Families rally to support fired Community School teachers, frustrated by Board of Ed's lack of transparency
'Morale is terrible' while superintendent remains, says parent
BEREA — Community School families still reeling from the shock of learning that fully one-third of the teaching staff will be let go imminently, are rallying to support the school’s stunned staff, while also pressuring the Board of Education to do more to support teachers, beginning with dismissing Superintendent Diane Hatchett, PhD.
“She’s done harm to our school,” parent organizer and former Community School teacher, Ashley Hammond, told The Edge. “Just having her there, the morale of the school is terrible because of her leadership, and I think whatever hard decisions that have to be made, parents need peace of mind knowing they will be made by someone else with the best intentions for our students.”
Shock and bawl
Earlier this week, roughly three dozen teachers — fully one-third the school’s entire teaching staff — were successively told in 15 minute increments, to report to the superintendent’s office across the parking lot where they were told they were being let go due to a nearly two million dollar budget shortfall. Teachers, many of them fighting back tears, were then sent back to their classrooms to face their students, according to Hammond.
“A lot of them were crying in the break room after class,” she said. “It was heartbreaking.”
The week before, Hatchett had emailed the staff that there might be some staff reductions to come, but did not specify by how much the staff would be reduced, or when it would happen.
State applies pressure
The Berea Independent School District’s board of education, which oversees Berea’s Community School was notified late last year that the District was in violation of a state statute, when an audit discovered that the District did not have the required amount of reserve funding in its bank account.
Additionally, in a complicated reporting process to do with how the state distributed federal pandemic emergency funds, a budget shortfall occurred.
“When KED [Kentucky Department of Education] would run the formula to determine how much funding we were going to get from SEEK funds, they used pre-covid enrollment and attendance numbers and sent us money every year that I’ve been in this position, which is four years,” Kyle French, Community School’s director of pupil personnel, told The Edge in an interview. “Then KED would use that information to give us funding.”
SEEK stands for Support Education Excellence in Kentucky, a student enrollment based formula used to calculate the distribution of state education funds.
But the SEEK monies based on pre-covid numbers was not extended this year, something that was somehow missed in the preparation of the school’s budget for this school year.
The Kentucky Department of Education has been working with the school to determine what to do now that the budget is 1.3 million dollars short.
State education officials are now demanding school officials clean up the budget or the state will do it for them.
French meanwhile said he has been working hard to stop the “nonsense” that the school has reported false numbers. “That’s not how I do things, and I have never been asked to do anything like that,” French said.
Teacher TLC
To help ease the sting of what Hammond and co-organizer and Community School parent, Heather Dent, told The Edge was the disrespect shown the teachers, they led a sign making campaign to boost teacher morale.
Dozens of families gathered at the public library in town on Thursday afternoon to create signs that sent messages of love and support to the teachers.
“I hung them up in the break rooms and in the atrium,” Hammond said.
Dent said that the campaign also allowed younger students who are aware of the disruption and their parents’ and teachers’ upset about it, to participate in a way that empowered them. “They didn’t get to participate in the protest with the high school kids, but they still wanted to let their teachers know they care,” Dent said.
On Tuesday, the day after the Board meeting where multiple parents came to the mic to excoriate Hatchett and the Board for their respective poor performances, scores of Community high school students walked out of class in protest and marched the school grounds demanding better treatment of their teachers.
Kept in the dark
Hammond complained of mysterious actions by the Board of Ed, such as not conducting regularly scheduled monthly meetings with microphones so that the audience could hear what was being said. They only started using microphones consistently in January, according to Hammond.
She also decried the Board not allowing their meetings to be televised for fear of libel suits if someone were to say something derogatory about someone.
“It makes you ask, What are they trying to hide?” she said.
Former Board of Ed member, Rebecca Blankenship, who served for just under two years before having to resign after moving to Lexington, told The Edge that she had been fighting with the District’s attorney, Teresa Combs of Fowler Pell, PLLC in Lexington, for months about allowing the meetings to be televised.
“I put up a resolution five times, but it failed five times,” Blankenship said. “[Combs] made the argument that if someone who is on the Board were to make a slanderous remark, that the school could then be sued for that but the liability insurance wouldn’t cover it.”
Blankship, who is studying law at Northern Kentucky State, said she investigated this and found that there was no precedent for it in the state. “This has never happened. There has never been a case that says a school board is liable for a board member’s inflammatory speech,” Blankenship said.
The state asks that board of education members clarify when they are making a personal statement at a meeting to differentiate from when they are speaking on behalf of their board, while the Kentucky School Boards Association Leadership Guide does suggest districts might want to consider liability insurance. The Edge could not find any case law of any Kentucky school district being liable for the comments of one of its board members, however.
Hammond said that she knows of many parents who want to participate in the school’s operations, but do not know how and do not feel welcomed by the District.
“I think a lot of that comes from the school not giving anyone the opportunity to be involved, with the Board’s lack of communication and their refusal to broadcast the meetings,” Hammond said.
The Board is comprised of new members, Board Chair Joe Morgan, and Vice Chair Sarah Rohrer, and incumbents, Tom McCay, Jackie Burnside, PhD, and Nathaniel Hackett.
Renewed pleas to axe Hatchett
“What I’d like to see is Hatchett to resign, but I don’t think she will,” Hammond said. “I’m hopeful that the new members of our board — they’re amazing and I think they are listening — that they will make the best decisions for our school with whatever power they have.”
All sources interviewed for this story said the way the teachers were dismissed was hurtful to the teachers, the students, and to the community.
“They’re extremely distressed by the way this happened,” Blankenship, who has stepchildren in the school, said. “They’re furious, they’re hurt, they feel abandoned.”
Hammond pleaded to fellow parents, “We cannot just show up this week and then stop. Keep going to meetings. Be proactive and make sure we’re giving our best to our children and their teachers. Keep up the momentum.”
The Edge is following this story as it develops. More coverage to come.
UPDATE: On Friday, March 21, at 8:30 pm, an important correction was made to this story. The initial report said that Berea Community School reported false enrollment numbers to the state. That is incorrect. The story has been updated to reflect that the enrollment reporting was accurate, and some additional reporting.