Letter from the Editor: Conflict in the CCSD

The Clarke County School District Superintendent and Board of Education have been in conflict over various issues for the past year. These conflicts are distracting from the needs of the district’s students. Illustration by Audrey Kennedy

Clarke County School District leaders are engaging in behavior that is distracting from the needs of CCSD students.

Since the hiring of Clarke County School District Superintendent Dr. Demond Means in 2017, the CCSD Board of Education and the office of the Superintendent have been in constant conflict.

From disagreements about the future of the West Broad property to the proper process for selecting new Board members, BOE meetings have been highly contentious.

“I may have used the word low-functioning (to refer to the BOE). I’ve also used the word dysfunctional — I’ve used the terminology that this Board is dysfunctional,” Means said at the Aug. 29 BOE meeting, revealing the explicit animosity that is present between the BOE and Superintendent.

The conflict has also extended beyond the realm of School Board meetings. Whether it is the ethics complaint filed against Dr. Means or the accreditation complaint filed against several school board members, the back-and-forth squabbling between the two parties and their allies has distracted from larger concerns.

Leaders in the CCSD need to stop their bureaucratic infighting, and instead focus their attention on the numerous pressing issues students in the district are facing.

On May 3, an ethics complaint was filed against CCSD Superintendent Demond Means, alleging that he plagiarised a portion of an email sent to teachers, lied about his dissertation and received a $500 payment from AVID.

These complaints, whether or not they are accurate, reflect a desire to address personal hostilities with silly legal maneuvers. These sorts of actions draw time and resources away from more serious issues.

On Aug. 9, the accreditation agency AdvancED sent a letter to Dr. Means, informing him that anonymous community stakeholders had filed a complaint against select members of the BOE. The complaint alleged that these unnamed board members were impeding the autonomy of the Superintendent.

Once again, certain members of the CCSD community have chosen to avoid direct confrontation by using intermediary sources and legal formalities. In this case, the implications could be drastic — if the district lost its accreditation, the validity of hundreds of students’ diplomas could be called into question.

The adults who are supposed to be guiding the school district with a clear vision and concrete plan are instead behaving like squabbling elementary school children on the playground. And, while all of this conflict is occurring at the district level, issues within schools are going unaddressed.

Instead of arguing about a dissertation from 14 years ago, the Superintendent and BOE should be addressing the stark discipline disparities along racial lines in CCSD, offering solutions to the fact that students with guns have been found at both local high schools in the past two years, and implementing programs to reduce the increasing teacher turnover rates.

Bureaucratic infighting has caused district leadership to lose sight of the most important part of their job: working to help students. It is time for the Superintendent and members of the Board of Education to alter their approach and refocus their attention on the problems that CCSD students, teachers and families face every day.

More from Elena Gilbertson Hall