Is the Muscogee School Board really a ‘hostile environment’?

“A hostile environment.”

That’s how the person who was hired last week as the Muscogee County School District’s transportation director described the school board. And that’s the reason he gave for resigning one day later.

Since then, the Ledger-Enquirer has asked a variety of people in the community whether that charge is true and whether and how it matters. Here is what we’ve learned.

Some folks who frequently comment about Ledger-Enquirer news stories on social media have hailed District 2 representative John Thomas and District 8 representative Frank Myers as heroes of democracy in the 21 months they have served on the board. They have lauded Myers and Thomas for courageously questioning the status quo and calling for more accountability and transparency.

Meanwhile, others, including community leaders, have only privately objected. They have complained among themselves, calling the approach of the board’s rebels too contentious – and they have singled out Myers as being the rude one, even a bully — but they haven’t publicly expressed such criticism.

Until now.

And two of them used to support Myers.

The meeting

Most residents of Columbus probably know John Lyles as a former local TV newscaster. He also has nearly 15 years of work experience in public transportation, including with MCSD and the Columbus Consolidated Government, according to his resume. But neither Lyles nor the administration clarified conflicting information about his employment history.

The administration had said Lyles is employed by the Liberty County School System in Hinesville, Ga., but his resume shows that he was assistant superintendent for operations in Liberty County from August 2013 to June 2014 and lists two current job positions: president and chief executive officer of Atlanta-based Internet Transportation Solutions LLC (also known as iTrans) since June 2010 and owner of Columbus-based JR Construction Inc. since June 2005.

Nobody cleared up the discrepancy during the Sept. 20 meeting despite questions from Thomas. Afterward, the Ledger-Enquirer asked Lyles to clarify. He said he is the Liberty County School System’s transportation director and his resume wasn’t updated. He also said the correct information is on his application, although it wasn’t provided to the public. He wouldn’t say whether he is in the positions he lists as current on his resume and referred all other questions to MCSD communications director Valerie Fuller, who also wouldn’t answer.

The next day, the Ledger-Enquirer confirmed Lyles declined the MCSD job offer, and board chairman Rob Varner of District 5 said Lyles “was not happy about the way he was treated by a couple of board members and the media.”

Several hours later, in an MCSD news release, Lyles said, “I must say that I have never experienced such a hostile environment directed towards administration in my professional career. My focus is on improving student achievement and the community. Columbus is my hometown. But because of this experience, I have decided that MCSD is not a good fit for my expertise at this time.”

Lyles hasn’t returned the Ledger-Enquirer’s messages seeking explanation about what he considered “hostile” during the board meeting. Observers noted Myers and Thomas weren’t close to being “hostile” while considering Lyles’ appointment. Thomas seemed respectful in his questioning of the resume discrepancy, they said, and Myers actually complimented Lyles.

“I’ve known John Lyles for 20 years,” Myers said during the meeting. “I’m a big fan of John Lyles on a personal level, but the idea that – I guess the policy hasn’t changed – that we’re not allowed to even talk with somebody, I have a couple questions I want to talk to John about, but we’re not allowed as board members to meet somebody before we vote.”

Observers instead suggest an earlier period during the meeting as the probable source of Lyles’ “hostile” comment.

Myers engaged in a heated debate with the board’s leadership about former Columbus Council candidate Jonathan Davis’ open records request and Myers’ own request for information from the administration.

“I’ve told Mr. Myers before that I agree with most of his issues and platforms, but I in no way, shape or form agree with the way he conducts himself and his tone whatsoever,” Davis told the board. “However, I now see that he has to act this way in some instances because it’s the only way anybody will pay attention. I’ve seen firsthand how you treat him, with a disrespect that no other elected official should receive.”

Others say it’s Myers who shows the disrespect during board meetings.

Myers told Lewis, “Much to your dismay, I’m an elected official who represents an eighth of this city, and we get ignored, John Thomas and I do. … I’ll ask you for the third time, if I want certain information, do you take the position that it takes five votes of this board for me to get it?”

Varner interjected, “Mr. Myers, let me suggest something. I think this discussion is probably inappropriate at this time.”

Myers accusing the administration of withholding information and even being dishonest is a common theme during the board’s work sessions and meetings. For example:

▪  At the May 18, 2015, meeting, while considering what Myers called a “$1.4 million no-bid milk contract,” he said, “I just don’t believe half of what I hear up here, and tonight’s part of it.”

Lewis replied, “So let me get this right. Are you saying the staff is lying about this?”

Myers: “Oh, no. No, no, no. I’m saying you’ve told me several lies, but that’s another story. We’ll get into that later.”

▪ At the Aug. 17, 2015, meeting, while trying to determine the number of financial transactions made without board approval, Myers asserted, “Either we’re not getting the truth tonight or we didn’t get the truth in February. I don’t know which one it is, again, and I am sick and tired of guessing.”

In an email to the Ledger-Enquirer, District 3 representative Athavia “A.J.” Senior said the newspaper’s reporting may have contributed to Lyles labelling the meeting as “hostile.”

“What caught my attention was in your quest to gather information from Mr. Lyles, I thought you were challenging/rough when conducting your interview after the appointment. You verbally challenged pretty much every response he or Ms. Fuller commented on. That situation felt hostile to me. I left the room (shaking my head).”

‘Completely disappointed”

Ken Henson and Sam Wellborn are prominent Columbus residents who supported Myers during his campaign two years ago. Now, they have buyer’s remorse.

“I really thought Frank could be effective, but I was just wrong,” said Wellborn, a retired Columbus Bank and Trust president. “I am completely disappointed in his behavior on the school board. I don’t mind him being the kind of board member who looks for things that may not be right, but he hasn’t discovered one thing in all his noise.”

Henson, a local attorney, saw Myers as a fellow lawyer with “intelligence and the mindset to do a good job. I thought he could help the superintendent with ideas and questions. Instead, he ended up having a vendetta against David Lewis, who in my lifetime is one of the best superintendents we’ve had.”

About a year ago, Wellborn and Henson independently communicated that disappointment to Myers.

“I told him I had it with him in terms of his behavior, that he was rude, that he was a bully, and he never would accomplish anything positive with that demeanor,” Wellborn said.

Henson said he told Myers, “You don’t need to be a flamethrower. Just ask questions, but don’t belittle people.”

Observers say, for a while, Myers seemed to tone down his approach. But after the two candidates he supported lost in this summer’s runoff, they say, he has returned to his offensive demeanor.

Henson noted the irony of the news story about Lyles’ resignation breaking while about 140 Columbus community leaders, including Lewis and school board member Kia Chambers, were on an intercity trip to Greenville, S.C.

During one session, the Greenville superintendent, W. Burke Royster, told the group that no incumbent school board member had been voted out of office in more than 20 years. When asked why his board was so effective, Royster said, “When they disagree, they never make it personal. They separate issues from personalities.” The Columbus group applauded.

As the 3^rd Congressional District representative on the Georgia Department of Transportation, Wellborn said he hears many comments about Columbus around the state.

“Every time I go to Atlanta with the DOT,” Wellborn said, “I’m constantly asked, ‘What in the world is going on with your school board?’”

Asked why that matters, Wellborn said, “It is very important what people think of us. … Everybody that wants to move to Columbus has got to inquire about our school system.”

Wellborn also was concerned about how the board’s contentious meetings affect the superintendent. “We have the most important leader in our city in Dr. Lewis, the best possible leader, and I just worry every day that we’re going to run him off,” Wellborn said. “He is thoroughly capable of bringing us to where we need to be in our school district, but we’ve got to give him time and we’ve got to give him support. He’s already done a tremendous job, but we never will able to do better with the kind of stuff that’s going on with the school board.”

Asked what are the chances that the “hostile” environment at the school board meetings will prompt him to consider working elsewhere, Lewis emailed the Ledger-Enquirer, “I remain committed to our community, its future and the job I was brought here to do.”

And that’s why it’s time to speak up, Wellborn said.

“It’s sticking up for our city,” Wellborn said. “How in the world are we going to be successful in the long term is we have a school board conducting themselves the way they are now?”

Brian Anderson, president and CEO of the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce, said he also has asked Myers to moderate his demeanor.

“He felt he was being marginalized and wasn’t being heard,” Anderson said of his conversation with Myers. “John has expressed the same thing. I’m not saying they’re wrong. I was talking about tone.”

Anderson said Lyles’ accusation and resignation turned “a quiet conversation” among community leaders “to another level.”

“The superintendent is the chief executive officer and does the hiring and firing, and the board holds the superintendent accountable,” said Anderson, who was an elected official as chairman of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners. “There certainly needs to be good conversation and dialogue, but you can’t have board members usurp the power of the superintendent and getting in the middle of personnel decisions.”

The fallout from combative school board meetings matter because of their potential consequences, Anderson said. Such headlines, especially on the Internet, impact a community’s reputation and inform businesses, potential school district employees and other families about whether they want to move here.

“They can smell whether you are a community that works together or not,” Anderson said. “… Tone and discourse and the way we treat people does matter.”

Asked whether he knows of any business or person who chose not to move to Columbus because of the acrimony at school board meetings, Anderson said no but added it’s impossible to know the number of such cases.

Anderson hopes the board can find a way to “disagree agreeably.” He emphasized Myers and Thomas “have a right to feel there should be more accountability, but from a style standpoint and handling discussion, there’s a way that’s considered professional and productive.”

When it comes to style, observers make a distinction between Myers and Thomas. Although they vote the same way, they act differently, board watchers say.

Columbus Museum director Marianne Richter and Chattahoochee Valley Libraries director Alan Harkness regularly attend school board meetings because their organizations are semi-autonomous branches of the school district and report to the school board.

“John Thomas, from what I see, always is on the quieter side,” Richter said.

Asked whether he has seen Thomas behave belligerently, Harkness said, “I would not characterize Mr. Thomas in that regard.”

Supporters

Just because she has homeschooled all eight of her children, Beth Garcia said, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a valid opinion about the school board. “I have a vested interest in our community through my tax dollars,” she said.

So she campaigned for Myers and cheers when he rants.

“I like what he says about needing to hold the school board and the administration accountable for the taxpayers’ money and for the success or failure of our schools,” Garcia said.

Garcia said she has told Myers he “could get more flies with honey than vinegar. Everything he’s saying is right, but the way he says it might turn some people off.”

But if someone turns down a $90,000 job because of a “hostile environment” at a meeting, Garcia said, “maybe he’s not the guy we need to run the transportation department if his skin is pretty thin.”

The only hostility she senses on the board comes from the establishment, she said.

“It comes from what John and Frank are proposing,” Garcia said. “Unless there is something to hide, I can’t imagine why there wouldn’t be answers to questions they’re asking. But there’s so much pushback. … Any time a school board member is denied access to information, it raises a huge red flag for me, and it should raise a red flag for everybody.

“Maybe Dr. Lewis has some great ideas, but they need to be closely examined before we vote yes. You have to have all the information before you make a vote that is worthy of the trust that we placed on you.”

Alton Russell, former Republican Party chairman in the 3^rd Congressional District, had four children and two grandchildren attend MCSD schools. He estimates he attends 60-70 percent of the board meetings, included Sept. 20.

“The conversation between Frank and the superintendent and Varner, I wouldn’t call it hostile,” Russell said. “It was heated, but it had nothing to do with Lyles. I don’t think anything that was said as far as Lyles was concerned was hostile at all.”

The conflict about Lyles’ resume “is an issue the administration needed to answer,” said Russell, and he commends Thomas and Myers for asking those questions and others.

“If you keep asking the same question and don’t get an answer, that doesn’t make you hostile; it means you’re trying to make the board accountable,” he said.

Russell described Myers as “very direct, and he has legitimate concerns, and he projects them in a very forceful way. You can’t say that’s being rude; that’s just expecting an answer.”

Thomas, however, “is a lot more laid-back,” Russell said. “He has the same view, but he’s not as direct and forceful.”

Instead of worrying that news stories about school board contention will hurt the city’s reputation, Russell said, community leaders should be more concerned about having eight MCSD schools on the state’s chronically failing list.

Myers and Thomas voiced that kind of reasoning near the end of the Sept. 20 meeting when they balked at paying $25,000 for a consultant to help the district develop a new mission statement.

“I know it’s a small amount,” Thomas said, “but it’s the principle.”

Myers added, “What I would do with that $25,000 is hire tutors for these 700 kids who can’t read at grade level at these struggling schools.”

Debbie Eklund, a medical assistant for Columbus Regional Health, has three daughters who graduated from MCSD schools. Although she didn’t attend the Sept. 20 meeting, she estimates she has been to a dozen of them since Myers and Thomas have been on the board, and she’s still glad she campaigned for them.

Eklund called Myers “a lot more gracious than he needs to be, but he’s been treated badly and taken a lot of verbal flak. He has to get his point across, so maybe he has to directly say or insinuate that somebody has not been entirely truthful. If that’s the case, then I’m grateful for him saying it.”

Calling either Myers or Thomas hostile is “hogwash,” Eklund said. “They have met with resistance on any question they ask. Anything they say that’s not gung-ho for what the superintendent proposes is being hostile? That’s ridiculous.

“Maybe they have to use stronger terminology and dig in their heels because nobody is listening to them. Personally, I’m grateful they’re doing what they were elected to do.”

Former board member

Fife Whiteside was considered one of the board’s contrarians when he represented District 5 for 15 years (1993-2008). He can’t recall ever being accused of being hostile, “but I probably was at one time or another. I’m sure something upset me where I was ugly about it. We’re all human.”

Regardless of the descriptions attached to Myers and Thomas, the bigger issue, Whiteside contends, is the proper role of the school board.

“A lot of business people don’t think the board should ask any questions at all, so any investigation of a prospective hire is considered hostile.”

It also might be beneficial.

Whiteside recalled a decade ago when the board was asked to approve hiring an assistant superintendent for technology. During the week between the work session and the board meeting, Whiteside said, he discovered the recommended candidate’s doctorate was a “fake degree from a diploma mill.” He informed then-superintendent John Phillips, who pulled his recommendation.

Whiteside laughed as he described the reaction.

“A couple of people told me thanks for doing a great job,” he said, “and a couple of other people asked me why I was micromanaging the superintendent. I thought then, and I still do, I was just doing what I was supposed to do. The board isn’t supposed to manage the school system, but it is supposed to oversee the administration.”

Whiteside, who estimated he has attended half a dozen meetings while Myers and Thomas have been on the board, said he has “chatted with” Myers about his behavior.

“It’s very possible you can overshadow the significance of the issue with the temper of the debate,” Whiteside said.

But he would rather risk offending someone, Whiteside said, than risk not fully representing his constituents.

“I wouldn’t allow an accusation of a lack of courtesy to interfere with my desire to have board members who are proactive,” Whiteside said.

John Thomas

Thomas said the “hostile” charge is “laughable.”

“I had noted a large discrepancy between Mr. Lyles’ resume and what I was told by Dr. Lewis at the work session,” Thomas wrote in an email to the L-E. “I questioned that, which is my job as a board member, and stated that I had no animosity towards Mr. Lyles. Mr. Myers has known John Lyles for over 20 years, and he specifically addressed Mr. Lyles in a very complimentary and supportive way.

“Frank and I chose to abstain from voting because neither of us trust the process when it comes to hiring key personnel in the school district administration. Perhaps it was the questioning of Mr. Lyles’ salary by (board vice chairwoman and District 1 representative) Pat Hugley Green which offended Mr. Lyles?”

Thomas insists the reaction to Lyles’ resignation should be more about the administration’s improper vetting of his candidacy than the board’s alleged hostility.

“This story has given the public a front row seat for a close look at the problems which can arise when a board rubber-stamps the superintendent’s recommendations for key positions within the administration,” Thomas wrote.

“… The debacle currently at hand perfectly illustrates why Frank and I require more information on applicants. Frank and I hope the other seven board members will take this incident as a wake-up call and begin to do the job the public elected and pays us to do.”

Editor’s Note

A note from Executive Editor Dimon Kendrick-Holmes:

Frank Myers is refusing to speak to reporter Mark Rice, citing Rice’s wife’s job with the Muscogee County School District as a conflict of interest.

After the Sept. 20 meeting, Rice was leaving Myers a voicemail asking him to forward the emails about the disputed open records request, when Myers sent Rice this text: “Go f--- yourself.” Then he sent another: “And you can print that.” That night, Myers posted a screen grab of both texts to his Facebook page, but later removed the image.

On Sept. 22, Myers sent this email to Rice: “I will not be participating in providing input to any school board stories until the Ledger acknowledges and rectifies the obvious conflict of interest of your wife being on the MCSD payroll. Please govern yourself accordingly.”

On Sept. 29, after Rice left Myers a voicemail inviting him to respond to critics in his story, Myers sent this email: “Did you not read my recent email to you? You are not to further contact me as long as your bills are being paid by David Lewis. Got it?”

Rice’s wife has been employed by schools in the Muscogee County School District in various support roles for the past nine years. She is currently an elementary school secretary at Britt David Magnet Academy earning $21,878.40, according to the earnings published in October 2015 on the Ledger-Enquirer’s MCSD salary database.

This story was originally published October 1, 2016 at 8:54 PM with the headline "Is the Muscogee School Board really a ‘hostile environment’?."