January 14, 2007
Ericka Davis:
I received the e-mail that you addressed to your “Dear Colleagues” and sent the morning of January 11, 2007. How can you call yourself a “colleague” of any other board member when
you have taken it upon yourself to speak for all of us without first acquiring our assent?
You write: “Due to numerous calls from concerned staff about the
incident that occurred at the January 9th meeting and calls to board members from the media, Dr. Pulliam and I
thought it would be best to get a message to staff and parents through the phone system to put them at ease that we were focused
on the children and committed to the work of student achievement.” When
did you and Superintendent Barbara Pulliam, the “we” of your e-mail, become a legal entity unto yourselves? Legality exists with the nine board members, not the BOE Chairperson and Superintendent. You have overreached the limits of your power and, in doing so, have probably caused
another SACS investigation to occur. Why have you placed the school system in
such a situation? You allege that “numerous calls from concerned staff”
and “calls to board members from the media” prompted your usurpation of power.
I can attest that I, also a school board member, received numerous calls from staff members, both teachers and administrators,
who were supportive of my actions in what you term “the incident that occurred at the January 9th meeting[.]” I have received calls from the media that were supportive, too. Why was I not allowed, in private consultation with Superintendent Pulliam, to use the phone system to
share my thoughts about the matter with “staff and parents”? Could
it be that you and Superintendent Pulliam have a private relationship that allows only a select few on the board shared privacy? Superintendent Pulliam did attend a rally at New Birth South during election season
in which she essentially endorsed you as well as former board members Connie Kitchens, LaToya Walker, and Allen Johnson, my
opponent, did she not?
It would seem that you and Superintendent Pulliam are working in concert to affect negatively those board members whom
you deem to be antagonistic to your machinations. Surely you know that such behavior
is not only unethical but illegal. Perhaps you missed that part of the training
on that expensive political junket that you planned and held at Amicalola Falls in Pickens County. I hope that your failure to understand how the law
works in relation to the maneuverings of school board members does not cause Clayton County Schools to lose its accreditation. You allege that “we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, are “focused
on the children and committed to the work of student achievement.” How
can you possibly justify that statement when the school board, prior to my being seated, voted to waste millions of dollars
on a land deal that cannot be said to be in the best interests of “the children”?
I note that you fail to mention that salient point in either your e-mail or your phone message. All you mention is “the incident,” and I question your motive in trying to make my valid questioning
of a school system administrator into something bad by calling it an “incident.”
It would seem that “we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, might have something to hide about that land deal,
but I can assure you that, in a game of hide-and-seek with the truth, the truth will be sought and will be found.
The next two sentences of your e-mail, though, really trouble me. You
allege: “We wanted to be open and honest about what happened before any
real harm was done. No specific name was provided.” What a glib way in which to gloss over trashing me. According
to Common Law, the Reasonable Man Standard comes to the fore in such instances. If
a “reasonable man” could conclude of whom you were speaking, then you do not have to mention my name in order
to slander or libel me. The people who heard your message knew to whom you referred;
therefore, the phone message that “we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, sent out to staff and parents served to
slander/libel me and was, in a sense, a calculated act, I believe, to conceal the real issue at hand, an inquiry into the
millions of taxpayers’ dollars wasted in that land deal. If “we,”
you and Superintendent Pulliam, wanted “to be open and honest about what happened[,]” then your message would
have outlined info about that land deal instead of attempting to smear me for bringing up that land deal insistently at the
board meeting. I would not have had to be so insistent had “we,”
you and Superintendent Pulliam, been more forthcoming earlier. If “we,”
you and Superintendent Pulliam, want “to be open and honest about what happened[,]” be open and honest about what
happened. Do not engage in obfuscation or try to silence me by turning off my
microphone during a board meeting.
But what is this “real harm” about which “we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, are so concerned? You apparently would like everyone to believe that it concerns the teacher corps. You allege: “We are in the midst
of teacher recruitment [sic] and [sic] if we lose public trust and resemble the actions of the past board [sic] we will lose
teachers and CHILDREN [sic] will suffer.” You cannot really believe that
an educated person will fall for this. “We,” you and Superintendent
Pulliam, are not concerned about “real harm” to teacher recruitment and teacher retention. If you were, “we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, would have used some of the millions of
dollars wasted on that land deal to increase teacher salaries, thus sweetening the incentive for teachers to remain in or
come to Clayton County Schools. Anyway, “we,” you and Superintendent
Pulliam, apparently could care less about “CHILDREN” suffering because, as recent news stories have made clear,
more Clayton County schools failed to make AYP this past school year, and approval for more overcrowded classes than the State
allows was sought by Superintendent Pulliam. Just reflect on how many more teachers
could have been hired with those millions of dollars that were wasted worthlessly in that land deal. “We,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, are unable to justify your unethical, illegal use of
the phone system based on the alleged suffering of “CHILDREN.” That
you would use all capital letters to emphasize the word “children” proves my point. Your actions cannot provide justification, so you capitalize the word for the appearance of such. That is laughable, but what elicits greater laughs is your evocation of “the
actions of the past board[,]” on which, I hasten to point out, you sat.
Yes, Ericka Davis sat on that board that nearly caused the Clayton County School System to lose its accreditation. Let us think back about why accreditation was nearly lost. Was it not because of the alleged micromanagement of former Chair Nedra Ware, LaToya Walker, Carol Kellum,
and Connie Kitchens? Your predecessor allegedly did some of the same things that
you now egregiously do, but, at least in her alleged attempts to micromanage, she did not slanderously strive to sabotage
a fellow board member politically by sending a phone message out to seven thousand Clayton County School System employees
and about fifty thousand Clayton County parents. Perhaps in the privacy of the Superintendent’s
Office late Tuesday night after the board meeting, the two of you decided to use the phone system to disseminate your spin
about something that happened at the meeting that did not serve your purposes. That
you failed to involve your fellow, “dear” colleagues does not seem to have concerned you. Did you miss that session on that costly junket that you took to Chicago to find out how to be a good board member? Did the sound of the waterfalls drown out that discussion in Pickens County last weekend? You
condescend: “I must remind you that we lost almost 700 good teachers because
of Board conduct in public meetings [sic] and Board members were replaced because even 2 years of good behavior did not erase
the pain of probation from the public’s mind.” How fascinating that
you now authoritatively cite “700 good teachers” when “we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, have consistently
denied losing such a high number. Does that make you a liar or just a bad politician? But, if you do have any hard data, via exit interviews, that these alleged “700
good teachers” left solely because of board actions, then please share this with your fellow board members. If not, issue a public retraction immediately.
“We,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, should also retract your statement that “Board members were
replaced because even 2 years of good behavior did not erase the pain of probation from the public’s mind.” The number of school board members who were replaced in the last election was three,
not two. Not only did Connie Kitchens and LaToya Walker get booted, but Allen
Johnson, too. I defeated him. Your
sidekick, Barbara Wells, had already been defeated overwhelmingly in the 2004 election.
There could not have been two more visible and public supporters of Superintendent Pulliam than Barbara Wells and Allen
Johnson, but at no time were these two former board members ever perceived as micromanagers.
The public clearly perceived that they were supporters of Superintendent Pulliam.
Your reelection was the only anomaly in this public cleansing of the board. (I
noticed in your swearing-in speech that you Biblically intoned that you were the “remnant” left on the board –
as if the three new board members were mere pagans.) Why would “we,”
you and Superintendent Pulliam, purposefully make such a misleading statement? Were
“we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, trying to frighten your “dear” colleagues into being afraid
to question the maneuvers of “we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam?
You conclude your e-mail with a reassertion as to the importance of children in the board’s considerations. You write: “I want us to have a
good year [sic] and more importantly, the children need us to have a good year. It
is not about us, [sic] it is about them.” Again, I ask you where this concern
for “the children” was when “we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, decided to use school system assets
to slander/libel me for my valid exercise of my elected position as a school board member.
Your actions are patently wrong, and “the children” will be the ones to suffer if SACS decides that “we,”
you and Superintendent Pulliam, committed a gross violation of the law and of ethical standards. (Surely you can get your buddy, SAC’s Mark Elgart of Alpharetta, to excuse your micromanaging ways
because perhaps you developed a close relationship with him when you apparently whined and complained in the past about the
other micromanagers.)
In addition, wasting millions of dollars on a land deal that makes little sense, instead of using those funds, obtained
from citizens being taxed at the highest millage rate possible under law, on the taxpayers’ children for their actual
instruction within existing schools, shows your insincerity. “We,”
you and Superintendent Pulliam, might think that “the public’s mind” is susceptible to such subterfuge,
but I think not. The public has and is speaking to me through phone calls, letters,
and e-mail about the plight of their children in the schools of Clayton County. They are tired of their children being shunted into
trailers and their children not being issued books for many classes. Teachers
and administrators, too, are contacting me. All share a concern for the way in
which the Clayton County School System is being managed, and your recent efforts to silence me on the board will not succeed. That is why I find it outrageous that an e-mail sent to you and copied to our colleagues,
Lois Baines-Hunter, Yolanda Everett, Rod Johnson, Eddie White, and David Ashe, by an alleged Clayton County citizen and alleged
“public educator” was also copied to Superintendent Pulliam by Deanne Jordan, Secretary to the Board of Education
and Assistant to the Chief of Staff. (Maybe this alleged “public educator”
is another CCEA/GAE plant whom you intend to use to smear me and any of your other “dear” colleagues who deign
to question you. I noticed that CCEA President Sid Chapman unilaterally pronounced
that the school board was immediately divided into “factions” simply because Lois Baines-Hunter and I chose to
stand for Chairperson and Vice Chairperson.) At the conclusion of this e-mail,
the alleged citizen writes: “Please share this e-mail with Mr. Haynes. I found his Clayton county [sic] e-mail inactive.” I have received numerous messages via Clayton County e-mail, so why was there difficulty in this particular individual getting through to me? Why, also, would Secretary Jordan forward this e-mail to Superintendent Pulliam? She has
no supervisory role over me – the reverse is reality – so she should
not be privy to e-mail sent specifically to board members. That she was deliberately
copied this e-mail tells me that perhaps Secretary Jordan and others may not understand the supervisory capacity of the board
over its superintendent. The tail must not wag the dog. State law is quite specific as to which entity has supervision over the other. Elected school board members supervise the superintendent whom the school board hired. “We,” you and Superintendent Pulliam, as I stated at the onset of this reply, are not a legal
entity and have no standing under State law to act for the board.
I want both you and your counterpart in the illegal entity of “we” that you have apparently created for
the micromanagement of the Clayton County School System to know that I always act on behalf of the students, and I resent
any implication to the contrary. I sought my seat on the board because I want
to make a difference in the lives of the children of Clayton County, my residence for over thirty years. Questioning that
land deal on which millions of dollars were wasted is part and parcel of that mission.
Should certain adult individuals within the school system be found to have engaged in malfeasance, then they will have
to accept what comes their way. I will agitate and articulate, but I will definitely
not equivocate. I will be heard, and my voice will be that of Clayton County’s
children singing of a new day when the school system embraces them and does not just parrot the phrase “for the children”
to further the political agenda of “we,” you and Superintendent Pulliam.
Finally, I call for your resignation as Chairperson of the Clayton County Board of Education because you have admitted
in the e-mail under discussion that you improperly used the assets of the Board without the consent of your “dear”
colleagues to promote yourself and your crony, Barbara Pulliam. That, Ms. Davis,
is the depth of micromanagement and the height of hypocrisy.
Sincerely:
Norreese
L. Haynes
School Board Member, District 8
