Morehouse School Board names new super, tables consolidation
The Morehouse Parish School Board named Hazel Sellers its new superintendent at its Tuesday night meeting and tabled all discussion of school consolidation until next month.
The meeting drew to an abrupt halt after board members Louis Melton and Rose Thompson started shouting personal insults at each other during a discussion about one of the school buildings. Melton asked Thompson if the inmates she saw working on the shuttered Southside Elementary a few years ago were in prison when she was. Thompson said what she did was back in ’82, called him the town drunk and said she didn’t walk around the street naked. Melton called Thompson a prostitute. “You wanted it, but I wouldn’t give it to you,” Thompson said before Melton left the room.
Board President Rick Hixon recessed the meeting until further notice. The meeting also was recessed earlier in the evening after an audience member fainted.
New Superintendent
Sellers was voted in 4-3. She said her career has been in Morehouse, and she plans to dedicate her efforts to bringing up test scores and help the students, teachers and the community.
While she addressed the board, a woman heckled Sellers, and Hixon had the disruptive audience member removed from the meeting.
Sellers has acted as interim head of the district since September, when the board moved then-superintendent, George Noflin, to an advisory role. Noflin will serve until his contract expires June 30.
Consolidation talks
Morehouse Parish Schools are set to lose $1.2 million from Minimum Foundation Program funds because of a loss of students. A number of cost-cutting measures are being considered, primarily some variation of school closures or consolidations. Ersula Norwood, business manager from the district, said previously that the district lost 170 students between the Feb. 1, 2015 and Oct. 1 student counts that determine the MFP for each district. An additional 20 students left the district between Oct. 1 and Feb. 1 of this year. Norwood said the losses were seen district-wide, including at Delta Magnet School.
Read:Morehouse schools losing $1.2 million
Leland “Chip” Rawls II, as head of the finance committee, opted to delay taking up a proposal to move sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from Delta Magnet School to Morehouse Junior High School. The meeting room was full to capacity, and many people were standing in the hall, wanting to address the issue.
Board member Chastity Kennedy and Melton argued against tabling the motion because so many people were there to speak against a consolidation that would affect Delta.
Hixon said the board didn’t have time to hear all the people who asked to speak on the agenda item, a move Kennedy said denied people’s rights. Board attorney Steve Katz said the number of people allowed to speak during discussion of an agenda item is at the discretion of the board president.
The move to table the Delta consolidation passed 4-2. Kennedy and Melton voted against, and Thomspon left for the middle portion of the meeting.
Thompson returned after Kennedy, speaking on an agenda item to reinforce the district’s antibullying policy, said Thompson has made threats to her welfare and the majority of the board and Katz had perjured themselves to protect Thompson.
Kennedy at first made a proposal to close Pine Grove and Cherry Ridge elementary and reopen the long shuttered Southside Elementary. She said she didn’t have all the information she requested from Norwood. Norwood explained that all the people she needed to get information from have not been available, and Kennedy said she’s sure it’s because there is a plan to thwart or sabotage her suggestions.
It was an allegation that Kennedy repeated throughout her presentation. She ultimately withdrew her motion to consolidate, citing lack of enough information at this time.
Read:McFarland: I have ALL rights and authority
The meeting was recessed shortly after Thompson described the amount of repairs Southside would need to be reopened and discussed work inmates did on the closed facility a few years ago. Since then, she said, vandals have further damaged the building.
Hixon said the most recent repairs list the district had on the school was from 2014, before the school was further torn apart.
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