Norwich — Three Montville school administrators charged with failing to report classroom fighting in the fall pleaded not guilty Thursday in Norwich Superior Court.

Superintendent Brian Levesque, high school Principal Jeffrey Theodoss and Assistant Principal Tatiana Patten are due back in court July 23.

The trio is on paid leave while facing charges of failing to report suspected abuse per the state's mandated reporter law. They were arrested April 19, a week after police charged substitute teacher Ryan Fish for allegedly monitoring and encouraging multiple classroom slapboxing bouts last fall.

Fish, fired four days after videos of the fighting surfaced among the administrators, is due back in court June 20.

"The appropriate action was taken immediately," Theodoss's attorney Richard Brown said of Fish's firing. "If we're micromanaging high schools and junior high schools and not allowing administrators and teachers to use their experience, we might as well put a (Department of Children and Families) officer in every school."

Brown described all three defendants as "dedicated servants" who "committed their lives to educating children."

Brown, and Patten's attorney Dado Coric, said they thought the cases should be dismissed.

"I don't think a crime's been committed," Coric said outside the courthouse. "Based on my reading of the warrant and the statutes, there's been no criminal activity."

Police and DCF say the administrators should have alerted authorities when they learned of the fights, per the state's mandated reporter law. The law states mandated reporters must quickly contact authorities if they have reasonable suspicions of abuse or neglect. DCF alerted police of the fighting incidents in December. No students were seriously injured but police noted the incidents left one student with a bloody nose and another with mental trauma. Another student vomited into a trash can as a result of the fighting, police said.

Failure to report is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison, up to a $2,000 fine, or both.

Patten and Theodoss declined to comment about the case on the record Thursday. No one picked up at a listing for Levesque, and a voicemail left with his attorney, Christian Sarantopoulos, was not immediately returned.

Levesque has argued he only knew of one incident that warranted Fish's firing but not calling authorities. He also called for Patten's termination in March, claiming she knew of the classroom fighting before he did and arguing she didn't act in a timely fashion.

Levesque's push to fire Patten prompted her labor attorney, Jim Parenteau, to accuse the school district of gender discrimination. Parenteau said the school district chose not to go forward with Levesque's claims, and an arbitration hearing originally scheduled for last week was called off.

Brown and Coric said it was unlikely the defendants would apply for the state's Accelerated Pretrial Rehabilitation Program, which is available to defendants charged with certain crimes when the court believes they won't commit crimes in the future. While applying for AR involves no admission of guilt and seals the case, the attorneys said their clients' reputations already are tarnished.

"Even if the charges have been dismissed and the cases sealed, the genie's out of the bottle," Brown said. "Their reputations are permanently stained irrespective of the outcome of the case. That's a pretty heavy price to pay."

b.kail@theday.com