Lexington-Richland voters must douse the dumpster fire that’s their school board
In the parlance of our time, Lexington-Richland 5 school board is a dumpster fire.
It’s time to put the flames out, voters.
The current board has proven its ineptitude. Let’s review the evidence.
Board members made former superintendent Christina Melton’s job hellish and essentially forced her to resign in a deal that was finalized behind closed doors. The board was so hostile that then-member Ed White stepped down in protest during a meeting.
The board’s executive officers also met in private to conduct the public’s business.
Last year, Senior Editor Paul Osmundson file a lawsuit on behalf of The State Media Co. claiming that the board should have voted in public to approve Melton’s resignation agreement and that the executive officers meetings should be open to the public. After the lawsuit was filed, the board relented and approved the Melton deal in public and opened the executive officers meetings.
The board also slapped former superintendent Stephen Hefner with a lawsuit after he filed a complaint with the district’s accrediting agency over the board’s hiring of the current superintendent.
The board has routinely been distracted by infighting, such as censuring and rebuking its own members.
And then there’s board vice chair Ken Loveless.
Loveless might just sue anyone who blinks at him in a way he interprets as an insult. He whines about people “bullying” and trying to “silence” him when he’s the biggest bully in the room. He uses lawsuits — including two filed over social media comments — as an apparent attempt to silence his critics.
Now, in the latest controversy for the district, Loveless has been hit with four charges by the state’s ethics commission that claim, in essence, that he discussed, inspected and criticized the construction of a district elementary school. That’s a problem, the commission says, because the contractor on the school project had hired Loveless to work as a subcontractor on a separate high-paying project.
That is what’s called — in the world of a functioning school board — a conflict of interest. It’s laughable that Loveless thought it was just fine, no big deal, for him to discuss, as a matter of school board business, a company that was paying him a million dollars.
The State’s Bristow Marchant reported that Loveless’ lawyer said in response to the ethics complaint that his client’s position as a school board member would not have influenced the contractor’s decision to hire Loveless’ company . . . unless, the lawyer argued, the contractor hired Loveless’ company in an attempt to silence Loveless — “to prevent Mr. Loveless from commenting on the quality of work” done by the contractor.
That “is apparently what has occurred here,” the lawyer said.
Let’s get this straight. The contractor hired Loveless’ company so Loveless would shut up his critique about their work on the school? And Loveless took the job? Voters, does that sound strange to you?
Loveless is a distraction from what a school board should be doing and is a self-obsessed embarrassment to the district.
All this translates to a board that’s not acting with transparency, barely functioning and with one member accused of not doing his job ethically. By the way, another board member — chairman Jan Hammond — recently paid $2,000 to settle ethics charges that she used her district email to call for the defeat of two fellow school board members in the 2020 election and for failing to disclose financial information.
School boards should be in the spotlight for discussing, debating and choosing policies and practices for educating children, not for secrecy, bullying and questionable ethics.
Next chance you get Lexington-Richland 5 voters, extinguish the dumpster fire that is your school board before it burns the whole district down.