Superintendent opens gathering to public after board member’s accusation

The Muscogee County School District superintendent has opened to the public a gathering of Muscogee County School Board members after a representative accused the superintendent of calling for a “back room meeting” to discuss the proposed $6.4 million contract with alternative education provider Camelot Education.

The gathering is scheduled for today at 5 p.m. in the board’s conference room at the Muscogee County Public Education Center, 2960 Macon Road, an hour before the 6 p.m. meeting in which the board is scheduled to vote on the recommendation.

Superintendent David Lewis sent board members this email at 1:22 p.m. Sunday:

“In order to afford you an opportunity to ask individual or specific questions related to Camelot programming, I have arranged for Mr. Ray Rodriguez to be available to meet with anyone interested in the Board Conference Room any time between 5:00 and the start of our board meeting at 6:00.”

Lewis also sent board members this email at 11:08 p.m. Sunday:

“For clarification, Mr. Rodriguez will be in attendance for the regularly scheduled Board Meeting beginning at 6:00 to address any questions as he did during the special called work session. This earlier meeting was simply intended to provide individual board members another opportunity to personally meet Mr. Rodriguez or ask questions regarding Camelot or its programs. There is no expectation that board members attend this earlier meeting and at no time will there be a quorum present.”

A quorum is the minimum number of members needed to be present for a gathering to fall under the state’s opening meetings law. In this case, a quorum of the nine-member MCSD board would be five, and the board would have to notify the public of such a meeting.

District 8 representative Frank Myers posted on his Facebook page Sunday night, “I just learned that a back room meeting has been called by David Lewis at 5:00PM tomorrow at the Taj Mahal. The purpose of the meeting-before-the-meeting-that-we-couldn't-avoid-making-public is to try to sell the board on the disaster-in-waiting program known as ‘Camelot.’ It is unclear whether the ‘public is invited.’”

Per the Ledger-Enquirer’s request, Lewis forwarded the Sunday emails he sent to the board and said, “As you will read below, I am not requesting the board to meet. Since some board members were not able to attend the formal work session regarding the Camelot proposal, Mr. Rodriguez and I were simply trying to provide an additional opportunity for any interested board members to meet Mr. Rodriguez and ask questions relative to Camelot and its programs. You or anyone else are welcome to attend if you would like to do so.”

Such an accommodation for the public isn’t enough for District 2 representative John Thomas. In an interview today with the Ledger-Enquirer, he asked rhetorically, “If it’s going to be in the board’s conference room, how many people can get in there?”

The board’s conference room is the space where the board conducts its closed sessions, out of public view from the boardroom.

“In effect, you’re excluding the public,” Thomas continued. “They should just have the meeting in the boardroom. I don’t think it’s right to set up to what amounts to a de facto closed meeting because of the limitation of space.”

Thomas vowed he will insist on the gathering being moved from the board’s conference room to the boardroom.

Asked how he would ensure the board doesn’t have a quorum during the informal gathering, Lewis told the Ledger-Enquirer in an email this afternoon, “At this time I am not aware of any members planning to attend this informal opportunity, but please know that, as always, we will comply with all open meeting laws.”

District 6 representative Mark Cantrell wants the board to table the recommendation.

“I’m concerned that we had a (March 16) work session with a lot of information to take in in three hours,” Cantrell told the Ledger-Enquirer in an interview today. “I don’t know if I can support it yet. I’d rather wait until next month to give us time.”

Lewis and his administrative chiefs have said they are asking the board to approve this proposal now so they would have time to implement in time for the start of next school year.

MCSD’s proposed one-year contract with Camelot Education of Austin, Texas, would be for $6,436,098 and renewable for up to three years. Lewis wants the board to vote on the contract during tonight’s meeting, starting at 6 p.m.

The plan, designed to improve alternative education in the district, would close the Edgewood Student Services Center and reopen the vacant Marshall Middle School to create the Marshall Learning Center, which would house:

▪ The AIM program (Achievement, Integrity and Maturity) currently at Edgewood, annually serving 400-500 students in grades 3-12 temporarily removed from their assigned school because of severe violations of the district’s behavior code. It would be called the Transitional School at Marshall with a capacity for 250 students in grades K-12 at one time, adding grades K-2 current not served.

▪ The Woodall Program currently housed at Davis Elementary School and Carver High School, serving 44 students with severe emotional and behavioral problems. It would be called the Therapeutic Day School at Marshall with a capacity for 75 K-12 students.

▪ A new program called Excel Academy at Marshall, with a capacity for 125 students, for over-age students in grades 6-12 who have fallen behind their peers.

▪ Catapult Academy, the dropout recovery program with a capacity for 120 students in grades 9-12 currently at Edgewood and 300 on the waiting list, would continue to be run by a separate contractor, not Camelot.

An article posted March 8 on Slate.com mentioned allegations of abuse at Camelot-run schools in: Reading, Pa., Lancaster, Pa.; Philadelphia; New Orleans and Pensacola, Fla.

In its 17-page response to Slate’s questions, Camelot wrote, “With the exception of an isolated incident in Reading, PA in which we immediately investigated and terminated multiple employees, Camelot has had no founded child abuse cases or lawsuits involving our students over the last decade. Your narrative is formulated using fewer than 10 incidents from the almost 5,940,000 daily interactions over a period of 10 years.”

MCSD board members have been mostly mum about the abuse allegations.

Camelot runs 43 alternative schools in six states, and MCSD would be the first district in Georgia to hire the company.

MCSD’s current places for these services have had costly problems this past year:

▪ Monday, MCSD and seven other defendants were sued for $25 million in a personal injury complaint resulting from an incident in the AIM program at Edgewood. The lawsuit was filed in Muscogee County State Court on behalf of the Lawanda Thomas, the mother of Montravious Thomas, whose right leg was amputated below the knee after a contracted behavioral specialist with Mentoring & Behavioral Services of Columbus body-slammed the 13-year-old boy multiple times Sept. 12.

▪ The Woodall Center is among the nine out of 24 facilities in the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support that the state determined last year to be unfit for those programs. The MCSD board unanimously approved in August the superintendent’s recommendation to transfer the Woodall Program to Davis Elementary School, complying with the state’s order to immediately move those students from the Woodall Center because it was declared unsafe and unhealthy.

If the board approves creating the Marshall Learning Center, the administration would try to sell Edgewood, which was appraised at $1.3 million and would more than cover the estimated $780,000 cost of renovating Marshall, the superintendent has said. He added that he has spoken with a potential buyer, whom he declined to name.

The money for the $6.4 million contract with Camelot would come from state and federal funds already allotted to the district, administrators have said.

Lewis has said the administration considered “four or five” other companies to provide this service, “but they didn’t have the face-to-face programming that this provides,” meaning the others rely more on students learning through tutorials on computers. “We’re looking for something with more of a relationship piece.”

Camelot is the only company Lewis said he is aware of that provides “this scope of services.”

The staff who would work at the Marshall Learning Center would be Camelot employees except for the school nutrition workers, Lewis has said. No MCSD employees would lose their job because of this proposal being implemented, administrators said. In fact, Lewis has said, “We can place all of these people and still have vacancies.”

Combined, the AIM and Woodall programs total 53 MCSD employees. They could apply for the Camelot positions or other openings in the district, administrators have said.

This story was originally published March 27, 2017 at 12:48 PM with the headline "Superintendent opens gathering to public after board member’s accusation."