No action after hospital psychologist questioned credentials

Arnold’s arrest also spurred Brandywine to re-examine his nearly three years with the district.

Officials learned that two months before Arnold’s arrest, a psychologist at Nemours Children’s Hospital near Wilmington had alerted four administrators from Lombardy and the Brandywine district that the qualifications Arnold claimed might be bogus.

The district launched an investigation in July and suspended the four officials with pay while an outside attorney reviewed the matter. The four officials included Lombardy principal Michael McDermott, assistant principal Cara Beach, and Nicole Warner, district director of special education, WHYY News has learned from officials familiar with the matter.

Brandywine Superintendent Lisa Lawson, who was promoted from deputy superintendent days before Arnold’s arrest, told WHYY News earlier this month that officials made serious missteps, such as not notifying human resources officials about the Nemours complaints.

Beyond questioning Arnold’s credentials, the Nemours psychologist told Brandywine that Arnold had been confrontational with a hospital intern after insisting, even though he was not a licensed psychologist, that a young boy he was counseling had a mood disorder, Lawson told WHYY News. The hospital had diagnosed the child with autism.

Yet none of Nemours’ concerns reached Brandywine’s HR office, or Lawson herself, she said.

At Brandywine’s board meeting last week, members discussed the actions of the four employees behind closed doors in executive session, and later approved the district’s disciplinary recommendations at the public session.

Though the board didn’t name names and merely voted to “approve employee matter” 25-005, 25-006, 25-007, and 25-008, sources familiar with the matter said the members voted to terminate Warner, whose old post has been filled on an interim basis by Josette McCullough.

The sources said the board voted to dock pay fromMcDermott and Beach, who are back at work running Lombardy, where classes started Monday. The district took no action against the fourth, unidentified employee.

Lawson would not confirm who was disciplined.

“What I can say is that, based on the third party investigator’s recommendation for disciplinary consequences, we moved forward accordingly based on those recommendations,’’ Lawson said Monday.

Lawson added that employees have 10 days to request a hearing on the district’s decisions.

The superintendent also said Arnold was fired in July and could have sought a hearing from prison, but did not. No date for his criminal trial has been set.

Before the board vote, Lawson apologized and expressed her “deep regret” to members and the public about the district’s mishandling of the Nemours complaint.

She promised “accountability for those actions” as well as “consistent and fair consequences for all employees.”

Lawson also said the district would be “revisiting our hiring processes in collaboration’’ with the state, enhancing training on “ethical conduct and students safety, and creating more robust channels for reporting concerns directly to human resources.”