Midlands superintendent lawsuit will actually see $125K boost to school district
A lawsuit between a Midlands school district and its former superintendent has been resolved, and the result might not only satisfy both parties but benefit a lot of local students to boot.
The suit pitting the Lexington-Richland 5 school board against former Superintendent Stephen Hefner is on the cusp of being settled after board members voted to authorize a negotiated release on Monday.
That settlement would be a windfall for the District Five Foundation, the school district’s non-profit service arm. As part of the settlement, the two sides agree that a sum of $125,000, paid out of the S.C. school boards insurance trust, will be put into the foundation.
The settlement money will be split evenly between “snack packs” – take-home foodstuffs for low-income children in the Chapin-Irmo school district on free or reduced lunch – and research grants for students at the district’s Center for Advanced Technical Studies.
“That’s a win for the district and the foundation, especially students they help through the snack pack program,” said School Board Chair Kimberly Snipes. “So if anything I was excited that that’s what they would do with the settlement. That’s a resolution.”
The agreement wraps up a four-plus-year legal struggle between the Chapin-Irmo school district and its former superintendent. Federal court filings from October indicated the two sides had reached a resolution to a lawsuit Hefner brought against the district in response to a suit initially filed by the Lexington-Richland 5 school board. The last hurdle was whether the two sides could agree on the language of a joint statement announcing the agreed resolution.
“The parties agree that this is a reasonable means to conclude this litigation and believe that this agreement is in the best interests of the children and families served by School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties,” the statement reads. “The parties are likewise hopeful that this resolution will turn an unfortunate set of circumstances into a positive result for the children and families served by the District.”
Snipes notes that the dispute dates long before she or most of the current board was elected, and said she was unfamiliar with the issue between Hefner and the board before she took office at the end of 2022. In the years since the lawsuit was initiated, the makeup of the Lexington-Richland 5 school board has almost entirely turned over in two intervening elections.
“I didn’t have any personal feelings about it, but it’s stressful because in the public you probably have confusion if this is about the current or former board,” she said. “I hear people saying ‘what are y’all doing?,’ and I’ve had to explain this has been ongoing and lawsuits take time. I’m glad it’s over because there are so many things going on in the district, it’s nice to have the focus on present projects and activities instead of pending litigation.”
Hefner did not respond to calls from The State seeking comment on the resolution before this story was published.
The dispute dates back to a letter Hefner and other former Lexington-Richland 5 officials wrote back in 2021 challenging how the district had hired a new superintendent. The group sent the letter to the district’s accrediting agency after the district contracted with then-Interim Superintendent Akil Ross’s education consulting firm to provide the district with “superintendent services” rather than the district hiring Akil Ross directly for the role.
The letter did not lead to any action against the school district, and Ross was ultimately hired on as superintendent full-time. But the district school board later voted to sue Hefner over the letter, arguing it constituted “malicious interference” in the management of the school district that was “politically motivated.”
The school board later voted to drop the lawsuit, after spending almost $9,000 on the case, but Hefner hit back with his own suit saying the district violated his First Amendment rights with their initial suit.
Monday’s vote draws a curtain on the bad blood between the school district and Hefner, who previously served as the district’s superintendent from 2011 to 2018.
Under the agreement, the trust will also cover the costs associated with the mediation between Hefner and the school district, although the two sides agreed to cover their own attorney’s fees and costs. The settlement will lead to the dismissal of Hefner’s federal suit against the district, as well as individual actions against board member Catherine Huddle and former board members Jan Hammond and Ken Loveless, the agreement says.
“The Parties expressly deny liability for all claims asserted against them” in the dueling lawsuits, the statement reads.
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