NEWS

3 MCSB members say they're being excluded

Bonnie Bolden
bbolden@thenewsstar.com

Dictatorial, exclusionary and hostile were how three Monroe City School board members described recent board leadership at a press conference Monday afternoon at the Old Central Bank building in downtown Monroe. Bill Willson, Jennifer Haneline and Vickie Dayton were joined by previous board president Clarence Sharp and Carrick Inabnett, vice president of economic development for CenturyLink, to discuss current leadership and recent board actions.

Carrick Inabnett, Vice President of Economic Development at Century Link, speaks during a press conference as Monroe City school board member Vickie Dayton, left, listens on Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. Dayton was one of three school board members who held a press conference to talk about their perspectives on recent school board actions.

On Thursday, the board voted 4-3 to hire the Educational Planning Group as both the independent court monitor and the medical magnet program experts required by the consent decree.

On Friday, Inabnett said he'd contacted the Department of Justice about the process used to hire the Educational Planning Group after hearing concerns in the community about the LLC's independence and the consultants' qualifications. He said he asked the DOJ to carefully vet the group that will be hired.

Inabnett on Monday said further information revealed that the DOJ met with the Educational Planning Group on Jan. 5 before the meeting Thursday night.

The board members said they had not been informed of the meeting and said some things regarding the consent decree and the previous two meetings have been misrepresented. They also had not been informed of how much the proposed contract would pay the Educational Planning Group. The three said they have been excluded from consent decree discussions in general and were discouraged from attending hearings held at the federal courthouse in Monroe in September.

Additionally, they said that the board spend approximately $50,000 on a consultant during that process but his recommendations were summarily dismissed. After the decree was approved, Dayton said the consultant said there were "unnecessary" items in the decree that put undue burden on the board.

ULM will not partner on MCSB program

Dayton used the press conference to ask William McElroy, owner of the Educational Planning Group and M3A Architecture, to decline any contract offered by the board. She said that move would allow the board to enter a cooperative endeavor with the University of Louisiana at Monroe, which had public support.

Educational Planning Group was hired at the Dec. 15 board meeting with a 4-2 vote. McFarland later said the board would revote after concerns about fairness were expressed.

M3A Architecture is developing the new Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, the Barkdull Faulk Elementary project and the Wossman High School field house. That information was not stated to the entire board at the Dec. 15 meeting.

At the meeting Thursday, Dwayne Ludley said McElroy had given a "generous campaign contribution" to McFarland during his 2014 school board campaign. Later, McFarland said he didn't know what Ludley was talking about because his son, Quinton, handled all the donations and campaign finance reporting for him. He pulled up the information at ethics.la.gov on his phone and found documentation that McElroy had donated $250 to his campaign.

MCSB votes to hire contested consultants

The three board members said at no point did McFarland disclose the donation when hiring M3A Architecture in the past and generally agreed that while the donation amount shouldn't preclude McFarland from voting on issues regarding McElroy's businesses, disclosure would negate the appearance of impropriety.

Willson said the group was hired over the three board's protests Thursday though the group lacks experience and Workman's Compensation coverage.

"It's very clear to me that under the guise of equity, under this pretend idea that white people cannot be for equity, we have people that are colluding and who are hiring the least qualified organization," Haneline said. "We have the opportunity to not only do what the consent decree says but to truly take our community forward several generation, several decades from where we're at now."

Inabnett said he reiterated the need for a proper vetting process to the DOJ and asked them to look at all three options presented to the board last week.

Willson pointed to "racial slander" made by Shelling after the Dec. 15 meeting. He said she called himself and Superintendent Brent Vidrine "blond-haired, blue-eyed devils." He recalled to a time when McFarland and Shelling asked for the resignation of previous board member Vickie Krutzer after a man in the background of a phone call at her house used a racial epithet. He said Shelling's behavior with no call for her resignation is hypocritical,

"We want nothing but racial harmony," Willson said.

Jennifer Haneline speaks as her fellow school board member Bill Willson and former school board president Clarence Sharp listen during a press conference Monday.

Haneline said Shelling has tried to keep her from asking questions during a meeting and behaved in a way that mocked some board members.

Of the Dec. 15 meeting, Haneline said the vote was arranged in such a way that voting against it could be perceived as voting against desegregation, which was never her intent. She left early, she said, in response to the power of her vote being stripped.

"It angers me because I feel like someone is putting personal profit and politics and personal gain on the back of our children, our community, the city of Monroe, our parish," Haneline said. "And this is what causes Louisiana to continually to be at the bottom of the rung time and time and time again. We have to stop doing this for ourselves and look at the bigger picture in the community."

At both meetings, she said, the actions of the four members who vote together show "clear collusion." She noted that none of those four asked any questions from any of the groups proposed for the jobs. The vote, she said, was about qualifications, not race. The Educational Planning Group was entirely staffed by African-Americans, as was New Orleans-based WYReveolution. The contingent from ULM included African-American leadership.

"This is about people who asked questions and got informed," Haneline said.

Willson said McFarland and Shelling have been "dictatorial" and "exclusionary of the three, alleging that Shelling and Johnson have communicated with other board members Daryll Berry and Brandon Johnson in advance of meetings and keeping information from certain members. Willson said that he, Haneline and Dayton have not been able to get items placed on the agenda, which is determined by McFarland.

One such item is the renewal of Vidrine's contract, which Willson said is a process that started six months ago. Sharp said he thinks not re-hiring Vidrien would be a "grave mistake" and pointed to the many successes of the district, including raising its ranking by a letter grade, under Vidrine's management.

Willson also said McFarland's committee appointments have not been consistent with the board members' qualifications.

Sharp said said the actions of current board leadership — such as saying other board members shouldn't talk to the media — are meant keep everyone from having a voice.

"I really feel sorry for this board as it's happening now because we're going back — way back to the '50s and '60s," Sharp said. "You know — one or two people trying to control the board and everything. That's not the way it's supposed to be."