May 20 Special Called Board Meeting

There were eight community members, including some Richland 2 employees, at tonight's School Board meeting, which started at 5:30PM.

For a thirty-minute period prior to this meeting, there was a public hearing on the budget. One person spoke.

How did Richland 2 publicize this meeting? Did it?

On the official Meetings webpage of the District, the Special Called Board Meeting was posted. HOWEVER, it did not state the 5:30PM Starting Time. The announcement contained the boiler-plate language. Here is how the webpage read:

BOARD MEETINGS

Upcoming Meeting:

   Tuesday, May 20, 2019
   Special Called Meeting

When — The School Board meets twice monthly on the second and fourth Tuesdays. Executive session at 5:30 p.m., and public session begins at 6:30 p.m. Special meetings, work sessions and hearings are held when necessary.

On the way out I was approached by a woman who was showing up for the Board meeting. Imagine her disappointment at having made the trip to R2i2, only to find the meeting was over!

Various members of the Board engaged in private conversations during the 5:00-5:30PM budget input session, since no one else spoke. Other board members were observed reading their phones.

Whose job is it to teach the board members how to conduct themselves during public meetings? There should be NO side conversations. Everything said by a board member should be spoken loudly enough to be heard throughout the room and on the YouTube recording. There should be no use of cell phones during meetings; no texting - sent or received; no email usage, because the public cannot know whether the content has to do with the meeting.

Freedom of Information Act rules apply. No secret conversations during board meetings. Whatever an official says at a public meeting is public and should be heard by all. It's called transparency.

New Board officers - June election

The time is fast approaching for the Richland 2 School Board to elect its Officers for the 2019-2020 school year. That election will be on June 25, 2019 at the Regular school board meeting. The officers are elected by the board members. Note: there are, at this time, five legal school board members and two legal vacancies.

Current officers are
Chair - Amelia McKie *
Vice Chair - Monica Elkins-Johnson
Secretary - James Shadd

* The legitimacy of the current occupant in the Chair's role has been under fire since January 2019. Amelia McKie owes $51,750 in fines and penalties to the S.C. Ethics Commission, as of 5/20/19. She took the oath of office on November 13, 2018 in violation of S.C. Code of Laws 8-13-1110(A), before she was legally eligible to take the oath. McKie's term of office as a Board Member and as Chair legally ended on November 6, 2018.

The Officers' term-of-office is July 1 to June 30. The next term-of-office for Officers will not be interrupted by an election.

The School Board members and their current terms-of-office are
Lindsay Agostini (2016-2020)
Monica Elkins-Johnson (2016-2020)
James Shadd (2016-2020)
Cheryl Caution-Parker (2018-2022)
Teresa Holmes (2018-2022)
James Manning (2018-2022)
Amelia McKie (2018-2022)

I hope that the Board might consider these Trustees for positions as Officers:
Chair: James Manning
Vice Chair Monica Elkins-Johnson
Secretary Lindsay Agostini

They have the experience and the integrity to do the job right.

Edited 5/25/19

A lie doesn't become truth...

Read this on Facebook today...

"A lie doesn't become truth,
wrong doesn't become right, and
evil doesn't become good,
just because it's accepted by a majority."

- Booker T Washington (1856-1915)

I believe there is a message in these words for the Richland 2 School Board.

Open Letter to Supt.

Today I sent the following email to Richland 2 Supt. Baron Davis:

"I am writing to request that Richland 2 video-record and publish the May 20, 2019 5:00PM Special Called Board Meeting, including the budget public hearing, and all future Special Board Meetings.

"I have inquired about the video of the April 23, 2019 meeting, The staff member said she would check on it, but I haven't received a further reply. Was it recorded?

"Will you please discuss with the Board whether the Minutes of the April 23, 2019 are sufficient? The Minutes provide no detail  The meeting was hours-long (5:30PM-7:27PM), and there is no record of what was discussed beyond the briefest of general wording.

"Will you please ask the Board's guidance on whether future Minutes of all official meetings should be reflect a greater description of the business transacted?"

Was there a Resolution for the bond documents?

A very serious question has arisen at the Richland 2 School Board about documents connected with the $468,000,000 bond that voters approved in November 2018. The question pertains to wording in two certifications that appear to have been added to the standard bond-document language.

Previously, I have written about the "Certificate of Incumbency" and the "Signature and No-Litigation Certificate".

It was over these that the Board Secretary, Lindsay Agostini, resigned her position as Board Secretary. She continues to serve on the School Board.

She resigned as Board Secretary to avoid the risk of personal and civil liability by signing those bond documents.

According to her public statement on April 30, 2019 School Board meeting she was to be briefed on those documents at the April 23rd "workshop" (Special Board meeting). She wasn't. The first time she saw the documents was after her personal attorney reviewed them.

When matters happen, or don't happen, at official meetings, it is because of planning, cooperation and decisions between the Board Chair and the Superintendent. They make the final decision of the Agenda.

The board should have been fully briefed on those documents in public. Board members should have asked questions and received answers. And then there should have been a Resolution that authorized the Board Chair and the Board Secretary to sign on behalf of the District.

In other words, the full Board takes the responsibility and bears the weight (and consequences) of the authority, completeness, honesty, truthfulness and accuracy of the documents to be signed.

No video of the April 23, 2019 Special Board Meeting has yet been published by the District on its website or YouTube. Was the meeting recorded?

The Minutes of the April 23, 2019 are completely insufficient. It is impossible to know what happened at that meeting from the written Minutes.

Is race dividing the school board?

Today I saw this posting on Facebook. I presume it is correctly attributed. It sounds like something Candace Owens would say, and I agree with it.

"American is not a racist country. Anyone claiming otherwise has a vested interest in keeping us divided. The easiest way to maintain power over any group is to keep those within it at war with one another."

Earlier this year there was an inference that those who complained about Amelia McKie's ethics violations, fines and penalties ($51,000+ worth) were racially motivated.

I heard second-hand that the president of the Richland 2 Black Parents Association said that the claim against McKie was not racist and that it's about ethics. I have tried to reach him through Facebook, but there has been no response. If anyone knows whether he so commented at a school board meeting, please let me know and I'll search the videos on YouTube for his comment.

At the May 14, 2019 McKie referred several times to the "majority of the board" being supportive of Supt. Davis. I'm going to ask her to name the four (or all) on the board who are supportive of Supt. Davis. Would that be Holmes, Caution-Parker, Shadd and herself? All of whom are black. And Shadd, who is black? And Elkins-Johnson,  who is black? Is their support, in McKie's opinion, because the superintendent is black? What about Manning and Agostini, who are white?

Is McKie really making a racially-divisive statement, when she said - more than once - the "majority of the board" supports Supt. Davis?

I will venture a guess that all of the Board are supportive of Supt. Davis. And it doesn't have anything to do with black or white. He is a strong administrator. He has a big job. He is doing most of it well.

Nobody agrees with everything that any administrator does. Disagreeing with an action of the Superintendent is appropriate, when it is called for. What's important to the top administrator in any business is to keep the majority of his bosses (Directors or Trustees) happy. If he doesn't, he's likely to find himself out of a job.

The legal issue over the addenda to the bond documents shows a weakness on the part of the Board Chair and the majority of the board. It was wrong of the administration to fail to brief the Board on the bond documents, with full disclosure and explanation of the two questionable addenda.

The Board should have put an immediate stop to what was happening, and then Mrs. Agostini wouldn't have been forced to stand on principle and resign as Board Secretary.

Bond document - True but incomplete and misleading

On April 30, 2019 Lindsay Agostini resigned as Board Secretary of the Richland 2 School Board. She continues to serve as a Trustee of the School Board.

Her reason for resigning was the personal or civil risk she believed she might have, if she signed two documents associated with the half-Billion dollars in new bonds for the School District. For more detail about her resignation, click here.

Mrs. Agostini did not want to sign as Board Secretary on the Certificate of Incumbency. As Custodian of Official Records of the District, she was being asked to confirm McKie is Board Chair and to confirm McKie's dates of office as Board Chair as 7/1/2018 - 6/30/2019.

Mrs. Agostini did not want the personal risk of signing official documents that might not be true.

Mrs. Agostini also refused to sign the "Signature and No-Litigation Certificate" and she read the language of that addendum:

"The school district is aware that members of the public have called for the resignation of the current board chair because of fines owed by the board chair to the South Carolina State Ethics Commission and because the Board Chair did not have on file a current Statement of Economic Interest prior to being sworn into a second term as a member of the board. The school district is not aware of any litigation, regulatory effort or official proceeding challenging the board's right [sic] and title to serve as a board member or board chair.”

Mrs. Agostini and I have not spoken about these documents, and I have no idea what her attorney told her.

My opinion? 

While the wording is factually correct, it is incomplete and significantly misleading. She was right not to sign. 

I think it is a very dangerous act to mislead bondholders of a half-billion dollar set of bonds. If the underwriter knew the entire story, would they be nervous about selling these bonds? 

I was a Series 7 stockbroker years ago, and these addenda are red flags. Corporate bond purchasers do read prospectuses. Does the Richland 2 bond attorney really understand the serious questions about McKie?

Will Mr. Shadd protect himself by also refusing to sign?