A year-plus of ‘petty disagreements’ and shouting matches: A look back on Richland 2 dysfunction

Infighting, “petty disagreements,” “personal attacks,” intervention by law enforcement. This has been the Richland 2 school board.

The Columbia-area board has been so enmeshed in drama that in the last four years, only 14% of meeting agenda items have been related to academics, according to a state report. In just the past year, police have had to escort people out of board meetings, one board member threatened another and was then arrested, and now the district superintendent has resigned.

Amid the ongoing dysfunction on the Richland 2 board, Gov. Henry McMaster in May said he would request an inspector general investigation into the district and in July formalized the ask.

That investigation report, combined with news coverage of the board in the last year, paints the picture of a fractured governing body that while responsible for overseeing the education of 27,000 students has spent much of its time attacking itself.

Constant infighting

Despite the board’s mandate to oversee education in Richland 2, just five academic items were addressed by the board in the last two years, “when Board member acrimony and disruptive communications directed toward the superintendent, District staff and the public were the greatest,” according to the inspector general report.

Investigators “observed dysfunctional or non-existent communication and a lack of trust among Board members. Each Board member contributed to its dysfunction and ineffectiveness through petty disagreements and personal attacks of other Board members,” that report read.

Indeed, on numerous occasions board members have yelled at each other or chided each other in public and in private. On at least one occasion, police escorted members of the public out of a meeting.

The infighting can be traced back to at least late 2021.

In September 2021, as the board was debating renewing then-Superintendent Baron Davis’ contract, board members Lashonda McFadden, Lindsay Agostini and Monica Scott walked out of the meeting after an argument with other board members because they said they hadn’t had enough time to research revisions to Davis’ contract.

During a meeting soon after, in October 2021, then-Board Chair Teresa Holmes and Scott got into a shouting match over comments made by a member of the public.

Almost exactly a year ago, in Jan. 2022, police got involved at a school board meeting when a district parent had a “verbal disagreement” with Davis’ wife, a Richland 2 teacher. Davis intervened, getting into his own argument with two members of the public before district security escorted the two people from the building.

In February 2022, Davis privately asked to limit his contact with board member McFadden after he said she “yelled” and “screamed” at him about a student bringing a loaded firearm to a district high school the day prior, according to an email obtained by The State at that time.

In May, McFadden yelled “I will f— you up,” at Holmes during a meeting and was later arrested, after Holmes filed a police report. The inspector general’s report also decried Holmes’ behavior in that meeting, where she called McFadden a “little girl” multiple times. The incident ultimately led to McMaster’s request for an investigation into the board’s conduct.

(That May incident wasn’t the first time a Richland 2 board member was arrested after a meeting. In 2019, now-former board member Monica Elkins-Johnson was arrested for disorderly conduct for shoving the sister of a state senator after a meeting.)

The investigation also found there were “noticeable factions and conflict entrepreneurs who fanned the flames and used parliamentary procedures, legal threats, and disrespectful language to humiliate other Board members.”

The report also noted “acrimonious comments” between board members and toward public speakers at meetings, as well as disruptive behavior and specifically referenced the September meeting where members walked out.

Superintendent squabbles

McFadden, Agostini and Scott ultimately voted against renewing Davis’ contract after that September 2021 meeting, losing the vote at the time 4-3. The November 2022 election shook the board up, giving that faction another opportunity to revisit Davis’ employment. None of the board members who voted in September 2021 to extend Davis’ contract remained, and after a six-hour executive session last Tuesday, Davis resigned.

One former board member, James Manning, told The State frustrations had been mounting between some on the board and Davis for a while. Manning did not seek reelection in November.

“They want a weak leader who will do their bidding,” Manning previously said. “In my previous dealings with the board members who remained on the board, they were very unhappy with Dr. Davis and many times indicated that once there was a new board that (firing the superintendent) was an action they were going to take.”

Growing tensions between Davis and board members were noted in the inspector general’s report as well. Breakdowns in communication between the board and superintendent decreased both morale and productivity among Richland 2 staff, the report noted.

The inspector general report added that in executive sessions, conversations devolved into “vulgar name-calling where executive sessions were terminated without accomplishing its work.”

Just in recent weeks, the school board has been behind closed doors in executive session for a combined 12 hours, spending four hours in private Jan. 5, another six hours behind closed doors last Tuesday before Davis’ resignation, and another three hours last Thursday before naming Nancy Gregory as interim superintendent.

Beyond behavior

More than behavior problems were identified by the inspector general’s report. Financial red flags and violations of freedom of information laws have also been persistent issues.

On multiple occasions, the board has violated freedom of information laws by having email conversations among themselves where at least four members are included in the email chain. State law says that counts as a quorum, meaning those conversations were legally supposed to happen during a public meeting.

Manning was specifically named in the report as well for recording an executive session discussion and sharing it with media.

Board members were also found to be using personal email addresses and personal cellphones for their communication, making it harder to access that communication through freedom of information laws. Board member communications are public records, with a few exceptions.

In direct response to the findings, Tuesday, the board began a discussion on giving members district-issued cellphones so communications would not be able to be kept out of public records requests.

The report reviewed some reported procurement card purchases as well, which allow certain staff and officials to buy materials using district funds. Red flags included $116 for unspecified “merchandise” from the home goods store Williams Sonoma, $130 for admission to Patriots Park, $72 for tickets to a Baltimore Orioles game and $873 for clothing from Lululemon.

Further, the report also says McFadden carried close to $2,000 in school meal debt for her children and then advocated for the full board to forgive all school meal debts, potentially putting McFadden in violation of state ethics law by using her position for personal gain. It also notes that three other board members — Holmes, Manning and Scott — had overspent their designated travel accounts by a total of $3,800 last fiscal year.

What’s next

Four new faces joined the school board following the November election. Angela Nash, Niki Porter, Joe Trapp and Tamika Washington have replaced Cheryl Caution-Parker, Amelia McKie, Holmes and Manning as board members.

The new board Jan. 19 named an interim superintendent, Nancy Gregory. Gregory has been with the Richland 2 school district since 1980, as a teacher, principal and administrator.

The next day, a spokesperson for the district sent an email listing Gregory’s accolades. This Tuesday, the board finally made a formal statement about the future of the district.

Agostini, now board chair, read a statement on behalf of the full board.

“I appreciate your patience and understanding as we have worked our way this week through a leadership change at our top administrative position,” she began.

The statement didn’t mention Davis, but Agostini said the board believes “we have found a proven leader who brings stability, accountability and a standard of excellence to the position.”

One item on the board’s executive session agenda Tuesday was Gregory’s compensation and contract. Agostini said Gregory will serve as interim superintendent for the duration of the 2022-2023 school year.

Details on how the district will choose a new superintendent will be shared in coming weeks, she said, adding the board hopes now to focus on student achievement, safety and responding to the inspector general’s report.

The district and the school board have previously commented on that report’s findings.

The school district responded with a statement promising to use the report to make “improvements,” but it also noted that student academic performance in the district was on par with students statewide.

Board members in a joint statement after the November report was released wrote, “The Board’s capability to lead is only as strong as our capacity to work through disagreements and find constructive solutions to the challenges facing education. ... This Board has not always hit that high standard. We commit to excellence moving forward.”

McFadden, who has been at the center of multiple controversies in the past year, made a similar comment.

“The OIG’s office highlighted areas of concern in my role that needs to be addressed. It spelled out policy violations and areas of improvement that I need to focus on,” McFadden said. As a housewife and a homeschooling mother when she was first elected in 2020, McFadden said joining the Richland 2 board was “a huge learning curve for me and I tried my best to learn as much as I could.”