SOUTH HADLEY — A South Hadley High School teacher was fined $7,000 after she admitted to accepting thousands of travel points and stipends collected from a travel company while organizing school trips, violating a conflict of interest law.
History teacher Stephanie Viens accepted $5,530 in stipends and 4,516 travel points between 2013 and 2017 from educational travel company EF Tours, according to the State Ethics Commission.
Viens reached a disposition agreement with the commission on Sept. 19.
In 2007, Viens, then the faculty adviser of the school’s Diversity/Cultural Exchange Club, began organizing school trips with EF Tours. The company’s rewards program provided Viens with the travel points and stipends based on factors including how many students, parents and chaperones she brought on trips, according to the State Ethics Commission.
Chaperones went on the trips free of charge on at least one occasion, the Gazette reported in 2018, but they paid Viens $180 to $200 for gratuities and transportation. No other chaperones collected an EF Tours stipend.
The South Hadley Public Schools business administrator emailed Viens in 2013 to inquire if anyone had received money from EF Tours, the commission said, but Viens did not respond to the email. She continued to organize trips through EF Tours and accept payments, according to the commission, and also used the travel points toward airline tickets and a vacation in Europe.
In a statement emailed to the Gazette, Viens said she organized trips that “provided hundreds of students with wonderful educational experiences.”
Viens said the school district did not pay her to lead the trips, which were held over vacations, and added that she “believed that receiving certain benefits from the tour company for my efforts was both routine and permissible” while she was organizing the trips.
“I subsequently learned that I should have sought approval to receive these benefits and should have reported them to the proper authorities,” Viens continued. “In light of those mistakes, I accepted the Ethics Committee’s ruling and have paid the fine.”
“Although this whole experience has cost me a great deal of time, money and peace of mind,” she said, “I do not regret taking my students on life-changing trips and I hope that teachers are not discouraged from taking the initiative to lead trips in the future based on my experience.”
When contacted by the Gazette on Wednesday, Superintendent Nick Young said that he cannot comment on personnel matters, citing legal limitations.
Viens was placed on a 30-day unpaid leave in December 2017 after a school investigation determined that she had violated the conflict of interest law. In addition to the unpaid leave, Viens was also removed from her position as the Cultural Exchange Club’s adviser and disallowed from leading any future trips.
Viens and the South Hadley Education Association, a union representing teachers and other school district staff, fought against this allegation, arguing that Viens was being targeted for union activism.
Responding to the union, the Department of Labor Relations found probable cause that the School Committee violated collective bargaining agreement laws around Viens’ case; it also found probable cause that South Hadley High School Principal Diana Bonneville violated the law in making threatening statements to South Hadley Education Association members concerning Viens’ suspension.
According to the Ethics Commission, “the conflict of interest law generally prohibits public employees from accepting any valuable gifts given to them because of their public positions or in connection with any actions they perform as part of their public jobs.”
If a community “has a direct and substantial interest in a matter, employees of the city of town generally may not be paid by anyone else in relation to that matter,” a spokesman for the commission said, and “the law generally bars municipal employees from participating in their official positions in matters involving their own financial interests.”
The spokesman continued: “Viens violated these sections of the conflict of interest law when she accepted the travel points and stipends as a reward for organizing the trips and recruiting students, parents, and chaperones.”
Jacquelyn Voghel can be reached at jvoghel@gazettenet.com.