The Place Where Ludington Talks
April 2024 School Board Review, LASD and MCC: Process Coming Due
Ludington
Is it mere coincidence that each public school board in Mason County has their regular monthly meetings fall on the evenings of the third Monday of each month? Perhaps, but at least they have the starting times staggered, so that one can go to the Ludington Area School District (LASD) Board at 6 PM, usually be able to make it to the Mason County Central (MCC) Board meeting starting at 7 PM, and possibly make it three miles over to the board of Mason County Eastern's (MCE) at 7:30 PM in time if the MCC slate is light.
The Ludington Torch hopes to achieve that Triple Crown one of these days, but on Monday, there was just too much excitement going on at MCC to leave the crowded board room that evening and we even took a little part in it. But first we had to survive the LASD meeting which had a rather light agenda on action items and none of any controversy.
Student recognition is always a good thing for school board meetings at the end of the year, the board officially recognized their quiz bowl team (above) who finished third in state and the efforts of cager David Shillinger (below) who not only eclipsed the career scoring record for LASD boys basketball, but also earned first team state honors, a feat rarely accomplished in this neck of the woods.
Three student members of the Business Professionals of America also showed their business acumen and their excitement in going to Chicago in a presentation before a cryptic education-ese report on something called High Impact Leadership was given by LES Principal Katie Elsinger. By this time the athletes and professional students had left the meeting so that when the time for public participation came, I wouldn't have to worry about any self-edits for the material I had. LPD Chief Chris Jones was in attendance and I often looked his way this evening when anything even-partially about the LPD or SRO came up, but something on the floor was more important for him.
XLFD: "I'd like to be able to give effective training on how to make sure that everyone associated with the district can respect due process rights of others in a three-minute comment, but I can only touch on the basics, and how the LASD is failing. Due process in general is a requirement that legal matters be resolved according to established rules and principles and that individuals be treated fairly. The Fourteenth Amendment says government actors of the state (this board and school administrators) must follow certain procedures before they may deprive a person of a protected life, liberty, or property interest. The dryest part of your bylaws explain how the district should protect everyone's due process rights. These parts should be read and understood by all administrative staff and reread whenever they expect to use their authority against students, parents, or teachers.
Unfortunately, three of the biggest problems I've noticed with the district (putting aside the whole masking issue and the artificial turf hazards for now) is that they have deprived a student, a parent, and now a teacher of their due process rights over the last couple of years. The first happened when a middle school boy told another he was getting an airsoft gun, a toy that can't shoot through a plastic cup, around Christmas. His simple statement was taken as a threat by the school, the SRO lied on his warrant application, and the end result was a boy who was suspended for a year for the mention of an airsoft gun, who saw his father needlessly go through the justice system as a result of the SRO's perjury and multiple due process violations.
Then there was the mother who was served a letter of trespass earlier this school year drafted by a different SRO and given to her without any fair process followed, depriving her of being able to see her children at athletic events and practices. Other than exercising her First Amendment rights to express herself to others, there was no crime other than perhaps by the coach that got in her face and threateningly yelled at her.
And then we have what happened to the baseball coach and teacher, who was sucker-punched by the district en route to losing his job due to having a consensual encounter with a former district student. Our principals and superintendents who should have been aware of his due process rights, ignored them and this could become a major liability for the district, which means additional costs to us taxpayers. Worse, the district's reasons for firing the teacher explicitly claimed the former student was still a student in the district, otherwise they would have no legal reason to terminate the man's job.
One can fault the now-former teacher for a moment of weakness when visited by someone who graduated from this school. but not even the LPD could find a law that he broke with the consensual tryst, the district had to pervert their own bylaws while ignoring their bylaws granting due process to the accused. (END Comment]
As normal, the board ignored the whole concept of even considering that their own staff committed due process violations or that other bylaws were corrupted to bring down one of their own teachers. Staff violating clear bylaws came into play at Scottville as well, so once the board noticed Theresa Erickson as their Soaring Oriole for her work done with the eclipse, they passed the following:
-Sending the BPA students to the Chicago National Leadership Conference
-Approving a trip to Washington DC for the National Festival of the States for the LHS Band in 2025
-Passed the West Shore ESD budget resolution for the next school year
-Approved $1.2 million for renovations to the MS/HS complex as part of the bond project
Mason County Central
The MCC Board also had a light agenda, likewise passing the WSESD budget resolution as required by area schools, and otherwise, only the approval of teaching probationary contracts (2,3, and 4 year) and tenure contracts. Yet after last months proverbial bloodbath, and the removal of the school board from that scene (the High School Library) to the new meeting room at the NE corner of the high school, recently constructed, there was little doubt that more parent involvement regarding coaches and other topics would again unfold.
After the meeting was called to order, Board Chairman Jim Schulte's return from the virtual world for the last four months had him reinforce what the district's policy on public comment was, printed in full on the back of the agenda, and his intention to abide by it as much as possible. This was also expected as the board had been put on the defensive end of the court of public opinion at the last meeting and needed to regroup by using their advantage of being able to control the ball. He also announced that there was a third party investigation being conducted by a member of WSCC's staff in order to fact-find and hopefully resolve the current coaching issue,
Tara Graham started off telling the board that it was hard to keep quiet when your loyalty is betrayed, wishing she could be involved more positively, but there was a need to hold the coaches accountable, and that there are more than coaching issues. Andrea Glamzi would follow expressing her desire for the coaches at MCC to not only develop and build their children in skills and love of the sport, but to develop them into well-adjusted adults.
Kandi Nichols tacked the other way, expressing support for the administration and coaches, indicating she has had four kids go through MCC and their sports programs and have had positive life lessons throughout, claiming that the issues seem to be mostly based on perception rather than the facts as she saw them. Toni Swinehart would follow, relating the personal story of her son.
Shaina Sanders reminded the board that four years of high school should be the time of a student's life, and that this is not happening for many because of poor choices made in selecting and keeping coaches that are lacking. That was when I decided to change the topic somewhat and introduce an issue involving the board's process (or more appropriately, lack of process) in renovating the meeting place that we were sitting in:
Tom Rotta, Class of 1982. This room looks a lot different than when I went to high school here, I understand it was recently renovated, and that's part of why I'm taking the time to speak here tonight.
Let me read from relevant parts of MCC school board policy 6321 dealing with renovations of school property: Before beginning renovation of an existing school building, except emergency repairs, the Board of Education, shall obtain competitive bids on all the material and labor required for the renovation of an existing school building which exceeds the State statutory limit. [This was around $27,000 back in 2021-22]. The Board shall advertise for the bids... the advertisement for bids shall... identify the time, date, and place of a public meeting at which the Board will open and read aloud each bid received by the Board... At a public meeting identified in the advertisement for bids, the Board shall open and read aloud each bid that the Board received at or before the time and date for bid submission specified in the advertisement for bids.
Financial records of the school showed that several large payments were made to a Travis Aultman beginning on Halloween of 2022 and continuing to the next summer, these totaled over $92,000. A FOIA request graciously fulfilled by Superintendent Mount showed that these were consistent with renovation work presumably done right here. What I didn't receive was anything showing that Travis Aultman's renovation work totaling over $92,000 was ever approved by the board, or for that matter, anybody else. I reviewed the publicly-available meeting minutes since late 2020 and found nothing about the board opening competitive bids or otherwise funding this costly renovation project.
I do recognize that Travis Aultman was an assistant coach here at MCC for many years, the assistant to the man who would become, and is now, principal of the high school, Jeff Tuka. Did that kindred spirit between the two allow them to avoid the notion of doing competitive bids demanded by district policy for this project? Where was the superintendent and the school board in all this? And why is this school board, who should be aware of this renovation policy and other similar policies in place to avert the appearance of impropriety in situations like these, highlighting this apparent mistake by meeting at the scene of the crime?
You need to avoid squirrely transactions like this If you are wanting the trust of the district's voters to pass large bond proposals and believe that you will not use that money the same way you did here to enrich friends, or maybe even yourselves, by going against established school policy. [END Comment].
I received a strange response to this comment, which turned out to be the last before the board went into their reports and action items. Trustee Barry Pleiness laughed and stated that if I had saw his compensation from the school, I would know he wasn't getting part of it. With all due respect to Mr. Pleiness, if he isn't making a lot of money, there is a lot more temptation to violate policy to get more on the sly-- but he wasn't the target of the comment, nor was John Wagner who additionally found school policies being violated as amusing. I was told by this duo that if I had an issue that I should run for school board, I informed them that I was not in the school district (and would thus be in violation of district policy like them).
With their reflexive defense refuted, the business of the meeting resumed. Though the names of the probationary and tenure contracts were left off the agenda, we have since learned that one of the coaches under the third-party investigation was approved. It made one wonder whether the investigation's results have been already decided in advance, that's a fait accompli, to our Parisian readers. A better plan by the district would have been to make the coach's contract provisional, so that if the hopefully-unrigged investigation came back with a recommendation to fire the coach, that such could be accomplished without undue strain on the district's resources to fight a standard contract.
Ryan Graham would point this out during his comment at the beginning of the second comment period. Margaret Greiner, Shaina Sanders, Susan Graham, and Tara Graham would follow with their own points regarding the coaches and investigation. Kandi Nichols once again acknowledged her support of staff, while better commiserating with those that did not share her views. Greg Thurow probingly asked further about who decided on a third party investigation and what steps the school took to make sure this was a fair investigation, and Superintendent Jeff Mount explained how it all began.
While he described that they had settled on the WSCC investigator after bypassing two others, he failed to explain the policy under which the investigation is being held so that the public could be more confident about any findings. There is no timetable behind this investigation either, so one could easily see it as a delaying tactic the longer it goes or think that it was incomplete if they make a decision too soon.
Elise Padron offered a secondary defense to the board in support of the embattled coaches, diplomatically noting that her satisfaction with the coaching may not be shared by the several parents at the meeting claiming otherwise. While Chairman Schulte indicated that she would be the last, since the 20 minutes maximum of the period had been reached, I raised my hand to do some follow-ups, and he gave me the floor, rather than call for a motion to extend the period.
Mind you at this point in the meeting, both Principal Jeff Tuka and Mount had been given the floor for their reports about the high school and district, respectively, neither addressed the Aultman issue. So, I started off by reminding them that the superintendent has both the receipts and invoices of the renovation project we were in and that the minutes of meetings are available to all, why were they ignoring the credible allegations of violating policy 6321 to contract with someone outside of competitive bidding who has a close relationship to administrative staff?
Mount agreed to look into it and mentioned something about the work being done in parts so that it may have fallen under the statutory limit requiring bids, I reminded him that projects could not be subdivided in such manner as to sidestep the policy requirement (see bylaw 6320, Purchases). If this was the tact taken, which would have failed due to at least one check over the statutory limit, it still does not explain the lack of contract or competitive bids for the contract, which are meant to protect the school and get lower prices on goods and services. Several payments were over the $15,000 limit that triggers bids.
Larry Graham would ask the board to look into interviewing some of the people at Ravenna for their investigation since the football coach was hired from there after 8 years of statistical on-field success, along with growing up in the area. It seems like a valid venue if a full and fair investigation is desired, as few successful coaches would leave their alma mater without some underlying issue present in the wings. The school year is coming close to its end, but with the controversies in Scottville look like this tumult will still be playing after school is over.
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