PUBLISHED: April 14, 2016 at 11:27 a.m. | UPDATED: December 12, 2018 at 4:51 p.m.
HARTFORD — Former city school official Eduardo “Eddie” Genao, who abruptly resigned last week after being accused of sending inappropriate text messages to a 13-year-old girl, was charged with a felony Wednesday, city police said.
Genao, 57, faces a count of risk of injury to a minor, Deputy Police Chief Brian Foley said. He said police officers arrested Genao at his home in Hamden.
“We served the warrant on him,” Foley said Wednesday night. “He’s in custody.”
Genao, a longtime school administrator who recently worked as Hartford schools’ executive director of compliance, declined to respond to the criminal allegations when The Courant approached him outside his house last week. “You know I can’t comment,” he said.
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A copy of the arrest warrant was not available, and a lawyer for Genao could not be reached. Police records show Genao was released about 11:15 p.m. after posting $50,000 bond. Genao is set to appear in court April 20.
“This investigation is ongoing,” Foley said in a statement Thursday. He said city police, working with school security, seized Genao’s cellphone at Hartford schools’ central office April 5.
Police then served a second search warrant and collected “electronic evidence” from Genao’s home that same day, Foley said. That evidence is still being examined; police are working with the state’s attorney’s office and federal investigators.
Genao’s arrest caps a troubling week for the city school system, which has been trying to fend off a potential scandal over its initial handling of the case — in particular, why high-ranking Hartford school officials did not spring into action when informed that a district administrator might be harming a child.
Mayor Luke Bronin and Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez said Monday that the city was summoning the state Office of the Child Advocate to help the school system review its policies and procedures when school employees hear that a child might be at risk of abuse or neglect.
Narvaez’s chief of staff, Gislaine Ngounou, apologized in a districtwide email Monday for failing to “aggressively pursue more information” after a city resident warned her on March 22 of an “urgent matter concerning one of your directors with regard to inappropriate child contact.”
The text message did not name Genao, and after a few back-and-forth texts, Ngounou said in her apology that she ultimately did not reconnect with the tipster, Aaron Lewis, president of a literacy and advocacy group called The Scribe’s Institute.
A subsequent email that Lewis sent to school board Chairman Richard Wareing on March 23 did not get a response. Wareing said he missed the email in his inbox.
Genao, a former assistant superintendent who had worked for city schools since 2005, resigned his $176,274-a-year compliance job on April 5 after Hartford police informed the district of its criminal probe.
Police launched its investigation a day before, on April 4, after a “concerned citizen” told police of “potential inappropriate conduct” between Genao and the girl, who lives out of state, Foley said. Investigators drove to the girl’s home and interviewed her that afternoon.
Bronin’s office has said that Hartford police were investigating allegations that Genao “sent inappropriate text messages to a minor” who was not a Hartford student.
Genao’s career in education spans more than three decades, beginning in New York City, where he was a founding president of the Association of Dominican-American Supervisors and Administrators, according to his resume and the group’s website. Records show he worked as an instructional superintendent for the New York City Department of Education until he joined Hartford schools as principal for Sport and Medical Sciences Academy in early 2005.
Among the records in his personnel file is a written reprimand from January 2008, during his tenure as principal of the magnet school, in which the school system rebuked Genao for using “exceedingly poor judgment in engaging in social interactions with a student electronically.”
After the school year ended, Genao became executive director of Hartford’s adult education center in summer 2008, and advanced to several other central office roles over the years. Before his demotion to the compliance job in late 2014, Genao served as assistant superintendent of early literacy and parent engagement.