It was the most debated education issue in Columbus for the past two months and perhaps the most contentious proposal in the four-year tenure of Muscogee County School District superintendent David Lewis.
And by a one-vote margin May 15, a majority of the Muscogee County School Board rejected the superintendent’s controversial recommendation to hire Camelot Education, a private, for-profit company based in Austin, Texas, to run three alternative education programs for $6.4 million annually, serving students with severe emotional or behavioral problems, severe discipline code violations and those who are over-age and under-credited.
Supporting the plan were board chairwoman Pat Hugley Green of District 1, Naomi Buckner of District 4, Laurie McRae of District 5 and Cathy Williams of District 7; voting against the plan were vice chairwoman and countywide representative Kia Chambers, John Thomas of District 2, Vanessa Jackson of District 3, Mark Cantrell of District 6 and Frank Myers of District 8.
So how and why did this plan fail, and what are the lessons learned? The Ledger-Enquirer reached out to all board members for their input to prepare this analysis. Green, Buckner, McRae, Williams, Thomas and Cantrell replied; Chambers, Jackson and Myers did not. Lewis and assistant superintendent Rebecca Braaten, who announced her resignation last week, declined the L-E’s request to interview them for this story.
In interviews via phone and email, board members expressed complaints and explanations about various problems regarding the proposal. They can be categorized under the following headings: trust, communication, cost, outsourcing and allegations.
Trust
Green’s support for the proposal is grounded in her fundamental belief about the roles of the superintendent and the board.
“I believe that the superintendent/CEO is hired to determine the needs and the timing of those needs for the school district as a part of his duty in the day-to-day operations,” Green said. “I also believe that the CEO should give deliberate and careful thought when evaluating any company or individual that is planned to do business with the school district.
“I trust Dr. David Lewis to make the best recommendations based on his professional knowledge and experience. I also trust that his decisions are based on what is best for students and the MCSD.”
Cantrell summed up his opposition to the Camelot plan this way: “When in doubt, don’t. There were just several red flags that came up about Camelot, but it was a hard decision, especially knowing I could have been one of the deciding votes.”
That’s why, Cantrell said, proponents and opponents of the proposal tried to sway him.
“Cathy talked to me about voting yes, and Laurie talked to me about voting yes,” Cantrell said. “Kia talked to me about voting no, and Frank talked to me about voting no.”
Lewis also called to gain his support, Cantrell said.
“It’s hard to vote against the superintendent’s recommendation,” Cantrell said. “… But all these factors added up, and I felt more comfortable voting no than yes.”
Thomas said the superintendent never called him to ask for his support “on any issue, nor has he ever had a conversation with me in an attempt to change my mind if he knew I was not supporting him or, more specifically, one of his proposals. Not once.”
Cantrell emphasized his vote was against the superintendent’s proposal — not against the superintendent.
“I think Dr. Lewis brought something 100 percent in good faith that he believes is best for the district,” Cantrell said. “I have 100 percent confidence in Dr. Lewis, but that doesn’t mean I always agree with what he brings.”
Buckner didn’t always agree with the Camelot proposal. In fact, she said, she leaned toward voting against it until Lewis sufficiently answered her “three or four pages” of questions and another page of follow-up questions.
Communication
Cantrell credits the administration for doing “a lot of research” about the issue, but he criticized the administration for not sharing the idea with the board and the public sooner than 11 days before the board originally was asked to vote on the proposal.
“Some things could have been given to the board earlier,” Cantrell said. “… The board needs to know what’s going on, especially something this big.”
Buckner said, “I think there was a communication problem.”
Lewis has said his administration had been exploring and developing this proposal for approximately 18 months before it was released to the public during a specially called board meeting March 16, in advance of the scheduled March 27 vote. Depending on which board member you ask, that was the first time certain board members were informed about the idea while others say they heard about it at the Jan. 18 retreat.
But the Camelot plan wasn’t mentioned then, Thomas insisted.
“We were told at the planning retreat that the administration was considering new ways to address problems with special-needs students,” Thomas said. “The kicker is that Dr. Lewis had already been talking with Camelot for a year at that point. When it was suddenly presented as a package (March 16) and the board was pressured for a quick approval (March 27), several board members who normally approve anything Dr. Lewis wants felt that something was not right with this particular proposal.”
Some board members received more specifics by accepting the superintendent’s invitation for a private briefing.
“He brought us in by ones and twos,” Buckner said. “Some board members don’t go when they’re invited.”
McRae said, “I first saw information about the Camelot proposal on March 9. I had received an email a week or two before that, giving all board members the opportunity to learn about the proposal.”
“Bringing it up two weeks before (the originally scheduled March 27 vote) was too much on the plate to comprehend,” Cantrell said. “Six months earlier, things might have turned out different.”
Buckner suggested the same time frame.
“If you are going to propose something controversial, it should be proposed six months, seven months before (the vote),” Buckner said.
Green noted, however, that as early as January 2014, six months into Lewis’ tenure, he stated in his initial assessment report to the board and public, “There currently is not a comprehensive systemic and systematic approach to addressing the needs of all students toward achieving full-option graduation. Impediments toward this end include the lack of alternative education options for traditional and non-traditional student learning.”
Also in the report, as one of his “near-term” planned initiatives, Lewis listed this: “Reform and restructure alternative education programs for at-risk and overage students.”
Lewis doesn’t mention in the report any possibility of outsourcing those services. Three years later, when the administration announced that conclusion, Hugley said, “Board members who chose to had an opportunity to meet with the administration, who reviewed and researched the different companies. The meeting included information about companies who provide such specialized resources and instruction.”
The administration also answered the board’s questions about the proposal in emails and private conversations, Green said.
So during that March 27 meeting, in the only unanimous vote about this issue, the board approved Lewis’ request to delay the vote until April 10 because the superintendent heard enough representatives say the decision was being rushed without enough information. Administration officials had said they needed an answer then for adequate time to prepare for the new programs before next school year starts.
The postponed vote allowed the district to conduct two public forums for residents to hear more about the proposal and Camelot officials questions.
Two weeks later, the board again delayed the decision, this time in a 5-3 vote. Chambers, Thomas, Jackson, Buckner and Myers voted to table the recommendation for three months and appoint a community advisory committee to further study the issue and report back to the board.
One month later, the advisory committee still wasn’t appointed, and the board took two votes with the same 5-4 split: first the vote that put the proposal back on the table, then, after 37 minutes of more debate, the vote that killed the recommendation.
The administration arranged trips for the board to visit Camelot schools in Chicago and Pensacola for an inside look at those programs, but only one board member, Williams, took advantage of the opportunity. Camelot paid for the bus trip to Pensacola and invited the public to join. Eighteen residents were on the May 15 ride, which left 11 hours before the board’s ultimate vote.
Because those trips were booked with only a few days of notice less than a week before the final vote, not enough time was allotted to change work and personal schedules, Cantrell said.
“Dr. Lewis overplayed his hand,” Thomas said. “He counted on his normal five, six or seven votes on this issue. He failed to gauge the feelings of the board, and he did not consider the input from the public. The proposal failed because it was completed in secrecy, presented with undue urgency and rolled out as ‘all or nothing’ to a board that had a lot of questions.”
Buckner also suspects Lewis and the administration took for granted support from some board members.
“He probably assumed he had such a good proposal, that it was very logical,” Buckner said. “… He may not have understood the emotional impact of what he was proposing.”
“People who are very passionate about an issue, they tend to draw other people in,” Buckner continued. “They tend to be like Trump supporters. They will keep up the noise, keep the fuss going. So he (Lewis) has to think about that because they (opponents) have enough time to stir things up in the community.”
Still, asserted Cantrell, “If we would’ve had adequate time … it wouldn’t be your back against the wall. It would have been much easier to absorb.”
Williams, however, contends the administration gave the board plenty of time and information to do its due diligence. She not only toured Camelot sites, she relied on the expertise from the separate visits Braaten, student services chief Melvin Blackwell and special-education director Mary Lewis made to Camelot schools in Chicago.
“I supported the administration’s recommendation based on the in-depth briefing I received from the educators who visited the sites, the quality and how comprehensive the services were,” Williams said. “I recognized that these educators were best equipped to analyze the services and determine if they met the needs of the district. I also made site visits to Camelot and heard from many MCSD educators about how needed these services were.”
Cost
According to the three program contracts, Camelot would have charged MCSD annual fees of:
▪ $3,084,020 for a Therapeutic Day School, serving as many as 75 K-12 students with severe emotional and behavioral disorders. They are currently served in the Woodall Program at Davis Elementary School and Carver High School
▪ $2,234,717.50 for a Transitional School, serving as many as 250 K-12 students with severe discipline code violations. They are currently served in the AIM program (Achievement, Integrity and Maturity) at the Edgewood Student Services Center.
▪ $1,117,358.75 for an Excel Academy, serving as many as 125 over-age and under-credited students in grades 6-12. This would have been a new program for MCSD.
These programs would have been housed in the former Marshall Middle School, except the K-5 students in a Therapeutic Day School would have remained at Davis, adjacent to Marshall.
The term of each contract, starting July 1, would have been six months, with successive options to renew for another six months through June 30, 2020. So the $6.4 million in annual fees would have amounted to $19.2 million over three years. Add the estimated $1,350,000 to renovate Marshall and accommodate the three Camelot programs, and the total cost of approving this proposal would have been more than $20 million over three years.
But the administration stressed that nearly all the Camelot fees would be redirecting money MCSD already spends on alternative education, and Lewis has said an undisclosed potential buyer was interested in purchasing the Edgewood property, appraised at $1.3 million, which essentially would have paid for renovating Marshall.
“The administration showed how the current funding is used for therapeutic resources, provided for some students, not all, and a discipline alternative program,” Green said. “These funds could be redirected to fund an opportunity for one vendor who could meet those needs and at a cost savings that would include a third program for over-age and under-credited students who are not currently being served.”
Chambers did ask the administration whether the board could vote on the contracts separately, but MCSD and Camelot officials have said the plan’s financials then wouldn’t work because the savings are in the economy of scale and shared resources by combining the three programs in one building.
McRae figured that’s sound thinking.
“In looking at the financial impact,” McRae said, “we needed to bundle these programs in order to be able to afford to provide our students with these new and expanded services.”
Thomas said Lewis “was adamant that it had to be the entire package. There was no negotiation; it was his way or the highway.”
Outsourcing
Camelot operates 43 schools in six states. MCSD would have been the first district in Georgia to partner with Camelot, and the plan was to make it the first district to have all three programs in one building. While the staff would have been employed by Camelot, those students would have remained part of the school district, including their records and test scores, MCSD and Camelot officials have said.
Thomas equated the unique proposal with being “the Camelot guinea pig for the state of Georgia, and I remain solidly opposed to outsourcing the work of our education professionals. There are 189 school districts in this state — surely we can collaborate with others and learn from those who are succeeding where Dr. Lewis says we are failing.”
Thomas added, “I believe that we have great programs in place that need more time and resources from our administration. The district should hire the therapeutic help and other professionals that we were told Camelot could provide. I believe our own people can do a better job than Camelot or any other outsourced program could.”
Lewis has said no current MCSD employees would have lost their jobs because of this proposal being implemented. Those displaced employees could have applied for Camelot positions and would have been offered other positions in the district, the superintendent has said. Combined, the AIM and Woodall programs have 53 employees; the total staff for the three Camelot programs at what would have been called the Marshall Learning Center was expected to be roughly 100.
“We currently have unfilled positions in our special-education staff and therapists,” McRae noted, “so how could we staff these much-needed new and expanded programs?”
Parents expressed concern about having special-needs children in the same building with students dealing with severe discipline violations, Cantrell said.
Chambers expressed a similar concern during the May 15 meeting, when she said, “You are grouping three separate groups of students who need three totally different things, and I just am not convinced that this totality is what is best for all students.”
MCSD and Camelot officials, however, have promised that the three programs would have kept their students apart at Marshall, including separate entrances and exits.
Allegations
Another “red flag” for Cantrell were the allegations of Camelot staff abusing students by being overly aggressive while disciplining them.
A March 8 story on Slate.com titled “That Place Was Like a Prison” reported allegations of Camelot employees abusing students with overly aggressive responses to discipline problems in five cities: Reading, Pa.; Lancaster, Pa.; Philadelphia; New Orleans; and Pensacola, Fla.
In its 17-page response to Slate’s questions, Camelot wrote, “With the exception of an isolated incident in Reading, PA in which we immediately investigated and terminated multiple employees, Camelot has had no founded child abuse cases or lawsuits involving our students over the last decade. Your narrative is formulated using fewer than 10 incidents from the almost 5,940,000 daily interactions over a period of 10 years.”
Whether the incidents were “real or not,” Cantrell said, “the uncertainty of it all” proved too unsettling.
Thomas called the company “suspect.”
“Camelot, in one incarnation or another, has had grave issues throughout their history and across the country,” Thomas said.
Thomas concluded, “Dr. Lewis and Camelot supporters on the board say that Camelot failed because the opposition was misinformed, did not do the research, did not understand. Those are all specious arguments. The opposition understood this proposal all too well and rightly defeated it.”
The board’s majority has blocked a few other proposals from Lewis in his four years here, such as the district’s calendar two years ago, the tentative budget last year and even the recommendation – during the same May 15 meeting when the Camelot proposal failed — to spend $220,000 for upgrading the 8-year-old boardroom’s technology. But this clearly is his administration’s most significant setback.
All of which prompted Buckner to ask Lewis whether this will prompt him to leave. The superintendent assured her of his commitment to MCSD, Buckner said, and told her, “We’ve got to figure out something else.”
Mark Rice: 706-576-6272, @markricele