Grace Episcopal School Alexandria’s hiring of Kelly Gable, despite prior arrest for domestic violence, calls into question student safety. Meanwhile, what happened to the school’s anti-discrimination policy?

Disclosure: Grace Episcopal School is part of Grace Episcopal Alexandria, where Anglican Watch editor Eric Bonetti was a member

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A recent investigation by Anglican Watch revealed two concerning developments at Grace Episcopal School, located in Alexandria, Virginia. The school is part of Grace Episcopal Church, the only Anglo-Catholic parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. Contrary to the representations of some parish leaders, the school is not a separate legal entity from the church.

This post addresses those developments.

An apparent breakdown in employee screening resulted in unacceptable risk to students at the school.

For the 2022-2023 school year, Grace School hired parishioner Kelly Gable to work in the school’s extended care program. Gable is an inappropriate selection for multiple reasons.

Domestic violence: While it appears that the courts may have handled this case through a diversionary program, the fact remains that local law enforcement arrested Gable on November 11, 2024, for assault and battery of a family member. Arlington County filed criminal charges against Gable in this matter.

To put it bluntly, any arrest for domestic violence should be an absolute bar to working with children, and we fail to understand how Grace Episcopal School either didn’t spot Gable’s arrest and prosecution or didn’t care.

Moreover, Gable’s problems extend well beyond allegations of assault and battery involving a family member. Specifically:

• While previously employed by the non-profit Robert Pierre Johnson Housing Development Corp., Gable falsified business records. Her corruption included submitting fraudulent timesheets while working at a position funded by Community Development Block Grants. When confronted with her misconduct, Gable lied and claimed that she was in the office on the days in question, despite myriad evidence to the contrary, including statements from the pastor of the church in which the company’s offices were located.
• During her time with Robert Pierre Johnson Housing Development Corp., Gable used her access to corporate email to attempt to illegally take control of another employee’s Facebook account. She abandoned her efforts to take over the account only when threatened with litigation.
• Gable displays questionable veracity, including falsely telling others that her alimony from a previous marriage increases over time. A review of her recent massive Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing reveals that her alimony is static at $30,000 annually.
• Gable has a long history of substance abuse and possible addiction, including multiple examples of abusing alcohol and then blaming others for her conduct. In one instance, she became very intoxicated while falsely claiming that someone had spiked her drink. In other cases, Gable has gotten very drunk in inappropriate settings.
• Gable has had repeated instances of acute pancreatitis resulting in hospitalization, which is strongly suggestive of chronic alcohol abuse.
• Gable is often disruptive in the workplace, engaging in gossip and inappropriate conversations about coworkers, up to and including defamatory and false statements, accusing others of embezzlement and other felonious conduct. Yet, at no point has she had the integrity to file a criminal report with law enforcement.
• Gable displays multiple indicia suggestive of mental health concerns, including an inability to hold a job, to respond in appropriate ways in social settings, challenges differentiating between truth and falsity in her statements, and difficulty living on her own without assistance from others.

For all of these reasons, Anglican Watch is deeply concerned about any situation in which Gable is in a position of trust, especially when it involves the welfare of children. Moreover, we believe her presence in an environment that parents entrust to developmentally nurture their children is entirely inappropriate, even with close supervision.

We further note that Gable has, for many years, served in the parish’s J2A, or Journey to Adulthood, program. All we can say is that if Gable’s conduct is consistent with the church’s definition of successful adulthood, the church should close the J2A program in its entirety. Nor would we entrust any child to Gable’s care, particularly when she appears prone to domestic violence and substance abuse.

All of this begs the question: Why did Grace Episcopal School not do its due diligence or contact previous supervisors? How was this hire acceptable to the then-head of school, Patti Culbreth? Culbreth has integrity issues that we will cover in a future post, but for now, suffice it to say that any decision to hire Gable, even as a babysitter, is a disaster waiting to happen.

School has history of non-compliance with policies, canons

Relatedly, we note that the school has a history of ignoring church canons despite being an integral part of a parish within the Diocese of Virginia and thus subject to the latter’s policies and canons. Areas of specific concern:

1. Not sharing financials adequate to allow vestry members to fulfill their fiduciary obligations to the parish and diocese. And to be clear, “We trust the school board” does not fulfill those obligations. Just as parishes cannot run off-budget programs like ECW in an effort to avoid auditing and disclosure, vestry members and church employees alike have obligations to make reasonable inquiries, ask questions, and be informed. Nor are the risks of not providing financials to vestry members negligible — one school we follow bought a parcel of land and a vacant building only to discover it had purchased a SuperFund site. Now, both the parent organization, which is the church, and the school face huge liabilities for remediation. And we will not be surprised if those in fiduciary roles face litigation over their failure to exercise due diligence in this matter.
2. Not complying with diocesan child protection requirements. In the past, the school has brushed these provisions off by saying, “Well, we screen employees and train them, so we’re compliant.” But that is not the same as complying with Diocesan requirements. Even then, we are unpersuaded that Diocesan requirements are adequate given the prevalence of child abuse in organized religion, so there is a large gap between what should happen and what does happen.

Removal of anti-discrimination policies addressing sexual orientation calls into question school’s ethics, compliance with denominational policies

Relatedly, at some point during Culbertson’s tenure, the school removed anti-discrimination involving sexual orientation from school policies. This decision is offensive on multiple levels.

For starters, it’s morally wrong. We get that church members can and often do have differing views on these issues. That’s fine. But children should not be subject to discrimination based, for example, on having same-gender parents. Jesus said nothing about the topic despite the fact that homosexuality was well-known in the ancient world. All he said was, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 19:14 KJV

Second, as part of an Episcopal parish (again, the school is NOT a separate legal entity, despite some clergy and vestry members’ claims to the contrary), the school is subject to church canons, which expressly protect access to the life of the church based on sexual orientation or gender expression. (Canon 17.5).

Thus, Grace Episcopal School is required not to discriminate on this basis and should have the integrity to say up front that it doesn’t.

Indeed, given the political bent of the surrounding area, it is probably an effective marketing strategy to make clear that the school welcomes all.

While attorneys may advise limiting potential exposure by resorting to broad-based weasel wording, one of the few things the denomination has going for it right now is its ostensible —and we emphasize ostensible — commitment to inclusion.

So, rather than hiding this commitment under a basket, how about showing a little courage and supporting Grace Church, the Diocese, and the national church? Especially now, when recent election results suggest the country is tipping towards shunning, exclusion, and increased marginalization of minority communities.

In short, while Patti Culbreth was a vast improvement on her dishonest, controlling, and power-hungry predecessor, Chris Byrnes, Anglican Watch considers the decision to hire Kelly Gable a profoundly damning failure of its purported efforts to protect children. Moreover, the school’s ongoing failure to comply with parish and denominational policies and canons is troubling in the extreme.

Photo screen cap from Gable Facebook page.