Emails: Raucci juggled conflicting jobs

School administrators helped Facilities Director Steven Raucci change his title to reduce the appearance that he was an administrator, according to emails released by the Schenectady City School District.

As an administrator, Raucci would not have been eligible to run his union unit. But, from the administration’s point of view, he was a highly effective union president: during his tenure, his unit did not turn in a single official complaint, a sudden drop-off from the dozens of grievances filed before Raucci took over.

Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney said last year that Raucci’s ability to quash grievances made him so valuable to administrators that they turned a blind eye to his intimidating treatment of employees.

Raucci is now serving 23 years to life for placing explosives on vehicles and homes in a campaign of intimidation. Some of his victims were school employees who reported to administrators that they suspected Raucci was to blame, but no action was ever taken.

Emails reviewed by The Daily Gazette showed a blurring of the line between supervisor and union president as Raucci handled disciplinary matters among his maintenance crew.

In a 2007 email, Raucci described a meeting in which an employee said a medical problem would keep her from doing various maintenance tasks. She wanted a different job.

“I said, ‘I don’t know what you want me to do,’ ” Raucci wrote. “She asked me if there was anything the union could do? Speaking in the role of her Union President, I replied that this is not a union matter. I said, ‘If you can’t do the work, you can’t work in that position.’ ”

In other emails, Raucci repeatedly told workers that their complaints were “not a union matter” and that they could not file a written complaint.

In another unusual step for a union president, Raucci often advised administrators on how to build a disciplinary case against his workers.

He walked Principal Tonya Federico through the process of documenting problems with a custodian in an apparent effort to fire him.

“I can not act on [name deleted]’s job performance as his supervisor until I have some sort of paper trail from you, his building principal,” Raucci wrote in 2008.

“I am asking that anytime you have a problem with [name deleted], you document it and issue him a letter whenever you feel it’s necessary. The decision to do so is at your discretion. You do not need authorization or approval from anyone to write him up at anytime for any reason.

He added, with underlined emphasis, “Letters can not be grieved by anyone in my unit.”

Raucci also said that he wished he could have ignored union rules and kept the man from becoming a custodian.

“I certainly understand the situation and problems associated with him and would be the first to say that [name deleted] IS NOT [word deleted] material. Regretably, (though I am President of my union) I have my moments when I wish I did not have to abide by union rules,” he said.

Another district employee wrote disciplinary letters for Raucci’s crew, but on at least one occasion, Raucci wrote an email saying that he’d written the disciplinary letter himself and made it sound like Facilities Assistant Patrick Paratore wrote it.

Paratore also sent each letter to Raucci before giving it to the employee, and accepted edits from Raucci.

In one case, where the worker was to be fired, Raucci advised Paratore to change a phrase so that the worker could not claim that he should have been warned before being fired.

He told Paratore to change “your abusive actions” to “your unacceptable actions” regarding excessive tardiness and sick time.

“If it was in fact abusive actions, as his supervisor you should have warned him much sooner rather than waiting months to correct it, thus giving the appearance that you weren’t doing your job,” Raucci wrote.

Raucci was cognizant of the potential conflict of interest in his dual roles. In the tardiness case, he told Paratore that he wouldn’t represent the employee at the termination meeting.

“Obviously he will ask for me to represent him as he always does, however, this time I will decline because there is a certain conflict of interest since I am supportive of your actions as your supervisor,” he wrote.

Raucci also changed his title at least twice to minimize his supervisory role.

In a 2004 email to Human Resources Director Michael Stricos, he said that he had taken on a new title: director of facilities.

“By the way, have you noticed I changed my title again?” he wrote. “[Assistant Superintendent] Mike San Angelo would use it whenever he introduced me to someone that we would meet with, and I decided to adopt it. I wanted to avoid the ‘Supervisor’ part in my title.”

Stricos wasn’t enthusiastic, warning that Raucci’s new title was commonly used by school administrators.

“Shudder … Director is by nature an SSDA title,” Stricos wrote. “This should probably stay on the down low.”

Raucci didn’t change it. It remained his title until he was arrested.

The school district released Raucci’s emails under the terms of a settlement with The Daily Gazette and the Times Union. There are more than 11,000 pages of emails.

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