DA opens probe into abuse claims at Holyoke school

The Hampden district attorney said Monday he would open an investigation into allegations that adults hired to calm tense situations among special-education students at a Holyoke public school instead abused the children, who were in fourth to eighth grades.

Anthony D. Gulluni encouraged staff members and parents from the Peck Full Service Community School to come forward with information, according to a video posted on the news website MassLive.com.

A report released last week by the Disability Law Center said students were tackled, pinned face-down, and yanked out of chairs for refusing to stand in the Peck School’s Therapeutic Intervention Program for children with behavioral and emotional disabilities.

Gulluni said he had learned of the allegations last week through media reports.

“When I became aware of them, it obviously raised some red flags and was very troubling,” he said.

Gulluni said that because the Disability Law Center is not a law enforcement organization, it was necessary for him to assign State Police detectives to conduct “a thorough, fair, independent investigation into those allegations and the conduct by the administration and by the staff at the Peck Middle School over the course of the last year or two years.”

The Disability Law investigation and a separate inquiry by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education both found that workers in the school had violated state regulations in using restraints on children who did not pose an immediate danger to themselves or others.

The state Department of Children and Families also has substantiated four claims of abuse at the school since October 2014 and is currently investigating a fifth allegation.

In a statement Monday, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said: “We have installed new school leadership and brought in outside experts to reform the school and will, of course, fully cooperate with any investigations into the matter.”

Separately on Monday, Stephen Zrike, the state-appointed receiver for Holyoke schools, announced that he was launching his own investigation and had placed the Peck School’s former principal and the district’s special education director on leave pending the outcome of his inquiry.

Zrike said he had also cooperated with officials from the state Department of Mental Health and the Office of the Child Advocate who visited the school Monday.

“I remain deeply concerned about the allegations shared in the report” from the Disability Law Center, Zrike said in a letter to Holyoke families. “Parents send their children to our schools to be educated in a safe and caring learning environment.”

The previous investigations were driven in part by a detailed letter sent by Liza Hirsch, a former Peck School employee, to Sergio Paez, who was superintendent of Holyoke schools from 2013 until the state took over the district in July, after years of poor test scores and low graduation rates.

Hirsch told the Globe last week that Paez pledged to investigate the claims but never shared with her the results of his inquiry. The state education department found that his investigation and subsequent report were inadequate, saying they failed to refute claims of abuse.

Two days before the report on the alleged abuses was released last week, Paez was voted superintendent of schools in Minneapolis. But he told the Globe Friday that he was unsure if he would be able to keep that appointment in light of the allegations and inquiries from Minneapolis school officials.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Paez said. “They are doing their due diligence, talking to the state, looking at the report, assessing everything.”

Two members of the Minneapolis school board are set to visit Holyoke this week to learn more about Paez’s tenure there, the Star-Tribune reported.