Friday, May 16, 2008
Editorial: Craig's interminable termination
The county schools superintendent has been paid not to work for almost two months. What gives?
Craig County, let your people know.
What is going on with the leadership of your -- their -- public schools?
School board members told the superintendent more than seven weeks ago that they intended to fire her. Yet Katherine Rodgers is still in the job, though not on it.
The former principal of the county's high school is doing all the work as acting superintendent. Rodgers, meanwhile, continues to be on administrative leave and paid as the district's $91,000-a-year superintendent. For how long no one seems to know.
Except, perhaps, school board members, who huddled in closed session for two hours Wednesday "discussing the status of a specific public employee."
It's a safe bet that the special someone is Rodgers. But board members came out of their meeting unwilling to confirm even that, much less to explain to the public why her pending discharge is taking so long -- or taking place at all, for that matter.
The board came out of a closed meeting March 24 and voted to give Rodgers notice of its intent to dismiss her less than a year into her four-year contract. Board members put her on paid leave and gave her two weeks to respond. That seemed reasonable.
The two weeks now have stretched into almost two months. The board's lawyer vaguely says "the deadlines were extended," but when or why that happened remains unclear.
In the interim, a U.S. Department of Education investigator has come and gone from the county seat of New Castle. The results of the federal investigation are not yet known.
And students' parents who have been critical of both the direction and style of Rodgers' leadership remain restive and want to know what is going on.
The public has a right and a need to know.
The school board can claim an exemption from the state's Freedom of Information Act when dealing with specific personnel issues, but it is not required to do so. After so public a notice of dismissal of a top county official, some explanation is past due.
