Do Lawyers for District Understand?

At the July 26 school board meeting I requested a meeting with the Board Chair and the attorney for the District. Mr. Manning said he'd meet with me informally. On August 3 I emailed him to request the meeting.

There could be a lot of reasons why he hasn't responded (yet).

On August 19 I emailed Kathryn Mahoney, attorney for Richland 2, and Frannie Heizer, Burr & Forman's bond counsel for Richland 2, to explain exactly why I have been complaining to the Board.

I explained to them that my complaint is not about the late filing of the Statements of Economic Interests by Amelia McKie and Teresa Holmes.

My complaint is that each took the oath of office illegally and that, until they do take it legally, they are not legal members of the Board.

The District has never contacted me to explain why my assertions are wrong. From that lack of contact, I can only assume that I am not wrong.

I also pointed out false, misleading and incomplete statements in the Richland 2 bond documents for a $26,000,000 sale of Bond Anticipation Notes.

Burr & Forman attempts to protect itself in the bond document by including this paragraph in the Legal Matters section, beginning on Page 51 of the sale document.

"Burr Forman McNair has assisted the School District by compiling certain information supplied to them by the School District and others and included in this Official Statement, but said firm has not made an independent investigation or verification of the accuracy, completeness or fairness of such information. The opinion of Burr Forman McNair will be limited solely to the legality and enforceability of the Notes, and no opinion will be given with respect to this Official Statement."

Did Richland 2 or its attorney ever tell Frannie Heizer of the ongoing questions about Amelia McKie's participation as a Board member and Board Chair? All of them should know about it, because Lindsay Agostini resigned from the Board Secretary position on April 26, rather than sign two documents associated with this sale. She would not risk personal or civil liability by signing a Certificate of Incumbency (related to McKie) and a Signature and No-Litigation Certification.

Neither Attorney Mahoney nor Attorney Heizer has acknowledged or replied to my August 19 emails. I didn't expect them to, but I certainly hope they will be questioning Board members, the Superintendent and the CFO as to what, exactly, is going on and why the Board hasn't fixed the issue by swearing in McKie and Holmes. McKie and Holmes first became eligible to take the oath of office on December 4, 2018.

Can a Board Allow Unofficial "Members"?

The School Board of District Two often refers to the district as a Premier district. And that it wants to be the Premier board of a premier district. To be that, it should be squeaky clean. Anything that is not totally clean should be cleared up, and quickly.

A school board is composed of  members elected by the public. The School Board of Richland School District Two is to have seven members.

A school board has awesome power, authority and responsibility. It can run your lives or it can ruin your lives, if you are students, teachers, administrators, staff or other District employees or taxpayers.

To run for election to the board, a person has to be qualified. The Election Commission sets the qualifications.

Once a person is elected, that person becomes a Trustee-elect.

To move from Trustee-elect to Trustee, that person must take an oath of office before assuming official duties. In South Carolina, the elected person must file a Statement of Economic Interests Report (SEI) with the South Carolina Ethics Commission before taking the oath of office.

If you take the oath of office before you file your SEI, the oath of office has been taken illegally. It doesn't count. It has no force or effect. Saying it does, does not make it so. No matter how many times you say it.

Once the SEI is filed, the elected person becomes eligible to take the oath of office.

Once the oath of office has been taken (after filing the SEI), only then the elected person can assume official duties.

Just about anyone can run for School Board. He or she must live in the School District and meet other general qualifications.

You don't have to be smart. You don't have to educated. You don't have to have a business background or financial knowledge. You don't have to understand accounting or spreadsheets or budgets. You don't have to have a manager's or executive's skills. You don't have to come from an educational background.

All you have to do is get one more vote than the candidate lower down in the results on Election Day.

Why is legal composition important? The Board makes decisions involving millions of dollars and affecting thousands of students and employees. Board officers sign legal documents that create huge financial obligations for the district.

All seven members must be fully and officially authorized by law to serve.

Right now, two of the seven are not. This means there are five legal members on the board and two who are not. South Carolina law calls them usurpers; they could also be called impostors or pretenders.

The five legal members of the Board should not tolerate this and should insist that the oath of office be administered legally to Amelia McKie and Teresa Holmes without further delay.

After that, the board will have the responsibility to clean up all the messes that have accumulated since November 13, 2018.

Remember the RVHS fight? teacher vs. student

Remember all the hoop-da-la about the teacher at Ridge View High School who ended up in  a fight with a student?

If you watch WIS-TV (Channel 10, Columbia) or read the news online, now you'll know the rest of the story.

A pre-trial intervention deal was struck. The terms were not included in the WIS-TV article. The usual outcome of such a deal is, after it is successfully completed, charges are being dismissed. This apparently is the expectation of former teacher Karon Wilson, Jr., who also expects that the charges will be expunged from court records. His attorney will inform him how that gets done.

Wilson was quoted in the WISTV.com news article: “I didn’t do anything wrong," Wilson said. "There’s no admission of guilt and I’m thankful for God for making this happen and for the support my students gave me. I don’t know anybody that has gotten hit in the face that would not react the same way. I don’t care if it’s a child or an adult, no teacher should ever be put in a position to be hit by a student in any regard."

At the end of May local news reported that Wilson had quit his teaching job. My guess is that he might have done that in anticipation of being canned by the District. It seemed to me, from the video at the time, that Wilson was defending himself.

The most that should have happened at the time was for Wilson to be placed on paid leave while the charges were investigated and resolved. What happened?


Would the District have backed him up and presumed he was innocent? Did he figure that he wasn't going to get a fair shake from the District? Now that the charges are to be dismissed and expunged, will he sue the District?

Do Richland 2 teachers and staff qualify for battle pay?

Richland 2 Football - The State piles on

In a story date-lined yesterday, August 17, at 11:11AM, The State newspaper piled on with its own story about ethics violations in the Richland 2 Athletics Department.

Read Lou Bezjak's story on www.thestate.com. Search for Blythewood High or the coach's name, Jason Seidel. A typical legal-approved, carefully-worded statement from Richland 2 was enough to make any sane person laugh. Like Lou's story? Write him at LBezjak@thestate.com

Quoting The State's quote of the Richland 2 PR puff piece, "recruiting 'for athletic purposed is a serious ethical violation.'"

Somehow, I think Richland 2 shouldn't be talking any ethics violations being "serious", when the Board itself overlooks ethics violations by it own members and especially by Trustees-elect, who aren't even members of the board, yet claim the office and get paid for it.

Did the Board ever take any action against Amelia McKie for violating Board Policy when she did not file Statements of Economic Interests with the South Carolina Ethics Commission for several years during his first term, 2014-2018? Or for her similar violations twice already in 2019?

Those violations are costing McKie $51.750 (fines and penalties by the S.C. Ethics Commission), but did the Richland 2 School Board ever address the violations of Board Policy?

And when McKie and Teresa Holmes took the oath of office illegally on November 13, 2018, did the five legal board members object or stand up and say, "Whoa! Wait just one minute!"

So I'm really questioning the "serious" part of the ethics violation allegedly committed by Coach Seidel.

Sure, such recruiting actions are wrong. But the Board should really be careful about throwing the yellow Ethics flag down on the field.

Be brave. Comment below. Surely, not all Richland 2 employees and parents are afraid to comment...  If you are, email me. Your confidence and privacy will be respected.

High School Football Recruiting

Columbia's WIS-TV reports today (August 16, 2019) that a smelly situation existed earlier this year in Richland 2 athletics. Read the long, exhaustive article on the WISTV.com website at https://www.wistv.com/2019/08/16/investigation-suggests-blythewood-hs-coach-tried-recruit-student-athletes/

You can safely click on the link, copy and paste it, or go directly to www.wistv.com and search for the article.

I've attending almost all the school board meetings since January, and I don't remember any mention of this.

If you are interested in all the gory details, read the WIS-TV news article. They did an excellent job of digging out the dirt and reporting it.

You can bet that the administrators and the lawyers were busy word-smithing the response by Richland 2.

In my opinion, if there is a major ethics problem with an employee, then you give that employee an "opportunity to be happily employed somewhere else."

Coach Terry on AEDs

At the August 13 school board meeting, the one speaker during the Public Participation segment was Coach Lawrence Terry, a Richland 2 employee at Richland Northeast High. You can view his comments on the YouTube recording for August 13, 2019, at 20:20 on the timer.

Coach Terry spoke about the importance of Automated External Defibrillators (AED) and especially of the importance of the training that should precede Certification.

Coach Terry suffered sudden cardiac arrest last year and mentioned a student who also suffered such a heart event, although the student was not on campus at the time. He spoke about the need for the equipment to be available where their use might suddenly be called for, such as on a sports field. If the AED is hanging on the wall somewhere back in a building, too much time might elapse before it could be found and brought to a victim on a field. He also referenced cold tubs to treat those who become over-heated and the ice required for the tub.

Of course, who would expect a member of the track team or football team out in 100º to become overheated or have a heart event??? 

No employee of Richland 2 should sign any document that reads that he has received adequate training in First Aid, CPR or use of an AED, if he has not received that training.

Don't stick your neck out. If you sign it and you haven't received the training, guess who will be hung out to dry when the truth comes out?

If you are expected to hold a Certification, then get the training, and get enough of it to be competent to administer aid.

Parents: ask where the AEDs are, how many there are, and how many Certificated employees know how to use them. Ask about First Aid. Ask about CPR training.

Employees: do you know where the First Aid kits are? Do you know where the AEDs are? Are they where they are supposed to be? Did you ever open the door of the First-Aid cabinet and look inside? Do you know what all those bandages and wraps are for? Are they adequately stocked? Do you know exactly what to do, if a student or colleague or visitor suffers a serious injury in your classroom?

If the First Aid kits are depleted, send a written request to your Supervisor and request re-stocking. And then follow up. New supplies should be in place within a week. There is no reason for it to take longer.

Ask the Principal of your kids' schools to sponsor First Aid and CPR training and training for using an AED. And what to do if someone is choking. Can you perform the Heimlich Maneuver safely?

Supt. Gets Whopping 12.3% Raise

At the August 13, 2019 Regular Meeting of the school board, the board voted 7-0 to award an "Overall  Distinguished" evaluation to Supt. Davis.

Then they moved on to a Motion related to the superintendent's employment contract. Go to YouTube and watch this portion of the meeting, which starts at 26:00 on the timer.

As read by Trustee Caution-Parker the Motion included terms "reviewed and discussed" in executive session for a two-year contract extension (to June 30, 2023), a 12.3% increase in his annual salary, an additional 2.5% increase in his annuity, and a simple majority vote of the board for actions pursuant to Section 11D of the contract. The motion was seconded by Trustee Shadd.

Section 11D was not explained.

The discussion of the Motion was quite interesting. First, Trustee Elkins-Johnson commented. She stated that she would not support the new contract for one reason - the Board was not allowed an opportunity to discuss the matter. She stated that the Board Chair (James Manning) had telephoned each board member to poll them. She supported many provisions in the renewal contract, but she said the board was not allowed to pull one item out. She objected to the "Super Majority" provision in the contract renewal, on which she did not elaborate.

Trustee-elect Holmes (who actually should not be at the board table and should not have had access to the contract or the executive session, because she has never taken the oath of office legally to become a full-fledged board member) stated that she would support the contract renewal, but she too did not like the Super Majority condition. She too said that the board could not pull that one provision out for discussion.

The truth is that the Board could have pulled it out. Somebody had put the contract amendment together. "Somebody" could have been told to continue to negotiate it with the superintendent. They couldn't "vote" on that in Executive Session, because no decisions can be made in Executive Session, nor can they choose up sides in Executive Session. They got bullied on that, and it worked.

But at the open session, a board member could have made a motion to pull that section out of the contract for discussion. The vote might have passed 4-3, or it might have failed 3-4. My guess is that it would have failed.

Holmes went on to say that the board decides by majority vote (4/7) on every other issue, and she did not agree with the requirement of a Super Majority (5/7) to remove the superintendent. She added that she was not planning to seek his removal. But her objection was not strong enough to cause her to vote No on the contract renewal.

Holmes said she would support the contract (YouTube @29:15), "because the majority actually ruled on this..."

WAIT JUST ONE MINUTE. When did the majority "rule" on that? What did she mean by "rule"? Did they take a vote in Executive Session?

Trustee Agostini made the final comment on the contract renewal. She stated two reasons for not being able to support the new contract for the superintendent. Her first reason was the requirement of a Super Majority vote to oust the superintendent, should that concern arise. Her second reason was concern about setting precedence "with such a large salary increase."

Board Chair Manning explained for the public that the board did have the opportunity to discuss the contract in Executive Session on more than one occasion "before coming to the final decision."

Then Trustee Elkins-Johnson made her final comment, saying "We did not have an opportunity as a board to discuss salary or any other concerns. We had an opportunity as a board to express our concerns only [emphasized] to the Chair."

The vote on the Motion to approve the renewal contract for Supt. Davis was 5-2 ("No" votes by Elkins-Johnson and Agostini).

Section 11D was not explained publicly.

Was there a violation of the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act?

South Carolina's Freedom of Information Act is found in Title 30, Chapter 4, Section 30-4-70 (b) which reads, in part, "No action may be taken in executive session except to (a) adjourn or (b) return to public session. The members of a public body may not commit the public body to a course of action by a polling of members in executive session.

(c) No chance meeting, social meeting, or electronic communication may be used in circumvention of the spirit of requirements of this chapter to act upon a matter over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power.

Was a decision, conclusion or agreement reached in the Executive Session? What did Trustee-elect Holmes mean when she said, "because the majority actually ruled on this..." Did she mean that a vote was taken in Executive Session and the majority (4/7) "ruled" in favor?

What did Chair Manning mean when he said, "the board did have the opportunity to discuss the contract in Executive Session on more than one occasion 'before coming to the final decision'."

Did the polling of the board members on the topic of the superintendent's contract constitute a violation of the Freedom of Information Act? Could his calls to each board member be construed as the prohibited "electronic communication"?

Regarding Trustee Agostini's reference to "such a large salary increase", on his Statement of Economic Interests Report filed with the South Carolina Ethics Commission, dated February 15, 2019, Supt. Davis listed his salary as $189,108, plus an $18,000 automobile allowance. Calculating 12.3% of $189,108, the superintendent picked up a raise of $23,260.