Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • Page 1

WEATHE Companies learning Spoiling SPORTS your vehicle 12-2; Si- 17 to buy smarter Yankees lose PAGE CI PARTLY CLOUDY, HUMID High 85-90 PAGE B8 BUSINESS WEEKLY CONNECTICUT LIVING, El gflhe. Established 1764 Newsstand 50 Volume CLVIII, Number 141 Copyright 1 996, The Hartford Courant Co. Monday, May 20, 1996 'rivate business, public schools: a clash of cultures Hard Lessons in Hartford In courtship, both sides saw future greatness. To Lightfoot, the promises of lean, efficient management were tantalizing. A department head at Travelers, Lightfoot had been through the wrenching experience of layoffs.

She knew that it might be necessary to cut some staff in city schools. But Lightfoot and others on the board wanted to believe what EAI said that there was enough mismanagement to fuel big savings. There was no talk about hard choices. "We didn't understand how they were going to make money out of that contract," she said recently. "It's not that we expected to take them for their money, but from my perspective, it was their business risk.

Please see Private, Page A6 By RICK GREEN and ROBERT A. FRAHM Courant Staff Writers Bill Goins could not believe what he heard. In astonishment, he looked around the table at members of the Hartford Board of Education his partners in this experiment to privatize public education. No layoffs? Chief operating officer for Education Alternatives Inc. and a veteran manager from Xerox Goins knew about downsizing, about managing multimillion-dollar accounts, about making a business profitable.

He'd made a career of telling people how to do it. Board member Ted Carroll told Goins he It was a marriage born of desperation, opportunism and hope when the Hartford Board of Education hired Education Alternatives Inc. to help manage its 32 schools in October 1994. Although the move was celebrated it was the first time a company was hired to manage an entire school system the two organizations had little idea how to make their relationship work. EAI vowed to save city schools by imposing a business mentality, from recalibrating thermostats to hiring low-paid interns.

It promised to pour $20 million into technology, staff and buildings and to pay for it without spending any more than was in the budget The school board was tired of going it alone and needed someone to help with its problems. In the end, the relationship failed over a clash of cultures, one private and one public, and degenerated into wars over money. Along the way, there were many signs that the partnership wouldn 't last The courtship had begun a year earlier when Stephanie Lightfoot, on her own, made the first call to EAI. A new, reform-minded board member, she wanted to find something or someone who could make things work better for Hartford schools. EAI jumped at the Hartford opportunity: a school system spending more than $9,000 per student made it a dream partner for the struggling school management company.

Since the city was spending so much more than other systems, EAI reasoned, there just had to be waste and, therefore, profit. And the coalition leading the Hartford school board jumped, too. With the worst test scores in the state, crumbling buildings, a seemingly never-ending budget and management crisis, there just had to be a better way. SECOND OF FOUR PARTS wouldn't be doing it in Hartford. Carroll repeated himself: "If it comes down to laying off one person or paying EAI, we will always make the decision not to pay EAI." The project was doomed.

It was March 1995, just six months into one of the most unusual alliances in public education history. The partners already had stopped listening to each other. The breakup would last longer than the partnership. Whistle-blowers: NU's 'most vexing issue' By MIKE McINTIRE and MICHAEL REMEZ Courant Staff Writers 1 996, The Hartford Courant Fired by Northeast Utilities, former Millstone nuclear plant mechanic Clarence Reynolds has sued the company, attended citizens' group meetings and appeared in a Time magazine cover story titled "Blowing the Whistle on Nuclear Safety." Northeast Utilities: A Fall from Grace SECOND OF TWO PARTS ValuJet s.earch points to canisters Pieces found in fire-damaged tire By DON PHILLIPS Washington Post WASHINGTON Investigators combing through the wreckage of ValuJet Flight 592 said Sunday that they had found pieces of hazardous oxygen-producing canisters embedded in a fire-damaged tire that had been in the cargo hold, as well as the first evidence of thick smoke in the passenger cabin before the DC-9 crashed May 1 1 with 1 10 people aboard. They also indicated that as many as 1 19 fully charged canisters could have been loaded on the plane in a haphazard manner, without the safety caps that are supposed to be on the firing mechanisms of the canisters.

The canisters contain a chemical that generates oxygen under high heat. If accidentally discharged, each canister is capable of produc- ing sustained external heat of up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Greg Feith, investigator in charge for the National Transportation Safety Board, refused to speculate on a cause of the DC-9's crash into Florida's Everglades, saying his investigators are "not going to stop and shift their entire effort to the cargo hold and these oxygen canisters." However, facts laid out by Feith at a press conference, near the scene of the crash northwest of Miami, raise the possibility that the poorly packed and poorly loaded canisters Please see Canister, Page All I1 1 I I I. rt I 1 if' 1 r-- mm 1 a. But last December, a federal labor department official blew the whistle on Reynolds.

An administrative law judge rejected his claims of harassment by NU, saying Reynolds lied under oath and misled investigators, who concluded his work record was "deplorable." Among the judge's findings: Reynolds fell asleep on the job, deliberately damaged a piece of reactor equipment and made unsubstantiated safety compliants. On the other hand, former NU nuclear engineer Paul Blanch was harassed by his superiors, federal officials determined. Once named the utility industry's "Engineer of the Year," Blanch was viewed as an expert on a faulty reactor gauge that affected every nuclear plant in the country. But investigators found NU discouraged Blanch's work on the problem and, after he complained, had auditors scour his work records in a fruitless search for damaging information. NU Chairman Bernard M.

Fox who gave a commendation to another worker who raised safety concerns personally authorized the unusual audit of Blanch, regulatory documents show. Though it admitted no wrongdoing, the company ultimately paid a 100,000 penalty for its actions. Two whistle-blowing employees, two very different stories. Among dozens of others, the two cases illustrate the complexity of NU's lengthy and often harrowing history of dealing with whistle-blowers. Firmly embedded in the public consciousness, the term conjures images of courageous workers risking all to bring safety problems to light.

To be sure, nuclear employees have braved harassment, and worse, to force utilities and regulators to correct serious flaws. Most don't seek the limelight or financial gain. "Nobody goes out to become a whistle-blower," See Whistle-blowers, Page A8 Shana Sureck-Mei The Hartford Courant about safety violations at the Millstone 1 plant. When he alerted federal regulators, NU sent him to a psychologist. Engineer George Galatis says Northeast Utilities stonewalled for two years before responding to his concerns 1 3S Few breaks in the workplace for those who are mentally ill Karadzic may step down A mediator says the Bosnian Serb leader has agreed to step Page All 6 SECTIONS 4 mm 0 Aim Lander E4 Classified Dl Comics E4 Comecticut A3 Conmcticut LMng El Crossword E5 Editorials A12 Horoscope E4 Legal Notices Local News Bl Lottery A2 Movies E2 Obituaries B6 Sports CI Television E3 Weather B8 Web site http:www.courant.com letter from her psychiatrist would be on its way to the company a few days later.

But when she didn't come to work that week, the salon chain fired her, claiming Jennifer had violated company policy by failing to request her leave in advance. Gone was her job, and, with it, her benefits. "If you're sick, you're sick," said Jennifer, who lives in Hartford County. "But I have a mental illness, and that's an abstract thing that people don't understand." "It's like getting hit by a car you need time to recover," she said. 'Substantial fear' When workers need time off to recuperate from surgery, undergo cancer treatment or allow broken bones to heal, most companies accommodate the leave and welcome employees back often with lighter schedules or other temporary and, sometimes, permanent help.

But when workers seek time to deal with Please see Few, Page All By LIZ HALLORAN Courant Staff Writer It had been a tough few weeks at work for Jennifer, a full-time skin care specialist who for more than a year had been providing facials and body massages to clients of a regional chain of salons. New rules, a new boss and a workload that had recently been increased were wearing her out. She became alarmed that the stress would stir the manic depression she had been battling with therapy and drugs for more than a decade. "I didn't want to get to the point where I was going nuts again," said Jennifer, 32, who asked that her real name not be used out of fear of being stigmatized by her mental disability. "I started getting panicky.

I just couldn't handle this world anymore." So last summer, Jennifer picked up the phone and called her employer. She told them she was having serious psychological problems and needed a two-week leave. A 0 520 John Long The Hartford Courant TWIN OF TWAIN Lee Sawyer of New Britain arrives at the Mark Twain House in Hartford on Sunday during a Mark Twain look-alike contest. Eleven vied to be the "Official Mark Twain" for the Mark Twain Days festival in August. Please see story on Page A3..