A friend in Memphis tells me the local TV media has been having a field day with James Williams’ past escapades in Dayton and elsewhere while all but ignoring the other four candidates for school superintendent. I went looking for some of those TV reports and found a familiar face on this one. Remember when Andrew Douglas was a TV reporter in Dayton? He remembers being here, and he remembers James Williams, too. Take a look.
Meanwhile, back in Buffalo, Williams tells the local media that the city should consider it “a great honor” that he is being considered for the job in Memphis. A Buffalo radio station reports Williams telling the school board to “make me feel appreciated” if they want to keep him. (His contract there runs through 2011.) And on a Buffalo News blog, they ask if it’s time for Williams to go.
Mad River school superintendent Mike Eaglowski ruled today that convicted sexual felon Christopher LeMaster cannot attend graduation. Eaglowski said the district needed to send a message that LeMaster’s conduct will not be condoned by the school district.
Many GOTB commenters urged the district to take this action earlier this week.
So, readers, are you satisfied with the district’s response?
When the news broke last week about Dayton Superintendent Percy Mack was a candidate for superintendent in Columbia, S.C., we talked a lot about whether he had been job hunting or not.
Mack insists he was not looking when Columbia’s search consultant called him, but he said he was frequently contacted by districts searching for superintendents. Just since the start of the school year, Mack said, he was contacted by districts in Wisconsin, Louisiana and Tennessee but did not respond. That’s because, Mack said, he only wants to work here in Dayton or at an urban district close to his native Georgia.
To make the point, he got out a letter he received from Memphis schools asking him to apply for superintendent there. Memphis is a huge district with more than 100,000 kids and superintendent there is a high profile and well-paying job. Mack argued if he were really just trying to springboard out of Dayton to a better job he certainly would have applied in Memphis.
Well, yesterday Memphis named its five finalists. Mack is not one of them, but guess who is? Yep, our old friend James A. Williams.
(Gerald Dawkins, Percy Mack and Craig Witherspoon, the three candidates for superintendent in Columbia, chat prior to a community meet-and-greet Tuesday.)
All three candidates for superintendent in Columbia, S.C., including Dayton’s Percy Mack, participated in an awkward-sounding joint meet-and-greet with the public Tuesday and then interviewed with the school board. It was hard to get any feel for how they were received from the story in the State, Columbia’s newspaper.
Meanwhile, The Fordham Foundation’s Ohio Gadfly newsletter waves a fond farewell to Susan Zelman, Ohio’s superintendent of public instruction who is looking to move on after clashing with Gov. Ted Strickland. The Gadfly calls Zelman “ornery, strong-willed, and mercurial, in addition to very bright, boundlessly energetic, and quite creative.” Fordham says Ohio will miss “Dr. Z” and warns of danger on the horizon as Strickland pushes his education agenda.
The city schools will require construction companies building its new schools to pay union wages going forward — for now.
The board voted unanimously to add language to is bidding requirements at its meeting tonight. The wage rules will apply to the next three schools. The move left non-union contractors — some of whom have worked on the district’s prior projects — miffed.
“We’re very disappointed,” said Kathleen Somers, president of Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc., of the Ohio Valley, a non-union contractors group. “That vote tonight cost taxpayers a lot of money unnecessarily.”
School board President Yvonne Isaacs said the goal is to attract more local companies to the projects — companies board members hope will employ more local people and minorities to build Dayton’s new schools.
If the experiment works and the schools stay on budget, Isaacs said the rule will remain for the remaining nine schools still to be built.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Dayton and we want to make sure that we see the people actually paying the taxes have benefitted,” she said.
Over in Riverside, former Stebbins High School student Christopher LeMaster pleaded guilty last month to gross sexual imposition for having sex with an unconscious fellow student. The 16-year-old girl had passed out after taking drugs and drinking alcohol at party only to find out later that LeMaster, 18, had has sex with her and that pictures of her undressed and unconscious were circulating among Stebbins students at school.
The initial report of this incident came when the girl told a Stebbins guidance counselor that she thought she had been raped. LeMaster was arrested in late February and put on “home instruction” by the school district in early March. He admitted his guilt in court on April 3 and later was sentenced to five years probation.
The girl now is home schooled and told the judge in LeMaster’s case that she had to leave Stebbins because she was the subject of so much harassment from other students. So now, LeMaster’s family wants him to be allowed to graduate with his class at Stebbins next month and school officials says they are researching the legalities of the issue before making a decision.
I have a simple question for Riverside schools. Why was LeMaster not expelled after pleading guilty to a sexual crime against another student? He is a sexual felon now and the initial report of this incident came at school. How can he possibly be allowed to continue as a Stebbins student (even if he is instructed at home) after that?
Seems like if LeMaster had been expelled in April, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Here’s the lastest on job hunts by Dayton Superintendent Percy Mack and Ohio Superintendent for Public Instruction Susan Zelman:
In Columbia, S.C., the State newspaper reports that Percy Mack and two other finalists will visit Tuesday for a whirlwind tour and interviews. Reporter Bill Robinson gave readers there some background on Mack and the other finalists in a story today. Robinson also includes a Q&A interview with Mack and the other finalists.
Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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