilling circle: Dr. Yanni provided limited information in the ChildLine report and to the police; Dr. Yanni told the police that the District’s investigation found no abuse; the police relied on that conclusion in closing the file; and (the head of HR, Rob) Freiling disowned any responsibility for the District to investigate abuse as it was the police’s role,” investigators wrote.
The separate third-party investigation that the board approved earlier this year is still pending, Gibson said Thursday.
Jess Rohan can be reached at jrohan@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: CB superintendent on leave amid child abuse report findings