The Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School Board held an employee grievance hearing in closed session Thursday that appeared to involve both the board’s president and the district’s superintendent.
Dr. Mary Brown, the superintendent, whose three-year contract was not ex-tended be-yond the end of the school year on June 30, and Samantha Milton, president of the board, met behind closed doors with other board members and Jim Keith, an attorney from Ridgeland who serves as a board consultant. He said he was there to “facilitate” the hearing.
In open session, Dr. Kalanya Moore, vice president, conducted the meeting instead of Milton, who did not vote.
The board voted in public to ratify a response to the Mississippi Department of Education, which in April had sent a notice that it had received complaints claiming violations of Mississippi Public School Accountability Standards and warned that failure to comply with the standards could result in an accreditation downgrade to probation or withdrawal.
A copy of the response was not immediately available, and it is not known publicly whether it contradicts the complaints.
The allegations charge that the board has interfered with the “day-to-day operations of the school district” and include several allegations of violations related to the issuance of contract non-renewal letters to employees.
In addition, one of the allegations is that “the Board failed to follow the District’s Grievance Policy ... by failing to notify the Superintendent of a grievance that had been filed by an employee.”
The meeting, which began at 8 a.m. at the Leflore County Civic Center, lasted more than two hours. Moore said the board prefers to hold grievance hearings away from the district’s headquarters to protect the privacy of employees who attend the hearings.
- Contact Susan Montgomery at 581-7241 or smontgomery@gwcommonwealth.com.
