All the hoopla over the last few months is about one spoiled man who has had his precious and delicate ego bruised.   This cry baby is a man named Mark Elgart, CEO of SACS, from Alpharetta, Georgia.  The former Chair of the Clayton County Board of Education (unless she backs out of her overdue resignation which is supposed to become effective on Friday, April 11, 2008),  Ericka Davis, always knew that her ace in the hole, so to speak, was her close friendship with Mark Elgart of the Southern Accreditation of Schools and Colleges (SACS).  So, as Norreese Haynes and other Clayton County Board of Education members began to vocally question Davis and her sidekick Vice Chair Rod Johnson (who has given what seems now to be the most interminal of resignations – a resignation which has never been effectuated, one with a date unknown, like the one also proffered by Eddie White) about the now notorious and infamous Land Deal and other very questionable practices (like the classic bait-and-switch on the lawyer’s two contracts which constitutes fraud on the factum and fraudulent inducement), Ericka and Rod turned to their educational “Unibomber,” Mark Elgart.  For some inexplicable reason, Georgia law had set up a situation in which one man, in his intemperate nature, could wield tremendous influence over any school system which deigns to question his unethical practices.  This is precisely what happened.

   In September of 2007, Ericka Davis, contrary to school board policy and to the so-called SACS Standard, of her sole volition, invited Mark Elgart to visit the Clayton County School Board meeting to engage in a presentation.  Ms. Lois Baines-Hunter rightfully and accurately pointed out to Elgart and to her colleagues that Elgart had “no integrity” for, in essence, allowing himself to be used by Chairwoman Davis in such a manner.  The Board of Education as a whole had not invited Elgart to participate in their meeting.  This was an underhanded move on the part of Davis to presumably intimidate Haynes, Scott, Baines-Hunter, and Strong and to cause them to pipe down their questioning of her and Rod Johnson’s actions.  The word on the street is that Davis and Johnson had met with Elgart, and shortly after the September meeting, Johnson fired off a ridiculous complaint to SACS against Haynes, Scott, and Baines-Hunter.  The complaints were specious and scurrilous.  For example, Johnson made all kinds of false allegations against Haynes.  When the SACS Report was finally published on February 15, 2007, it was as, as Haynes announced in a press release that same day “a sham and a farce.”  Not a single thing that Johnson put in his complaints against Haynes stuck.  In fact, Mr. Haynes had filed a 12 page, single-paged response with 17 exhibits in which he totally obliterated Johnson’s laughable complaints, and Haynes actually turned the tables on Davis and Johnson in his response, pointing out at length and with detailed documentation their micromanaging of the schools and other ethical breaches.  On December 25, 2007, Haynes filed a four page, single-spaced letter to Elgart and SACS which contained his two Official Complaints against Ericka Davis and Rod Johnson.  Even thought Elgart could not nail Haynes with a single specious complaint which Johnson lobbed, he chose to totally ignore Haynes’s complaints against Davis and Johnson.  (Elgart’s biggest complaint against Haynes is that he works with MACE.)  His “inquisition team” did not ask a single question about Davis and Johnson in their interrogation sessions (even though Haynes had sent many exhibits to Elgart/SACS and even offered to show his “inquisition team” the documents when they traveled to Clayton for the so-called “interviews”).  Their minds were already made up.  (In fact, at the very end, SACS cancelled their interview me, Darth Vader himself.)  The whole process, including the “Report” itself, was one-sided, biased, skewed, and “fatally flawed.”  It was indeed “a sham and a farce.”  It was shameful for SACS to send forth such a prejudiced report.

   Now, Clayton County has become “Elgart’s Iraq.”  He does not know what to do with it.  Unlike other counties when he stirs up mass hysteria with his pronouncements of “I care for thy children” but the school board members are so corrupt and stupid that I cannot bless thy children until they leave, Clayton County people are, to quote Mr. Haynes, a little too jaded to accept his every word as “law and gospel.”  Davis and Eldrin Bell (who cannot run the Clayton County Government but he apparently wants to take care of his darling Ericka Bell, so he meddles in the school board affairs) orchestrated a third-world coup and jack hammered Norreese Haynes off of the school board.  Mr. Haynes has been off the Board for five weeks now and the school board is now teetering on disaster – not because it is incompetent but because Elgart, Brock (the Board’s own attorney who sold them down the river in total contravention of the rules and ethics for lawyers), and the Atlanta media (especially Cox Communications) continue to whip up hysteria to the point of mob action.  If Haynes was the problem (he actually was the whistleblower), to the use Martin Lawrence’s phrase:  “What the problem is?”  Davis, Elgart, Johnson, Bell, et al., could not kill the Message, so they killed the Messenger (Haynes). 

   Elgart is apparently used to people falling all over themselves when he enters a room.  He apparently has become accustomed to having his political posterior inordinately kissed.  Well, they “ain’t gonna” happen in Clayton County.  He is mad.  He is probably still steaming that the Board fired his buddy Dan Colwell in 2003.  He made stupid and inexplicable attacks against MACE in his report.  His accusations are unfounded and ridiculous.  I take this opportunity now to state to him, to Kathy Cox, to Sonny’s elfs (James Bostic and Brad Bryant) whom he appointed to “help” the Clayton County Board of Education, or any other weenie out there that I will be glad to meet them anytime, any place, and anywhere to debate the so-called problem of the Clayton County Board of Education.  We can agree to a formal, open, and public debate (with a moderator) addressing written propositions which deal with the situation with the Clayton County Board of Education.  What we have is a cry baby with a bruised ego who is exercising the “bully pulpit” of his private organization (SACS which, by the way, is not the only game in town, so to speak) and cares not one iota for the nearly 53,000 children in the Clayton County School System.  He and ilk were even willing to engage in the most unconscionable smearing of a young man and compounded the smearing with unmitigated lies which had not even a scintilla of truth in them.  Shame on you, Mark Elgart.  Shame on you, Cry Baby!

April 9, 2008