Knox response

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From: Dr. John A. Knox, Clarke County Board of Education, District 8 Re: April 9, 2019 meeting with Dr. Demond A. Means and his AdvancED complaint against me Date: May 17, 2019; revised September 12, 2019 I appreciate the opportunity to present my account of my meeting with Dr. Demond A. Means at his office at the H.T. Edwards complex on Tuesday, April 9, 2019, between approximately 5:18 pm and 5:56 pm.

This account is based on a detailed written narrative I created approximately eight hours after our meeting, and is informed by Dr. Means’s allegations in his complaint to AdvancED, as well as my past meetings with Dr. Means, and some subsequent Board-Superintendent-related developments in the past five weeks.

Summary of this document: My intent in meeting with Dr. Means on April 9, 2019 was to express praise for recent recommendations, approved by the Board, for principal changes, and also to express concern over the potential negative impacts of a potential additional change in the context of the many principal changes that had already occurred during the 2018-19 school year. Recruitment and retention of staff is a legitimate concern of a Board of Education, as per the CCSD Strategic Plan 2018-2020 Priority #5 Professional Capacity, Goal Statement 3 (Recruit, Hire & Retain). I perceived my intent to be consistent with Balanced Governance principles and Board policy. While Dr. Means perceived my actions to be “unprofessional and threatening,” that was neither my intent nor, in my recollection, consistent with anything I said or did. I elaborate on how my words and actions were consistent with Board policy and inconsistent with Dr. Means’s portrayal of them in his letter to AdvancED. My primary intent in having the April 9, 2019 meeting with Dr. Means was to help him in his job—not to undermine, not to threaten, and not to intimidate.

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To place the April 9, 2019 meeting in context, I summarize below my four one-on-one meetings with Dr. Means from September 2017 to the present.

My first one-on-one meeting with Dr. Means after initial meet-and-greets was on September 11, 2017. We met at the Georgia Center just prior to a public-radio interview I was doing regarding an approaching hurricane. The concern I wished to raise at this meeting was that a communication from the Superintendent to the Board had called out, although not by name, one Board member (not me) in a way that I felt was a little harsh. I wanted to explore with Dr. Means ways that Board members could have a range of interpretations of their position but still not be targeted in communications to the entire Board. My intent was sincere and positive, in the spirit of teamwork and collegiality.

However, the conversation did not go well. Dr. Means stated that most or all of the Board members were “below the line,” referencing a diagram that had been given to us in a previous communication. I had brought a copy of this diagram and asked for clarification on where that line exists with regard to meetings that Board members could attend, or groups that are considered stakeholders. Dr. Means stated at this meeting that my attendance at a planning meeting for construction at Hilsman Middle School was “below the line” (although subsequently in 2019 he praised both Board member Greg Davis and myself for attending that meeting). I was also informed that voters are not stakeholders. Dr. Means then interpreted my confusion and frustration as anger, and he repeatedly accused me of being “angry.” He escalated the tension rapidly; our conversation turned into a confrontation on Dr. Means’s part forcing me to explain that I was not, in fact, angry. I was simply trying to learn as a new Board member (I joined the Board in January 2017) what the boundaries were within “balanced governance,” the governance approach that Dr. Means encouraged the Board to adopt (and which we incorporated into our Board policies). The meeting ended poorly, as I headed to the WUGA studios in the Georgia Center for my scheduled interview, with Dr. Means apparently remaining convinced that I was angry with him.

After this encounter, I shied away from one-on-one meetings with Dr. Means for many months, preferring to communicate via e-mail or, on occasion, phone calls to avoid opportunities for conversations to be escalated into confrontations.

At a later date, in mid-2018, Dr. Means communicated his displeasure with me in front of other Board members. In response, I contacted him and we met at a local bar/music venue on September 4, 2018. I expected to be reproved, especially since in the interim the Board President had made various negative statements to me about my service on the Board.

However, during this meeting Dr. Means had nothing but positive things to say about my service on the Board. I repeatedly asked leading questions that opened the door for him to criticize my performance. But Dr. Means waved off any and all opportunities for criticism, even about my lack of face-to-face meetings with him which he had recently criticized me for! I left this meeting perplexed, but relieved that the Superintendent did not seem to view me as a destabilizing member of our Board.

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After this positive meeting, I followed up on the Superintendent’s request to the Board for individual Board members to meet more frequently with him, which he stated in his January 11, 2019 Communication to the Board.

We met twice in Dr. Means’s office in early 2019, and both meetings went well. I adopted the approach of a gentle coach, suggesting ways in which he could use his Superintendent’s Report at regular meetings more effectively, echoing several of HYA consultant Brad Draeger’s recommendations. My intent was to help Dr. Means. Importantly, Dr. Means received this gentle coaching advice well, and after the first meeting said, “Let’s do this again!”

After two positive one-on-one meetings, I was encouraged that my relationship with Dr. Means had recovered from our September 11, 2017 meeting. In the meantime, the Board had approved the Superintendent’s recommended changes in principals at nearly one-third of all the schools in the district, which raised some concerns in the public. Moreover, Dr. Means had called out yet another principal, at a local high school, for having “failed miserably” in several aspects of his job. This pointed criticism of the principal was conveyed to all Board members in a board communication on March 22, 2019. It was surprising because, prior to this time, I do not recall any seriously negative comments about that principal being conveyed to the Board.

It seemed as if, all of a sudden, this principal was a miserable failure in the Superintendent’s eyes.

I was concerned that one more principal change, particularly at a high school, and particularly with a principal whose performance had been widely praised by faculty, parents, and students alike, would be a “bridge too far” for Dr. Means in this school year. This concern was motivated by our CCSD Strategic Plan 2018-2020 Priority #5 Professional Capacity, Goal Statement 3 (Recruit, Hire & Retain), which includes the goal of reducing resignations and other departures by 5% annually (see https://www.clarke.k12.ga.us/domain/2135, pages 19 and 20). Furthermore, this principal is the fourth principal in less than four years at this high school, which has endured the following: a very public situation of sexual assault in early 2016, leading to the removal of a principal; then the removed principal was replaced by a highly regarded interim principal who was not hired to be the permanent principal; the next, third, principal declined to move to Clarke County and then departed after just two years, and now a fourth principal (who was also the interim principal) who is the principal that the Superintendent has deemed a failure. That is a lot of leadership “churn” at one high school in just three years. I was afraid that the amount of churn, combined with the starkly differing assessments of his performance by the Superintendent vs. the high-school community, could be highly problematic for the Superintendent.

I decided that before any decisions were made by the Superintendent, and before the principal decided to leave, that I should expend a little of the capital I had built up over the previous pleasant meetings with Dr. Means to broach this difficult subject.

My fourth one-on-one meeting with Dr. Means from September 2017 to the present, and the third in 2019, took place on April 9, 2019 and is described from Dr. Means’s perspective in the

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AdvancED complaint. Below I describe that April 9, 2019 meeting from my perspective: The meeting was scheduled for 5 pm on April 9. However, my workload at the University of Georgia was so intense on that day (and throughout the spring semester) that I was running late. I e-mailed Dr. Means at 4:55 pm, telling him that an advising meeting of mine had run over and that I would arrive at his office no later than 5:15 pm, noting ironically that my day job was interfering with my Board work. Dr. Means responded by e-mail at 5:00 pm, saying, “No problem, see you then.”

I had trouble finding an open door at the H.T. Edwards facility, but Dr. Means let me in and we sat down in his office at approximately 5:18 pm.

I began the meeting with praise for Dr. Means. I praised him for what I termed his "gutsy" decisions regarding the five principal changes that the Board had recently approved. (Even though one of the decisions involved replacing a principal I have come to know and respect, the Superintendent’s reasoning was compelling and I supported that decision.) I did caution gently that there was some negative feedback from the public about the number of moves of principals to central office staff, but I gave what I thought was a constructive suggestion about how to quell concerns... if he wished to engage the public. I was careful not to be telling him what to do.

Shortly thereafter, I broached the awkward subject of the high-school principal. I contrasted the Superintendent’s "failed miserably" description of the principal that was sent to the Board on March 22, 2019 with the response the Superintendent himself gave me right after our Board meeting on April 4, 2019 when I asked the Superintendent a general question about the situation at the high school. The Superintendent said to me on April 4 that "he'll be fine" with reference to the principal, and indicated that he had no big concerns about the principal. I said to Dr. Means that I couldn't reconcile these two statements, hence the “Mixed Messages” title of the handout that I brought with me to guide me in my discussion. I explained that my read of the situation, based on a very short encounter with the principal in question, was that we might lose this principal.

At around the same point in the conversation, I asked what had happened to the other CCSD employees who had been placed on plans of improvement. He replied that both such employees had later left the district. This reinforced my concern that this principal was being placed on a fast track to departure from our district.

In this context, I requested data to support the “failed miserably” assessment and the immediate plan of improvement, and stated my desire to know what this plan of improvement would entail. I encouraged communication between the Superintendent and the principal to clear up any misunderstandings that might have occurred regarding the principal’s status and standing vis a vis the Superintendent. My words to him were

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consistently softer in tone than the handout than I provided, and which was provided by Dr. Means to AdvancED as part of his April 10, 2019 message to AdvancED. Dr. Means interpreted these words as a confrontation, which was not my intent. I was concerned for him. I indicated that it had been my observation, not only in my dealings with him but also Dr. Means’s dealings with others, that sometimes what he said or inferred did not mesh with what others heard or said.

At this point Dr. Means reverted to language that suggested that Board members were interfering with his job. Since my intent was to help, not to interfere, and it was now around 5:30 pm on a long day after 4+ weeks of 12-16 hour work days, I sighed, put the cap on my pen and set my pen down on the table under the full control of my fingers, and...

At that moment the Superintendent accused me of "slamming your pen down in anger" and that "I've never done anything like that in my career with an employee" and "What am I supposed to make of this as an employee" and "I'm uncomfortable with this" and so on, repeatedly. Dr. Means made these accusations at least 5 or 6 times during the next 25 minutes, circling back to the matter of the slammed-down pen, which was not, in fact, slammed down. Around this point Dr. Means asked if I was angry. I answered in the affirmative this time, in contrast to September 11, 2017, because the circumstances of repeated false accusations that diverted attention from important matters had become more than a frustration for me as a Board member.

Dr. Means indicated to me repeatedly over the next several minutes how uncomfortable he was, and how confrontational I was being. He alluded to our September 11, 2017 meeting, which indicated to me that despite my best intentions and hopes, our relationship had not progressed beyond his initial accusations against me.

Dr. Means then accused me of not answering a question; when I asked him to repeat the question because I wasn’t sure what he was referring to, he refused. When I asked if he wished to revisit whatever the question was at a later time, he said that he hadn't decided yet.

And then, at approximately 5:55 pm, Dr. Means stood up, took a step back from the table where we were sitting, crossed his arms in front of himself, and made a gesture indicating that I was to leave his office. I was, in essence, being kicked out of the Superintendent's office.

As I turned to go, he apparently decided to modify our parting, and then strode toward me and stuck out his hand. I had already gotten the cue from his previous body language that he was not going to shake my hand, so I was taken aback. I looked at him, looked at his hand, and then shook it.

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He made some perfunctory closing remark, and I said, "Have a nice trip," referring to an unexplained trip the Superintendent was taking to Los Angeles (later explained variously in a Board communication and to an individual Board member as being an interview for a position as a Broad Academy Fellow, or alternatively as a Broad Academy Associate Resident).

And that was the end of our April 9, 2019 meeting. I departed his office at approximately 5:56 pm, and left through a side door into the parking lot. I did not see anyone else present.

Ten days later, in an April 19, 2019 Board communication, Dr. Means listed for the first time a three-week chronology of his schedule that does not entirely comport with what I recall from my April 9 meeting with him. In this chronology, which again was not sent to the Board until April 19, he lists: Meeting with a board member 5:00 p.m.

Meeting with the board president and vice President 5:30 p.m.

However, if Dr. Means had had a meeting with the Board President and Vice President scheduled for 5:30 pm, I think he would have told me in his 5:00 pm, April 9, 2019 e-mail response to me that we would have a short meeting, since he already presumably had a 5:30 pm meeting on his docket. Our previous one-on-one meetings were usually close to an hour in length. In addition, I did not see the Board President or Vice President present when I left his office at 5:56 pm. While it is possible that they did have a meeting, it seems unlikely that that meeting was scheduled at 5:30 pm. I think it is also possible that Dr. Means’s account in his letter to AdvancED is not completely accurate with regard to the timing, and that his meeting with the President and Vice President may not have happened within one minute of my departure from his office as indicated in his letter to AdvancED. I personally find the “backdating,” in which for no apparent reason Board members were told the Superintendent’s schedule for a previous week, to be quite odd.

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Now, turning to claims that Dr. Means has made regarding me and my conduct in his letter to AdvancED: •

“your behavior was in violation of board policy BH, BBD and CF”: These claims are too vague to be responded to adequately. These policies are relatively lengthy and more specificity is required to understand precisely which parts of BH, BBD, and CF are being said to have been violated. Below, I attempt to depict the ambiguity of following these policies as a Board member in this situation: For example, in Policy BH, under Domain I: Governance Structure, the following enumerated items exist: 5. Not undermine the authority of the local superintendent or intrude into responsibilities that properly belong to the local superintendent or school administration,including such functions as hiring, transferring or dismissing employees.

6. Use reasonable efforts to keep the local superintendent informed of concerns or specific recommendations that any member of the board may bring to the board.

While Dr. Means might claim that our conversation violated #5 in Domain I, I would contend that I was attempting to follow #6 in Domain I. I framed our entire conversation in terms of my concern that additional principal changes in this school year might stretch the public’s trust beyond the breaking point, especially if the change involved a principal who was highly regarded. Recruitment and retention of staff and in particular principals is a legitimate Board concern. I did not demand any particular action to be taken with regard to any employee.

Similarly, in Policy BH, under Domain VI: Personnel, the following enumerated items exist: 1. Consider the employment of personnel only after receiving and considering the recommendation of the local superintendent.

2. Support the employment of persons best qualified to serve as employees of the school system and insist on regular and impartial evaluations of school system staff.

While Dr. Means might claim that our conversation violated #1 in Domain VI in Policy BH, I would contend that I was attempting to follow #2 in Domain VI in Policy BH. The statement that Dr. Means provided the Board on March 22 regarding the “failed miserably” principal was so much of an outlier compared to other feedback from teachers, students, and the community that I requested data to support this evaluation of school system staff. The judgment of “failed miserably” and the additional language in the March 22 statement (see the “Mixed Messages” sheet for the complete text) did not sound evidence-based.

In Policy BBD, Part III., Board, Superintendent, and District Staff Relationships: 1.

Working with the Superintendent: It is vital to the overall productivity, morale, and smooth functioning of the District that the governance team—the Superintendent and

8 the Board—work together as a cohesive unit in the spirit of collaboration. The Superintendent and Board should view each other as key advisors.

I contend that in our meeting on April 9, 2019, I was attempting to fulfill #1 in Part III of Policy BBD by serving as a “key advisor.” I feared that a situation was developing that the Superintendent might not be aware of. He communicated to me that the situation with the principal was “fine” and that the principal took it well. I saw with my own eyes that the situation was otherwise. Would a “key advisor” withhold this information from a Superintendent? Given the choice between a festering situation potentially spinning out of control, versus having an awkward conversation with the Superintendent, I chose the latter, more personally difficult path. Because of this, I was reported to AdvancED. Dr. Means might claim that I violated #7 under Part III of Policy BBD: 7. Hiring and Terminating Employees: The authority and responsibility for the recommendation of hiring and terminating employees is the responsibility of the Superintendent.

Board members shall refer constituent feedback on personnel issues to the Superintendent…

However, I would contend that at no point did I make any recommendation for hiring or terminating any employees. Furthermore, our conversation did follow #7 under Part III of Policy BBD, by conveying “constituent feedback” regarding the principal in question, who was made a personnel issue when Dr. Means stated that he had “failed miserably” and was under a plan of improvement.

In Policy CF, the following unenumerated statements are found: The relationship between the Board and the Superintendent must be one of mutual respect, trust, goodwill and candor.

Individual Board members do not have the authority to require specific action by the Superintendent that has not been voted on by the full Board.

Except for issues involving the Superintendent as an employee, the Board will address personnel issues after consultation and upon recommendation by the Superintendent, and will issue all orders affecting employees through the Superintendent.

I contend that I was attempting to fulfill each of these statements in Policy CF in my conversation with Dr. Means on April 9, 2019. The goodwill, trust, and candor exhibited in our prior one-on-one meetings encouraged me to extend the candor to a potentially serious personnel situation. I did not at any time require specific action by the Superintendent. I consulted with the Superintendent about this situation.

In summary, it is impossible to know from Dr. Means’s letter to AdvancED which portions of Policies BH, BBD, and CF I am being accused of violating. However, I have demonstrated above that in each of these policies there is sufficient ambiguity that while from Dr. Means’s perspective there may have been violations, from my

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perspective I was simply doing my job as a Board of Education member, as per policy. In such an instance, it cannot be claimed logically that I was intentionally violating Board policies. At worst, this demonstrates the considerable ambiguity of existing CCSD policies and the difficulty that Board members have in navigating the “letter of the law” in confusing and even competing language stretching across multiple policies.

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“unprofessional and threatening behavior”: At no time did I engage in any verbal or physical actions that would have been construed by an impartial observer to have been unprofessional or threatening. I did not raise my voice. I did not use abusive or profane language. I did not make any accusations. I did try to convey the consequences of losing the high-school principal in question, but it was not intended to be in the context of “you cannot do this.” I intended it to be in the context of “here are some risks that I perceive,” additional information for the Superintendent to consider in the context of his decision-making process.

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“demeaned and mistreated professionally”: I praised the Superintendent for his decisions regarding several principals, but I felt duty-bound to indicate some possible consequences in the event of another principal’s loss. At no point was I intending to demean or mistreat the Superintendent.

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“threats issued in your document suggesting my employment is in peril…”: at no time did I suggest this. I did indicate that there could be a loss of confidence in the Superintendent among the public and the Board. That was simply my assessment given the situation. I did not say that his employment was in peril.

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“It is alarming… governance inconsistency”: Because of the escalating nature of our meeting, I was never asked for an explanation as to why I would raise flags about this particular principal and not others. As noted above, the reason I did not ask for additional details regarding the other principals was that each of the rationales for those changes made sense to me. In one very challenged and challenging school, a young principal in his first school was being replaced by one of the most successful and experienced principals in our district. That made sense to me. In other cases, principals who had not been highly regarded by the public but had been left in schools by previous superintendents were being replaced, and that made a lot of sense to me and was a “gutsy” move, as I noted approvingly. However, the “failed miserably” rhetoric with regard to the high-school principal simply did not match anything that I had heard from anyone else in the entire Athens-Clarke County community. And so I sought data confirming the situation. I do not understand why this is “alarming.” It is consistent from my perspective, because if the Superintendent’s rationale makes sense, then I do not see any reason to pursue the matter further and ask for data; that would seem to be micromanaging.

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“ensure that you do not leverage your political and/or governance authority to adversely impact my employment or my professional reputation”: I am unclear as to

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what this statement means. As I have been taught, I have no individual authority as one member of a nine-person Board of Education. I also have no political aspirations. My meetings with Dr. Means were intended to help him in his position as Superintendent.

When he complained that I was not talking to him enough, I specifically responded by setting up meetings with him. Now, I am in the position of being reported to AdvancED because I met with him. My situation closely resembles a “Catch-22.”

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“while you may have opinions about my communication style, it is the role of a board member to objectively evaluate the superintendent as a member of a governing body—not as an individual”: First of all, all I did was convey concerns that what the Superintendent intends for people to hear, and what they hear—or, conversely, what others say, and what he hears them say—are not always the same. This was not intended to be a formal evaluation. On a separate but related note, our Board’s Superintendent Evaluation Committee has been dysfunctional for several years. Year after year, comments made by certain Board members have been completely deleted from the final evaluation by the committee chair, and replaced with verbiage from the committee chair. It is a broken system that prevents constructive feedback from the Board to the Superintendent. So, even if it is out of bounds for an individual Board member to speak with a Superintendent about communications style—even though I did so in earlier one-on-one meetings with Dr. Means without his losing his temper— there is not, on this Board at this time, any other way to communicate with the Superintendent about such matters. In fact, our Superintendent Evaluation Committee is currently embroiled in a conflict over whether or not we obey our own Policy CEI and provide a mid-year assessment of the Superintendent that includes assessment of “the Superintendents [sic] relationships with the Board,staff, and the community.” In short, feedback from certain Board members to our Superintendent regarding his relationships with others is very difficult to get through to the Superintendent in any other setting than a one-on-one meeting with the Superintendent. The official evaluation channel has been effectively blocked.

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“You inappropriately used the April 9 meeting to evaluate me from your lone perspective”: I was attempting to help the Superintendent understand that his positive tone regarding the principal’s situation was not, as far as I could tell, perceived the same way by the principal. This was not a formal evaluation. I was attempting to head off potential trouble, to assist the Superintendent, but this was viewed as “inappropriate.”

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“The process of placing principals on plans of improvement is difficult, but necessary”: Although it was stated to the Board that the principal in question was already placed on a plan of improvement as of March 22, no additional information has been forthcoming regarding this plan of improvement—including whether or not the principal was, in fact, ever actually placed on a plan of improvement.

In summary, I reiterate that my primary intent in having the April 9, 2019 meeting with Dr. Means was to help him in his job—not to undermine, not to threaten, and not to intimidate. As

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a representative of a district where many students attend the high school served by the principal in question, I thought it was better for me to provide private feedback to the Superintendent than to do nothing. Again, as a Board member, I was motivated by the CCSD Strategic Plan 2018-2020 Priority #5 Professional Capacity, Goal Statement 3 (Recruit, Hire & Retain).

If the facts of this case, which I have tried to lay out as completely as possible, warrant sanction

by AdvancED, I am willing to undergo whatever punishment is decided to be warranted. I would have hoped that this situation could have been dealt with without recourse to AdvancED. I have tried my best to follow our “balanced governance” model in good faith and would have listened to and followed corrective advice from the Superintendent or from Board leadership prior to any communication to AdvancED. That was not the decision of the Superintendent and Board leadership, however, and the letter to AdvancED was drafted by Dr. Means and vetted by an outside consultant before submission the very next day.

I do want to note that my actions should not be construed as evidence of a larger “conspiracy” against the Superintendent. I did not discuss my meeting with other Board members ahead of time, did not meet with any other Board members about it ahead of time, and did not plan what to say to Dr. Means with any of them. This was my personal attempt to head off what I thought could be trouble for the Superintendent, rather than standing back and saying nothing while a situation with the potential for damaging blowback against the Superintendent could develop at a local high school, possibly without the Superintendent’s full realization of the potential trouble ahead.

Thank you for your time and attention to the particulars of this situation.

Sincerely,

Dr. John A. Knox Clarke County Board of Education, District 8