Who's the board member who caused OKCPS superintendent to resign? No one wants to answer.

Murray Evans, The Oklahoman
·4 min read
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Oklahoma City Superintendent Sean McDaniel is pictured Aug. 29 during a media briefing on security at Oklahoma City public school events at the Clara Luper Center for Educational Services.
Oklahoma City Superintendent Sean McDaniel is pictured Aug. 29 during a media briefing on security at Oklahoma City public school events at the Clara Luper Center for Educational Services.

Lips remained sealed on Tuesday, with no one close to the situation providing transparency into the surprise resignation of Sean McDaniel as the superintendent of the Oklahoma City Public Schools district.

But the district did announce it would hold a special board meeting on Thursday night. On the agenda are items for closed session discussion “regarding the evaluation and employment” of the superintendent, as well as open-session “discussion and possible action regarding the evaluation and employment of the superintendent,” and the selection of a search firm to find a new superintendent.

McDaniel’s resignation letter to OKC district's board members noted there is “a particular member” of the board “who holds completely different views” than he does “regarding individual board members' roles and responsibilities and mine in serving this District."

McDaniel said in the letter he’d tried to “bridge that gulf through conversations with the board and with concessions I have been willing to make, but to no avail. I regret that our differing views of who should administer the District on a daily basis are now irreconcilable."

The identity of that board member remains a mystery. The Oklahoman contacted, via email, all eight board members, and one incoming board member, on Tuesday, and only one responded. That one, Meg McElhaney, said she could not comment.

“Unfortunately, since the details I have are from executive session and/or related to a personnel issue I am obligated to not speak on it,” she said.

How the Oklahoma City School Board has responded so far

The district issued a statement on behalf of the district's board Chair Paula Lewis that read: “At this time, there is no additional information to share related to the resignation of Superintendent McDaniel. Currently there is no plan for a press conference or media interviews. The board will call a special meeting to consider the resignation and discuss next steps in the coming days."

The statement said: “The average tenure for urban superintendents is approximately three years, and we are grateful to have had Dr. McDaniel in OKCPS for double that. Dr. McDaniel is the longest serving superintendent in the last 20 years for OKCPS.”

Lewis has served as the board chair, an elected position, since 2017.

McDaniel also didn’t respond to a message left by The Oklahoman. He said in his letter he planned to finish out the school year with the district and work until June 30, at which point he would have been the OKC district's superintendent exactly six years, as he started July 1, 2018.

Oklahoma City Superintendent Sean McDaniel and other district leaders talked Aug. 7 about the coming school year at the Clara Luper Center for Educational Services.
Oklahoma City Superintendent Sean McDaniel and other district leaders talked Aug. 7 about the coming school year at the Clara Luper Center for Educational Services.

He is the longest-serving Oklahoma City Public Schools superintendent since Arthur Steller, who held the job from 1985 through November 1992. Since Stellar left, McDaniel is one of only three people to last at least five years as the district’s superintendent.

School board, Sean McDaniel clashed over charter school approval

Clues to why McDaniel is unhappy might be found in one of the board’s recent high-profile votes.

As recently as late October, the board unanimously amended McDaniel’s contract to award him an annual raise of $11,300, increasing his annual base salary to $278,300. McDaniel is the state's highest-paid school superintendent, according to an Oklahoma State Department of Education database.

But on Nov. 27, several board members went against McDaniel's recommendation by approving, by a 6-2 vote, an application for a charter school that McDaniel opposed. The six board members who voted against McDaniel’s recommendation were Lewis, board Vice Chair Lori Bowman, Carole Thompson, Juan Lecona, McElhaney and Mark Mann. Mann has since left the board. Supporting McDaniel’s recommendation were Cary Pirrong and Adrian Anderson.

Pirrong’s term expires this year, and he’s running for reelection. Terms for Lewis, Bowman and Thompson expire in 2025. Anderson’s and McElhaney’s terms expire in 2026, and Lecona’s expires in 2027.

On Feb. 5, the board held a special meeting, at which the only agenda item was a closed session regarding "the evaluation and employment of the Superintendent." The board held a regular meeting on Feb. 12 with no closed session but canceled its regularly scheduled “work session” on Feb. 26.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Identity of OKCPS board member who irked McDaniel remains a mystery