The Clarksdale Municipal School District has been told the only employee they can hold accountable for anything is the superintendent.
That was one of many things said about responsibilities when Denotris Jackson, executive director of the Mississippi School Board Association and Tommye Henderson, superintendent search coordinator, had a training session with the Clarksdale Municipal School District board last week.
Jackson said MS Code 37-7-301 is the major statute that regulates the school board’s role.
“As a board member, it is your responsibility to organize and operate the schools of the district, to make the division between the high school grades, elementary grades in your judgment that will serve the best interest of the schools,” Jackson said.
She said the district belongs to the citizens of Clarksdale. She added the board adopts the curriculum and instructional management plan, crafted by principals and central office staff, and presented to the board by the superintendent each year.
Jackson said the board approves things for the district and the superintendent makes recommendations. “Sometimes those areas get a little cloud in the middle, but basically, you’re approving and Dr. Nelson (CMSD superintendent Dr. Earl Joe Nelson), you are recommending,” Jackson said.
When a student is expelled, Jackson said parents have the option of appealing to the school board. She said the superintendent brings a recommendation from his investigation with staff. The board has the option of either supporting or not supporting those recommendations.
“It doesn’t take a long time to deal with some of this stuff,” Jackson said. “Either you approve it or you don’t.”
Jackson said when she was on the school board in Clinton, meetings were an hour to an hour and a half. She said hearings can take longer, but that is not usually necessary.
“That’s the part most boards don’t really minimize,” Jackson said. “They want to hear a whole lot of stuff, but you’ve got the evidence in front of you.”
Jackson said the superintendent and principals do the investigations, not the boards.
When Jackson was on the Clinton school board, she said she received calls from parents about matters. She encouraged anyone who called to talk to the teacher and principal and follow the chain of command.
Board member Joan Morris made reference to hearings that went on longer.
“We had one that went on for months,” Morris said.
Morris said she was referring to an employee’s contact that was not renewed.
“Adults are involved, so it’s going to be much more lengthy,” Jackson said.
However, Jackson said hearings can be streamlined without spending time on things having nothing to do with the situation. She said they should be an hour at the most as everyone has the same information.
Jackson said the hiring of quality teachers who know how to get students to learn and the appointment of principals who can manage those teachers is at the center of the board/superintendent relationship
“How will this improve student achievement? How will this improve student life?” said Jackson on how the district should rule in teacher and principal non-renewal hearings. “We’ve got to remember everything that we do, if you can’t tie it back to student achievement, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.
“Some of these people that we love and they’re our friends and we go to Sunday School together and we’re on Junior Auxiliary and we’re on all of these clubs and all of this stuff together, they’ve got to go.” Jackson said the role of the board is to support superintendent’s recommendation.
Board attorney Carlos Palmer said, in another community, he saw a situation where the community supported a principal who had been there for years and had the only failing school in the district. The principal had been there for years and the community had a different idea of success.
“It all depend what your community expectation of success is,” Palmer said.
Jackson said boards should look at data of how a school is performing, not who a person is. She told a story of a district that was failing academically and financially and was about to be taken over by the state when the superintendent retired.
“The wheels were in the process. It was about to happen,” Jackson said. “The board hired a superintendent from outside of the school district. You talk about a community in an uproar. They wanted one of their own, but it was your own that helped you to get these Fs that you at this point were about to be taken over.”
She said one board member was criticized for that decision.
“We’re about to be taken over and the people were fighting the board on their superintendent hire,” Jackson said. “That board member told me, he said, ‘I have to shop outside of my community. I couldn’t go to the grocery store because people would see me, they would get in my face, they would yell at me, they would be so upset with me about the decision that we made.’ He said, ‘But I had to support our decision and I had to do what was right by the children.’”
Jackson said the CMSD board hired a superintendent from the outside in 2019 as Nelson came from the Pass Christian School District that had an A with the Mississippi Department of Education.
“That F that you all had, if I were in that position, I would’ve selected somebody from a high performing school district myself,” Jackson said. “They know what that looks like.”
Jackson said less than three years into the new superintendent’s tenure, the district was a success academically and financially and a model for U.S. Department of Education.
She said the role of a principal is to evaluate teachers.
“Teacher performance is really not your business,” Jackson said. “That’s the principal’s business.”
Jackson again said the superintendent is the only employee the board holds accountable.
“If the superintendent’s been failing for three years, they’ve got to go,” Jackson said.
“If you’ve got a principal problem, you really don’t have a principal problem. You’ve got a superintendent problem. For good schools, you don’t have a teacher problem. You have a principal problem.”
Jackson said she served on the school board with current speaker of the house Phil Gunn. She said students had to answer questions at hearings, not parents.
“Philip said, ‘Can we do this for all 4,999 kids in this district?’” Jackson explained. “When we were by ourselves, every time there was a discipline or an employee matter, ‘Can we do this for the other 4,999 students in this school district?’ If there’s ever a no, then we don’t need to do it for this person.
“When you hold people accountable, they’re going to be mad, especially if they have not been doing well,” she added.
