LR5 school board votes to move forward with former superintendent lawsuit
The Lexington-Richland 5 school board is moving forward with a lawsuit against a former superintendent who complained about how the district hired a new interim superintendent this year.
But the split vote at Monday’s board meeting showed some board members are reluctant to proceed with a lawsuit against Stephen Hefner, who was top administrator of the Chapin-Irmo area school district for seven years until 2018.
Board member Matt Hogan moved to drop the lawsuit Lexington-Richland 5 filed in a Lexington County court last month. But the board voted against dropping the lawsuit in a 4-3 vote, allowing it to advance.
In August, the board approved taking legal action against Hefner and other former school officials who had filed a complaint with the district’s accrediting agency challenging the school district’s contract with Akil Ross, who was named interim superintendent in June. That contract was entered into with HeartEd LLC, Ross’s education consulting firm, to provide “superintendent services,” instead of directly hiring Ross as an employee of the district.
“With that complaint, there were a lot of unknowns,” Hogan said. “What would happen to our accreditation? What would it cost the district? That motion was brought before we truly knew the facts. And the fact is there was no investigation, there was no legal cost to the district, there was no representation that we had to get.”
Cognia, the accrediting agency, has said it doesn’t plans to any action on the former superintendents’ complaint.
Board vice chairman Ken Loveless argued against dropping the lawsuit, saying the district could have been harmed if its accreditation had been put in jeopardy.
“If that situation had prevailed, that’s one of five things where the state of South Carolina can take over a school district,” Loveless said. “All we are asking for is a formal apology.”
But board member Rebecca Blackburn Hines argued that with any threat to the district’s accreditation now over, it doesn’t make sense for the district to continue to pay for an attorney to pursue the lawsuit. She said that would “take money away from our teachers and students because we need an apology.”
“I don’t justify (the complainants’) behavior, but … Cognia has a method for dealing with complaints. If we sue everybody who files a complaint, what message does that send to our children?” Hines said.
Board member Nikki Gardner argued the lawsuit needed to move forward to deter politically motivated action against the board and the superintendent.
“If we stop now, it will be, ‘They were right and we were wrong,’” Gardner said. “No one will see this discussion, they will see the end result and they will continue to do it because they get away with it.”
Board chairman Jan Hammond said she believed the complaint itself and the publicity around it had already done damage to the school district.
“Nobody notified me or Dr. Ross before it was in the newspaper,” Hammond said. “I think it did damage the reputation of Dr. Ross and the board.”
Gardner, Hammond, Loveless and Catherine Huddle voted to move forward, while Hines, Hogan and Tifani Moore voted in favor of dropping the suit.
This story was originally published December 13, 2021 at 9:24 PM.
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