Remembering Dr. Kyle Corlett

[XLFD]

It hasn't been a great school year for former Ludington Area School District (LASD) Superintendent Dr. Kyle Corlett pictured below).  It started out fine; he didn't even have "former" as part of his name at that point.  His only problem seemed to be with a lingering issue of achieving a viable contract with the teacher's union, the Ludington Education Association (LEA).

 

Early on, and through the summer months, he maintained a defensible position of claiming that the district could not afford a raise envisioned as fair by the LEA, putting out numbers that backed the contention that the LASD would dangerously tap into their fund balance too deeply to accommodate raises in salaries by about 3%, effectively keeping apace with inflation.

While the school board would generally support and find him effective in an October evaluation-- at the same time seeing LEA members paraded in front of them at meetings convinced that Corlett and his hired negotiator were acting in bad faith-- the trapdoor would trigger just before the November meeting with an auditor report showing that the district had $2.2 million more in their coffers than they admitted during the bargaining process.  

The meeting that followed had around a hundred people, many not in the LEA, circling around the spacious Peterson Auditorium with a common critical message regarding Corlett's conduct and inability to continue at his position.  The inflexibility that had been a trademark of Corlett's career at the LASD finally snapped back in his direction.  Corlett would offer his resignation to the board in early December in a week that saw the financial director resign first.  The trustees accepted it at a special meeting and had enough warning aforehand to have offered an interim superintendent, Mary Marshall, to come in the day after Corlett's resignation became effective on December 7th.

A day that will live in infamy?  Perhaps, I have not seen evidence to the effect that Dr. Corlett was guilty of unethically acting in very bad faith by hiding the $2.2 million in order to keep a healthy fund balance or shortchange staff.  And yet the perception of wrongdoing cannot be easily shaken away and some of his past actions indicate that he had some character flaws and weaknesses that just finally caught up with him.

When Dr. Kyle Corlett was introduced to the local public and hired at the regular November 2021 board meeting where he was the last man standing, he showed off a disarming sense of humor arising to the point of self-deprecation at times, with a lovely wife and two charming kids representing both genders.  At first impression, he seemed much like the outgoing superintendent, Jason Kennedy, but a lot thinner and more likely to take root once hired.  

The biggest controversy of the time was the continued masking of children at LASD while other county districts had moved on, and initially Corlett seemed to be amenable to unmasking but was aware of the board's majority who would be unmoved for a few more months.  In his personal capacity, he would advocate for opting out of Ludington having marijuana dispensaries at a city council meeting, showing a concern for the children and the community in his comment.  He regularly acknowledged a staff member at board meetings with Soaring Oriole awards.

Over the next few years, he timely fulfilled FOIA requests within reason and was approachable.  There seemed to be few, if any, conflicts with the school board, and with almost any issue he had the ability to smooth out the rough edges with dry humor.  But after finishing out the first school year, a year that started awfully without him there due to that mask policy and the Airsoft Kid debacle, warning signs began showing. 

The due process lacking in that debacle was compounded and was perhaps the greatest weakness of Kyle Corlett over the next few years.  One has to believe that this weakness manifested itself in the negotiations he had with LEA this year that would eventually lead to his downfall, some of that being procedural.  What follows is a recap of five of his major problems with due process over the years.

An early 2022 incident showed that Corlett had some investment in due process, but by late 2022, Corlett would introduce at the last minute a proposal seeking to use the school forest surrounding the Ludington Elementary School as a venue for the Ludington's planned deer cull, a proposal that would be provisionally approved if the city would provide liability insurance.  The board would not receive information regarding the legality of or safety precautions for having the cull on elementary school property.  That cull would eventually be called off for the year following an injunction filed against the school and city.

In late 2023, he (and the LPD) would ignore giving any sort of due process to the mother of a football player who had the audacity to raise her voice at another football mom who happened to be an employee of the local MDOC named Megan Myers, who for some reason gets special protection by local law enforcement, even when she gets credibly accused of sexual harassment and sends an innocent man to prison.  The mother of several children would be banned from attending her son's practices and games for doing nothing out of the ordinary, under the direction of Corlett.

In early 2024, he would influence the dismissal of teacher and baseball coach Evan Kroese.  In this case a former adult student sought out this former unmarried teacher at his home, they talked, mutually recognized that there was an attraction between them unhindered by any rules and mores that formerly applied to them and consented to take it to another level.  This was not a cause for dismissal when all of the evidence came out, as we observed here.

In late 2024 he would lead the prosecution for the expulsion of a student who took part in an altercation between LASD and MCC students out at the college.  Mercilessly railing against the student staying in school, Corlett never would explicitly indicate what school policy or state law was violated by Brad that led to his expulsion.  He would just misrepresent those policies once again and direct the board to expel the straight-A student with no prior disciplinary record.

This year he would once again ignore due process, this time with a substitute teacher who had in the distant past been charged with what appeared to be a baseless crime that had been dismissed by a distant court.  This was the basis for Corlett banning him from subbing in the district, and a potentially actionable cause for the sub to sue the district under employment law.

While some of this was happening in the background, Corlett would see the link between administration and staff deteriorate.  We exposed staff assessments of policy and administrators in a series of articles in 2024, staff assessments showing a lot of animosity towards the superintendent even at that stage. 

A frustrated mother of a special needs child lent her voice against Corlett's philosophy and attitude as it affected her child since that time.  This summer showed that the schism was only getting worse, with the LEA filing charges with MERC against administrators.   Meetings became monthly airings of grievances by dozens against Corlett and a mostly uncaring board starting in August.

Dr. Kyle Corlett was a complex individual who had a unique sense of humor; my best recollection of him was after I had argued for months that the artificial turf to be placed at Oriole Field was dangerous and toxic. While the field was being installed, he saw the irony in the district spending a lot of money to get rid of hazardous chemicals in the school's labs, at about the same time they were spending a lot more money introducing tons of new biohazards at the football fields.

That humor could not defray the collective bargaining missteps the former superintendent made over the course of the year, ending with an audit that gave his humor a sinister spin by indicating that he may have tried to cook the books at staff expense, enough for his stated goal of reaching a desired surplus.  The final joke turned out to be his credibility, and one hopes that the appearance of impropriety he leaves behind was more proper than it looks.