Board talks employee performance
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on November 24, 2017 5:50 AM
A discussion between members of the Wayne County Board of Education became heated Monday afternoon, centering on what action the board is entitled to take when dissatisfied with the performance of a school system employee.
The conversation revolved around the board's approval process for contracts. Board policy states that the WCPS finance officer, currently Michael Hayes, should present all bids for a given contract to the board at the board's monthly meeting. In recent months, several such contracts have returned having been presented with only one bid, which several board members found unacceptable. One such contract -- for the purchase of a washer and dryer for the Spring Creek High School athletic department -- was denied and sent back for bids at the board's Nov. 6 meeting.
To deal with this, the board's policy committee drafted an update to the policy defining the WCPS finance officer's responsibilities. Presented to the board on Monday, the updated policy included a line which threatened punishment should Hayes not bring more bids to the table.
"Failure to provide all bids to the Board of Education for consideration will result in disciplinary action of the department director and/or finance officer," the policy read.
Board member Chris West quickly pointed out that the board does not have the authority to directly discipline any members of superintendent Michael Dunsmore's cabinet, and that any suggestion of doing so was "harsh" and "unprofessional."
"We can certainly make our displeasure known to [Dunsmore], but we have no control over what he does after that," West said.
Board members Patricia Burden and Jennifer Strickland, who are both members of the policy committee, said they were not sure how the line was included, as it had simply been a point of discussion near the end of the meeting and never came up for a committee vote.
"This never came up for a vote, and I was shocked to see it in there," Burden said.
Tensions boiled over briefly when the discussion turned to the performance of past finance officers. Several board members agreed that Hayes was not the first finance officer to not secure enough bids. This prompted board member Raymond Smith Jr. to speak up.
"I'm constantly reminded by my colleagues that I'm the new guy on the board, and I'm well aware of that," he said. "What I'm hearing is that this has been a problem for all this time, and none of you have done anything about it."
At that, board chairman Arnold Flowers interrupted Smith, claiming that the board had been working for years to fix the problem. Meanwhile, Smith began repeating the phrase "may I finish talking" as Flowers continued to speak, until Flowers had finished.
"The fact that we are having this discussion means that whatever we have been doing has not worked, and we need to do something," Smith said. "What that is, I guess is what this discussion is about, but we have to do something."
After the discussion ended, the board agreed to strike the line about disciplinary action from the policy. Board member Len Henderson, the third member of the policy committee, was the only member to voice opposition to removing the line.