An Illegal Substitution in Ludington

[XLFD]

The Ludington Torch has a good working relationship with the Ludington Area School District (LASD) Superintendent Kyle Corlett (pictured below), but we have noticed over the years that he does have a problem with procedures, which can be understandable to a point since there are probably too many complex procedures one has to navigate in the course of being a superintendent in our state.

But Dr. Corlett has shown an injudicious capacity to deny students ('Brad' and the Airsoft Kid), staff (a teacher/coach), and parents (a mom of a football player) the right to due process and/or follow the LASD's bylaws, and we have reported on some of the most egregious of those in the Ludington Torch.  We now have a new 'victim class' for such abuse, a contractor hired by the school to substitute teach.  Corlett released a letter to the LASD community on the school's Facebook page that has since been retracted for some reason (likely due to the legal liability of the proclamation noticed by the district's Thrun Law firm).  We wisely retained a copy of what was said and provide it here in its entirety:

When a brief investigation through reliable sources uncovered the name of the substitute teacher in question, Christopher Demorrow, we couldn't help but think that the superintendent had went out of his way in this letter to deceive the community.  When one looks at the local court records, Demorrow has only one entry closed or pending (active) in the district and circuit courts, and that was for a divorce back in 2020.  

But we did find court records from Ingham County about Demorrow showing that he was charged with domestic violence (DV, with a prior wife) in the district court (54B) from a 2010 incident, which was dismissed in the first half of 2011 by the prosecution.  The emancipated ex-wife and prosecutor came back with a vengeance adding some provocative sex crimes (described here) late in 2011 in Ingham's circuit court, and in 2012, Mlive reported that a plea deal had been reached, where all of the sexual allegations were dropped in order to find Demorrow had kicked his ex-wife in the back in a dispute over TV viewing and ripped a rake out of her hand, making her fearful.  One almost has to believe that the sex crimes were not very credible and even if found to be unprovable would greatly damage his reputation as a teacher in a private Catholic school.

The media would report he moved back to Ludington in 2011 to live with his parents, and this is probably where he has been since.  Corlett says the district hired Demorrow as an independent private contractor and used him the previous week as a sub.  This suggests that Demorrow was not operating with their usual substitute service, and this subjects the district to a vetting process mandated by Michigan statutes in MCL 380.1230 in various sections:

The last sentence says that if there exists no criminal history check for a sub provided from other districts, they must follow subsection 1, which says:

Ergo, the LASD needed by law to contact the MSP to do a criminal history check on the independently contracted sub, Demorrow, before he got into the LASD classroom.  This statute and others infer that there is no limit as to how far back the checks go in the person's adult life, so it is very unclear why such a check would not recover the two misdemeanors back from 2012 for Demorrow.  Somebody from the district seems to have dropped the ball in vetting this candidate, and Dr. Corlett is the one ultimately responsible.  

That becomes even starker when we read the Corlett letter (Corletter?) after doing our own research on Demorrow.  Speaking and acting for the school district, he indicates that Demorrow will be denied the ability to teach in the LASD solely because Demorrow had a plea bargain to dismiss sex crime charges, and by his wording infers that it happened over this last weekend, rather than 13 years ago.  This is the due process violation; he does not have that authority.  

Bylaw 4121 of the LASD enforces that the district has a duty to conduct a fingerprint-based criminal history check on the hiring or employment of any substitute teacher, unless it has been provided through another district the person has subbed at.  Once that check is received, Bylaw 4121.01 states plainly how the superintendent or board is to review the criminal history check (or any other credible report of criminal activity), and in the most relevant part states:

Dr. Corlett didn't abide by that.  In perhaps the clearest part of his misleading missive he has unilaterally denied Demorrow to work at LASD in the future solely because he was charged with sex crimes, sex crimes that were dismissed.  Depending on his source, he may not even know of the two DV misdemeanors in Demorrow's background, but one thing is sure, he fails to mention that that had anything to do with his decision on Demorrow.  

The problem here is that unless the MSP background check was faulty in giving Demorrow a clean slate instead of acknowledging the two 2012 misdemeanors, district administrators failed to do the necessary, statutory criminal background checks on Demorrow before utilizing him.  One wonders whether they have done this before, putting our kids in danger by their negligence even before last week.  

But the bigger mistake is that Demorrow was denied the right of due process when Dr. Corlett obtusely admitted that the only reason the sub would not be employed in Ludington schools again was because Demorrow had had charges against him dismissed by a prosecutor thirteen years ago.  Demorrow deserves at the least a dedicated personnel review by the school board to discuss whether he would pose a danger to LASD students where they should not base such a decision on the fact that he had some ugly charges summarily dismissed by a prosecutor.  Like their superintendent did.