The Stonington Board of Education should soon have a comprehensive assessment of how the administration handled repeated complaints by female high school students involving improper touching and comments by former high school teacher and coach Timothy Chokas.

The school board is expected to receive, perhaps in days, the report by Christine Chinni. The attorney, after being hired by the board, has for several months been investigating how school officials handled the allegations against Chokas and what lessons should be learned.

Also pending is the review by State Child Advocate Sarah Eagan as to whether school officials properly followed school system policies and procedures and state law in regard to the Chokas matter.

This all comes to a head as the school board conducts its performance evaluation of Superintendent Van Riley.

The entire matter has raised numerous troubling questions.

Given a long record of student concerns raised to school personnel about the teacher, why was he given such a sweetheart severance arrangement when he agreed to leave in the middle of 2019-2020 school year? That arrangement included Chokas receiving his salary and benefits through the end of the year and a promise by the administration not to raise the issues with future prospective employers, unless required by law.

Why did the administration not document in the teacher’s personnel file the record of student complaints about his behavior, which date back many years? When The Day obtained the file through a Freedom of Information request, it was empty of any record of the behavior referenced by female students.

Why weren’t student concerns about inappropriate conduct forwarded to the Department of Children and Families in accordance with the mandatory reporting law obligating educators to disclose such potential misconduct? If some incidents were reported to DCF, what happened?

And why did the administration fight so relentlessly, and at great legal expense, to block our Stonington reporter, Staff Writer Joe Wojtas, from accessing documents in accordance with state Freedom of Information laws?

One such document — a memo written by High School Principal Mark Friese to Superintendent Riley detailing an unidentified female student’s complaints in January 2019 about Chokas’ behavior toward her — was finally turned over by the administration this week. But the school board had to practically pry it from Riley’s hands, recently voting 5-2 to block the administration from appealing to Superior Court an FOI Commission decision ordering the memo’s release.

The memo documents the student’s complaints that Chokas had been “physical” with her and given her an inappropriate degree of attention. Other students, according to the memo, confirmed behavior that they considered “creepy” and “flirtatious.” It also refences past misconduct and Chokas’ promises to conform his behavior to proper norms.

Most alarming was the student’s recollection that Chokas talked of his “past trouble for touching girls” and told students that if anyone “had a problem with him they should go to him first, not the principal or administration.” Given such a stunningly inappropriate statement, why was Chokas allowed to walk away with a clean record?

Though we await the pending reports along with the school board, it is hard to imagine the superintendent continuing with the confidence of the board, of the parents and of the student body.

There is also a lesson in this for other school boards. Any guidance about transparency is absent from the Stonington Board of Education policies and guidelines. It would seem to us that school board guidelines should describe an expectation of openness. If public documents are requested, they should be released. If the administration concludes a requested document is excluded from disclosure, policy should require it to provide an explanation to board members and cite the applicable exemption under the FOI law.

In Stonington, the administration spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to block the disclosure of documents without the school board ever being apprised of the justifications or the expense. And it appeared ready to spend more if the board had not finally intervened.

Unfortunately, this is not an exception. Other school boards likewise turn over such decisions to administrations without challenge. Questions should be asked when documents are withheld. That is the role of an elected official. These are, after all, public schools.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.