A legal proceeding in Western New York is garnering lots of attention.

But it’s not playing out in a courtroom or mediation room of a law office; it’s happening in a school cafeteria.

A June 30 hearing was the fifth one conducted by the Hamburg Central School Board in an attempt to have board member Catherine Schrauth Forcucci removed after a charge of official misconduct. It is alleged that since August 2013, she has engaged in a pattern of actions that have been confrontational and interfered with the board’s duty to function.

The hearing was open to the public after state Supreme Court Justice Diane Devlin ordered the school board in early June to allow an open proceeding. The first three hearings were held in private, but Schrauth Forcucci won her challenge to have the matter aired in open sessions. A hearing on June 25 featured bizarre scenes during testimony by Hamburg Schools Superintendent Richard Jetter about her alleged out-of-control behavior and bullying.

Testimony continued June 30 during a session that lasted more than five hours.

It’s the latest round of happenings for the drama-plagued school board, which has seen its share of legal action in recent years. So much so that it drew the ire of state Education Director John King Jr., who in a recent letter to the school board inferred it was acting dysfunctional.

“The record before me illustrates all too well how conflict and an atmosphere of this nature can interfere with the board’s ability to govern the affairs of a district and can undermine the public’s confidence in its elected school board,” he wrote.

That apparently was in response to a petition by Hamburg attorney Dan Chiacchia asking that board members Sally Stephenson and her daughter and fellow board member, Holly Balaya, be ousted from the board for breaches in fiduciary duty.

The founding partner of Chiacchia & Fleming LLP claimed Stephenson provided an affidavit to the school’s former attorney while he was suing the district. He also charges that Stephenson and Balaya have been voting on a number of issues that were a conflict of interest for them considering family relationships they maintain with the plaintiffs.

Although his petition was denied by King, Chiacchia said that ousting Schrauth Forcucci would point the district in the right direction. He noted that Balaya’s term on the board ends this month and that her mother is approaching her final year of a three-year term.

“(Schrauth Forcucci) seems like she’s been a pawn in this whole thing, when I really think it’s Sally that should go,” Chiacchia told the Buffalo Law Journal last month. “Catherine has done some pretty outrageous things as far as her behavior and lack of ability to conduct herself in a civil manner, and I think there is no change in that woman. She was screaming at me at the last board meeting that I spoke.”



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