Muscogee school board debates, approves cabinet-level hire
After a 20-minute discussion about their proper role in hiring a cabinet-level position Monday night, Muscogee County School Board members approved David Lewis’ recommendation for interim chief of operations and facilities.
David Goldberg, the assistant superintendent for administrative and support services in the Carroll County School System since 2013, succeeds Myles Caggins, who retired in November after leading the division for 15 years.
During last week’s work session, District 8 representative Frank Myers objected to Lewis asking board members to vote on hiring a person they hadn’t met. So the superintendent set up that opportunity, which was a half hour before Monday’s 6 p.m. meeting.
“What if we were Aflac or TSYS or Synovus and somebody walked in and said, ‘You’re going to get 30 minutes before the meeting to meet him.’ That’s the first time you laid eyes on him. All you got besides that is a resume. The person who suggested that in a corporate culture would be getting their boxes packed in their office and sent on their way. You don’t treat your board like that. The board decides these things. When power is taken away from the board, accountability is taken away from the process.”
Board vice chairwoman Pat Hugley Green of District 1 disagreed. She cited board policy, based on state law, which declares in part: “The Board of Education members, collectively and individually, remain neutral and do not become involved in the review of applications for vacant positions in the screening process, except in the recruitment and selection of the Superintendent.”
Green added, “We have rules we have to follow. We are not making it up.”
Myers countered, “I’ve got news for you. The review of applications and the screening process is over. Now it’s time to hire. And if it’s not the job of the board of education, why are we here? Why have a board of education if the vote means nothing?”
District 4 representative Naomi Buckner said, “I certainly would like the process to be more open.”
Kia Chambers, the nine-member board’s lone county-wide representative, said the policy should dictate the board’s direction. “If we as board members know that we do not have a say-so in higher-level positions, cabinet-level positions, then we’re finished with this discussion.”
The problem is that all the board members couldn’t agree on how to interpret the policy. Even one of the board members who ultimately voted to approve the recommendation, Mark Cantrell of District 6, said, “I feel like I’m rubber stamping.”
The board voted 6-0 to approve Lewis’ recommendation. Myers abstained, and John Thomas of District 2 and Athavia “A.J.” Senior of District 3 were absent.
After the vote, Goldberg’s thank-you comments to the board included a statement all members could support: “I’m going to dig deep. I’m going to get rid of the bad, and I’m going to get the good to rise up.”
Lewis explained last week that he recommended an interim hire because he wants Goldberg to take an objective view of the division without feeling an allegiance to anyone.
“After an interim period of approximately 18 months or so,” Lewis said then, we will make the assessment going forward, once he has made his recommendations and assessment, if he is the one to lead it going forward.”
In a related issue, Myers earlier read a statement from Thomas, who criticized the “typical” audits that are done on cabinet-level positions when they are vacated. In addition to Caggins, chief financial officer Sharon Adams and chief information officer Forrest Toelle also left the district around the end of last year.
“These audits were not thorough or comprehensive in any way and in reality were little more than annual fixed asset inventories conducted routinely every year,” Thomas wrote, noting no accounting was produced for all financial accounts over which the executive had control. “ As exit audits these audits are puny, pathetic and not at all to standards of best practices in the operation of a multimillion dollar organization.”
Lewis responded that he asked the internal auditors “to continue to look into all three of our retired chiefs and just make sure we have procedural policy completed. When those are completed, all of the board members will receive that information as well.”
During the public agenda Monday night, former mayoral and school board candidate Paul Olson alleged the board’s meeting was illegal because the agenda wasn’t posted when he checked the Muscogee County Public Education Center on Thursday. After the meeting, board attorney Greg Ellington told the Ledger-Enquirer that Olson confused the state law’s requirement for meeting notices and agendas.
The Georgia Open Meetings Act requires notice of the meeting’s date, time and place one week in advance, but the agenda shall be posted “at some time” two weeks before the meeting. So the board was in compliance Monday.
Mark Rice, 706-576-6272. Follow Mark on Twitter@MarkRiceLE.
This story was originally published February 16, 2015 at 10:07 PM with the headline "Muscogee school board debates, approves cabinet-level hire."