Former employees claim TCC fails to follow due process policies

Kristen Bennett, the former executive vice president of advancement at Tarrant County College, keeps coming back to some advice she learned from former coworkers: “You cannot trust human resources at TCC,” she said. In August, Chancellor Eugene Giovannini placed her on an improvement plan and opted to not renew her contract. They met in one-on-one meetings for months without HR in the room, she said. All she wanted to do was survive the process. She thought to herself, “I can’t go to HR because if I go to them, I don’t think they’re really going to help me.” So she didn’t. She eventually was stripped of her job, barred from stepping foot on TCC property and says she didn’t get the opportunity to go through the proper termination process, according to a February lawsuit.

Bennett is part of a group of people terminated from TCC who claim they did not get their constitutional right to due process and filed lawsuits. The cases raise questions about whether TCC ensures proper due process for all employees, who describe their situations as symptoms of a larger issue. Administrators, though, say they are following the process outlined in law and policy and are pushing back against the claims of systemic abuse. “Giovannini exacerbated it,” said Frank Hill, the lawyer on Bennett’s lawsuit and two related cases. He described top administrators as upholding an unfair system that ultimately costs taxpayers thousands of dollars annually to pay lawyers, settlements and investigations. The board of trustees started the process to fire the chancellor in mid-March. Before taking that step, the trustees placed Giovannini on administrative leave as a third-party firm investigates Bennett’s retaliation claims against the chancellor. Carol Bracken, TCC’s associate general counsel, disputed Hill’s claim that the college systematically withholds employees’ due process rights. Administrators described the college’s due process policies as robust. Susan Alanis, the college’s chief operating officer, said it is not unusual for an organization as large as TCC to have issues like this pop up.