Why did LR5 superintendent Melton resign? New affidavit provides behind-the-scenes details
More details have emerged on the controversial exit of a Midlands superintendent last year.
In an affidavit filed in Richland County court Feb. 11, former Lexington-Richland 5 school board member Ed White laid out new details of the tense and often hostile relationship between some school board members and former Superintendent Christina Melton.
In the sworn statement, White sheds new light on his previous allegations of how he feels his fellow board members mistreated Melton in her final months on the job as the district’s top administrator. He also documents the closed-door meeting that ultimately ended her tenure and spawned an open-meetings lawsuit.
White said future problems became apparent when a new school board majority first met in December 2020. During a closed-door session on Dec. 14, “Chair Jan Hammond communicated that the objective of the session was for the Board Members to comment on what they thought about Dr. Melton,” White writes.
“What resulted was a rambling, awkward and confusing session where several Board Members complained about Dr. Melton,” he said. “Most of these complaints were centered on her failure to follow instructions of (board member Ken) Loveless and other individual Board Members, not her communications with the board as a whole. Ken Loveless and Nikki Gardner were visibly angry and hostile to Dr. Melton.
“I concluded that the meeting was an attempt by the Board Officers to bring Dr. Melton into line obeying their individual directions outside of the public view and to tell Dr. Melton how they expected her to change,” White concluded.
White notes the presence of Andrea White, now the school district’s attorney, although at the time Ed White says she was not retained by the district and that Melton seemed unaware that Andrea White would be present, or even of the purpose of the meeting.
“(I)t was my impression that one or more of the Board Officers hired Andrea White to participate in the meeting without Dr. Melton’s knowledge,” Ed White wrote. “In my 18 years on the Board I am not aware of any time legal counsel was engaged to represent the Board except by the Superintendent working with the Board Officers.”
That meeting would be a harbinger of a quick deterioration of the board’s working relationship with Melton. By June, the superintendent would resign her position and White would publicly resign as well over the board’s treatment of her.
White’s comments were filed as part of a lawsuit filed by The State’s senior editor Paul Osmundson. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of The State Media Co., challenges the legality of board members agreeing to end Melton’s contract and pay Melton $226,368 without a public vote.
Loveless and board member Catherine Huddle declined to comment on the affidavit when contacted by The State. Calls to Gardner and Hammond were not returned before publication.
White said in his affidavit that at the time he was moved to try to open the private meetings to set the board agenda between the superintendent and board officers — Hammond, vice chairman Loveless and secretary Gardner — because he feared “the Board Officers would use the Board Officer meetings to continue to secretly bully, intimidate and further harass the Superintendent to conduct the District’s business the way they personally wanted it conducted.”
Lexington-Richland 5 has since begun holding its board officer meetings in public, after that issue was also raised in The State’s lawsuit. The board also voted publicly to retroactively approve the superintendent’s resignation and settlement agreement.
White says the tensions between Melton and the board came to a head after board members voted in May 2021 to drop its mask requirement. Melton later postponed that move after meeting with Andrea White about legal concerns, including the possibility of an employee lawsuit if the requirement was dropped at a time when state guidelines still required them.
In a closed session May 10, “Trustees Huddle and Gardner were particularly loud and angry and speaking in a hateful and hostile manner toward Dr. Melton,” Ed White’s affidavit reads. At one point, White recalls Huddle “casting a nasty, glaring scowl in the direction of Dr. Melton and saying, ‘The insurance is not the issue. You directly disobeyed this Board’s motion. You work for us. We do not work for you. You overturned our mask policy change and you made us look bad,’ or words to that effect.
“Trustee Gardner began her own tirade directed at Dr. Melton stating that ‘we tried to work with you’ and making it clear through her angry demeanor that it would be impossible for Dr. Melton to continue to co-exist as the Superintendent with her and her cohorts on the board,” White continues.
Both Huddle and Gardner demanded in the closed session that Melton resign as superintendent. “I recall Trustee Loveless smiling as he looked at Dr. Melton stating, ‘I agree with everything Trustee Huddle and Trustee Gardner said’ or words to that effect,” White said.
At a subsequent board meeting, White recalls another executive session in which he recalled “Nikki Gardner saying she wanted to fire Dr. Melton and pay her nothing.” Attorney Andrea White said there was no basis to terminate Melton’s contract and she would be entitled to a substantial payout if her contract were terminated.
“At that time Catherine Huddle looked at Ken Loveless, as if the rest of us were not in the room, and stated ‘we are going to be criticized when the public finds out about this,’” Ed White writes.
At the June 14 board meeting, members again met behind closed doors and were presented with a settlement agreement that White said he had never seen or heard about before. “I assumed the Agreement had been negotiated by Andrea White, working in consultation with the Board Officers, who all seemed familiar with its contents,” he wrote.
Ed White said the “unorthodox contract” required that Melton and the board members not speak negatively about each other in public. No public announcement was proposed; Melton was to go on leave and announce her resignation after the upcoming graduation ceremonies. When he asked, White was told the agreement did not require a public vote.
“In the 18 years I served on the board, I do not recall the Board ever signing a document in Executive Session nor do I recall the Board Members signing a contract without a prior vote on the document in public session,” he said.
No prior public discussion about Melton’s position had taken place before the document was signed. He refused to sign the agreement, he says, at which point “Catherine Huddle looked at me and smiled as she said, ‘Remember, we are in Executive Session and you cannot repeat anything we say or do in here,’ or words to that effect,” White said.
“From my point of view, Dr. Melton did everything within her power to keep her position as District Superintendent,” White said in his affidavit. “She never indicated any desire to leave the employ of District Five.”
White publicly resigned his seat on the board at the June 14 meeting, citing the undisclosed settlement agreement with Melton. The board members subsequently went back into executive session and when they returned, Melton publicly announced her decision to resign.
The board later voted to censure Ed White for violating their executive session policies and for allegedly making false statements in his public criticism of board members after his resignation. When asked at the time, board chair Hammond did not specify which of White’s claims of a “hostile” work environment produced by Gardner, Huddle and Loveless were false.
In his affidavit, White claims he spoke with Melton about a week prior to the meeting at which she resigned, in which she reportedly said that even if she tried to stay in her position, Gardner, Huddle and Loveless “were so insistent on intruding in into the operations of the District that she was concerned that they were going to mess things up and blame it on her, and in so doing, damage her reputation.”
Melton also reportedly expressed the possibility of going back to work for Lexington-Richland 5, “if the Board composition were to change.”
This story was originally published February 19, 2022 at 10:50 AM.
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