2 Muscogee County School Board members object to superintendent's private evaluation

Two members of the Muscogee County School Board threatened to walk out of Tuesday night's called meeting to prevent a quorum and block the board from going into closed session.

At stake was whether the public would be allowed to witness the board conducting the superintendent's annual evaluation.

As the 15-minute discussion started, six of the board's nine members were present. So if representatives Frank Myers of District 8 and John Thomas of District 2 left before the vote, a majority wouldn't have been in attendance and the board wouldn't have been allowed to take any action, let alone go into closed session.

But about halfway through the debate, Naomi Buckner of District 4 walked into the board room, and chairman Rob Varner of District 5 quipped, "Now, we'd have a quorum -- assuming you don't walk out as well."

First-year board members Myers and Thomas, however, didn't walk out either. Instead, they stayed to argue against evaluating the superintendent in closed session, also called executive session, which is the normal practice.

"I don't know how you can even say that the superintendent's evaluation is a personnel matter that even qualifies for executive session," Myers said.

Board attorney Melanie Slaton responded, "Yes, it does qualify for an executive session. You can vote to have the discussions in public or you can have them in private. I think it's appropriate to have personnel matters discussed in executive session."

"If we want to release the evaluation afterward, that's fine," said District 3 representative Athavia "A.J." Senior, " but I don't think anyone who's ever had a job has had an open evaluation with the other employees or someone looking on."

Thomas said, "In contemplating walking out to stop this executive session from taking place, I wasn't considering doing it just to be a pain to anyone. I feel strongly that this discussion should be held with members of the public in attendance and with the AV team recording for replay on government television. I'm just not happy that we're trying to do something that looks like we're trying to hide something."

Varner responded, "I'm just really tired of the constant insinuations that this board is trying to hide something. That's the last thing we'd do. There's so many things that have been said in public about this superintendent, I can't imagine we could say anything else in private that hasn't been already said in public."

Myers said, "There is nothing that makes us close the door and do stuff behind closed doors. Nobody is putting a gun to our head and forcing us to go into the back room. I'm saying it's better practice for the people and better accountability to the people to do this stuff in public."

Buckner responded, "It's not going into a back room. It's following the rules. It's doing what we've decided to do. We are following policy. Just the insinuation, when you say, 'Go into a back room,' that connotes something secretive, something deceptive."

Myers also objected to the timing of the evaluation. He wants to wait until after October's release of the district and school scores on the Georgia Milestone tests, the state's standardized exams.

Regardless, another board member, county-wide representative Kia Chambers, walked in before the vote, and joined the majority in the 6-2 decision to conduct the superintendent's evaluation in closed session. Voting yes were Varner, Senior, Buckner, Chambers, vice chairwoman Pat Hugley Green of District 1 and Shannon Smallman of District 7. Myers and Thomas voted no. Mark Cantrell of District 6 was absent.

Mark Rice, 706-576-6272. Follow him on Twitter@MarkRiceLE.

This story was originally published September 29, 2015 at 10:03 PM with the headline "2 Muscogee County School Board members object to superintendent's private evaluation ."