Hushed-up deal spends $100K
Chief pushed out gets paid to stay
Amajority of the Reynoldsburg City School Board — members Debbie Dunlap, Neal Whitman and Rob Truax — ran and were elected in 2015 on a promise of greater transparency. That makes their actions last week ironic as well as shady.
The three prevailed in a barely explained 3-2 vote on June 14 to approve a deal under which Superintendent Tina Thomas-Manning — whom they had forced out as of July 31, when her contract was set to expire — will stay on the district’s books for an additional year as a consultant working from home.
For transparency advocates, it’s an opaque way to conduct public business.
The vote came after a closed-door session, and with no explanation of the agreement beyond referring to it as “the agreement with Ms. Thomas-Manning as presented.” Having spent the past year and a half opposing the superintendent at every turn, the board members offered no public reasons for their agreement to essentially un-fire her and agree to another year of salary and benefits for work yet to be defined.
Nontransparency is written right in: Item 14 of the agreement states, “The Parties will not comment on this Settlement Agreement unless required by law to do so, and instead will present to the media... the Joint Statement attached as Exhibit B.”
Board member Elaine Tornero, an ally of ThomasManning, told The Dispatch she wished she could give more details, but said that the district’s legal counsel, Bricker & Eckler, “really pushed the fact that we aren’t supposed to talk” and that questions should be referred to the central office.
There are a couple of problems with this. First, school-board members are elected officials, answerable to the public they serve, and they should not agree to stonewall on a vote that begs to be explained. Arguably, Ohio’s Sunshine Law doesn’t require them to answer questions; in the strictest sense, it requires only the production of records.
But the spirit of opengovernment laws certainly demands that elected officials explain their actions. And district residents especially expect an explanation from those who campaigned on transparency. And they especially want one when officials vote to spend six figures maintaining an official who was told in September that her contract wouldn’t be renewed.
Second, school-board members who hide behind central-office administrators in a controversy are not only shirking their responsibility, they’re forgetting that they are expected to be watchdogs over the administration, not creatures of it.
The statement mentioned in the agreement wasn’t released until Monday afternoon, after The Dispatch asked about the vote. It’s fair to ask whether it ever would have been made public if a reporter hadn’t asked for it.
The statement is light on details, but says it aims to avoid spending time, resources and attention on “protracted disputes and litigation.”
The Reynoldsburg school board and Thomas-Manning both have a lot to explain to voters. The board majority’s relentless effort to oust the superintendent succeeded in her removal from the job, but apparently left the district so vulnerable to being sued that lawyers advised paying Thomas-Manning handsomely for another year.
Thomas-Manning, in accepting the deal, owes Reynoldsburg Schools taxpayers $100,000 worth of expertise.
Over the next year, taxpayers should look closely to judge what they’re getting from this agreement. And board members who so valued transparency in their elections campaigns should cease the secrecy and be ready to supply the records and the explanation to make it plain.