‘It would be insane.’ SC school board spars over one member’s police report on the other
A confrontation between two Midlands school board members has led to one elected official filing a police report on the other, and another round of fireworks at a local school board meeting.
Lexington-Richland 5 board member Catherine Huddle filed a complaint with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department after an exchange at an Oct. 28 board meeting with fellow board member Mike Satterfield. The incident report was attached to the meeting minutes of the most recent board meeting, held Nov. 18.
In a written statement included in the minutes alongside the report, Huddle writes that Satterfield confronted her during a break at the October meeting over an election mailer that was sent out ahead of the Nov. 5 election endorsing Huddle’s re-election by the Defeating Communism PAC. The mailer was critical of Chapin High School English teacher Mary Wood’s decision to teach a book about a Black man’s perspective of racism in American society. Wood is Satterfield’s daughter.
“He was less than a foot from my face,” Huddle wrote. “He was yelling in my face ‘you did this! This is your fault! This is on you!’” as Satterfield held up a cell phone with an image of the election mailer.
“I had no idea what it was and told him so,” Huddle said. “He kept yelling ‘you did this!’ and ‘this is on you!’ I felt extremely intimidated and threatened even though he didn’t touch me. I have never been yelled at with such loudness and proximity in my life. I was so frightened that I burst into tears.”
Another board member “came in and got Satterfield to leave” and Huddle “went into the bathroom to calm down.” She said she heard Satterfield continuing to yell from the other room, and when she returned to the meeting area he was gone and did not return for the rest of the meeting.
“Based on this incident and his failure to apologize, I believe Mike Satterfield should not be on our board,” a hand-written addendum to the typed statement says.
The report says Huddle contacted the sheriff’s department after the meeting to report a “civil disturbance.”
At Monday’s school board meeting, Satterfield said the report and Huddle’s preamble are “not official.”
“It’s called a citizen’s complaint,” he said. “Anybody can call up and make a complaint. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean there’s an investigation. They never talked to me. It’s one-sided.”
Satterfield, a former principal at Chapin High School, summed it up as “cutting and pasting stuff from Facebook, which I’ve had to deal with that with adolescents.”
Satterfield declined to address Huddle’s allegations when contacted by The State earlier Monday, but after an initial version of this story posted online, his wife Kathryn Clark Satterfield replied in the comments on The State’s Facebook page, saying her husband had not sought out Huddle but their paths happened to cross in the hallway.
“He did raise his voice, but did not yell or scream at her as she states,” Kathryn Satterfield said. “He was obviously quite upset as any parent would be.”
It was the first time Satterfield himself had seen the flier, and he left the meeting to go see his daughter and grandchildren and ensure they were safe, his wife wrote.
“Ms. Huddle wanted the deputies present to press charges or file a report,” Ms. Satterfield claims, “but she was told my husband had done nothing wrong.”
Huddle also writes in the minutes that board vice chair Kevin Scully “was present when Mr. Satterfield verbally attacked me and did nothing to stop the attack. ... This individual clearly cannot be trusted to conduct himself in a manner consistent with being an officer of a school board.” Scully had been elected vice chair at the Nov. 18 meeting of the newly-elected school board.
Huddle also attached several screenshots of Facebook comments Scully made before his 2022 election to the board calling former board member Ken Loveless “Crooked Ken” and blaming issues in the district on “an incompetent, micromanaging board majority and an ineffective and weak superintendent.” Those comments are cited in an ongoing defamation lawsuit against Scully brought by Loveless.
On Monday, Scully cited that lawsuit in moving to pull Huddle’s additions from the minutes.
“The district could be placing itself in legal jeopardy if publishes it,” Scully said. “It would be insane for us to do that.”
But Huddle said state law allows a board member to have outside items placed in the minutes. “It’s a motion to violate the law, in my opinion,” she said of Scully’s motion. “It would violate my freedom of speech, and I would consider anyone who votes for it to be acting outside their official duties as trustees.”
Huddle added that Satterfield and Scully should recuse themselves from a vote on an item addressing their own conduct.
But both men said a statement of Huddle’s opinion about her colleagues was not relevant to any item before the board Monday. “It’s not board business,” Satterfield said.
The board voted 3-2 to remove the items, with Scott Herring joining Satterfield and Scully in voting to take Huddle’s additions out, and Jason Baynham voting with Huddle to keep them. Board member Elizabeth Barnhardt was absent Monday, and board chair Kimberly Snipes abstained.
This story was originally published December 9, 2024 at 11:49 AM.
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