Legal bills and blues
Did an attempt to cut legal costs cost Creg Williams his job?
In May during a Board of Education executive session, William Purdy moved that the district should continue to retain Lashly & Baer for its legal services. Ken Brostron, the attorney who has served the St. Louis Public Schools system since the first desegregation lawsuit was filed in 1977, works for that firm.
Creg Williams had told the American during its first at-length interview with the new superintendent in spring of 2005 that he wanted to have in-house counsel and to reduce the legal fees the district was paying.
Sources tell the EYE that Williams thought the district’s legal fees were excessive “and a lot more than they should have been for a district this size.”
The Philadelphia school district from which Williams was hired had a $6.1 million legal bill in Williams’ final year, but it has 235,000 students. He said he found it “unusual” for a district to outsource its legal work so heavily.
Williams succeeded in reducing legal fees. According to figures provided by SLPS during last week’s board meeting, the district’s legal bills dropped from $3.72 million in fiscal year 2004 (William Roberti’s year as superintendent), to $3.10 million in 2005 to $1.43 million during Williams’ first fiscal year.
While the savings are dramatic, the drama might have been too much for Purdy and Brostron, sources say.
Williams reportedly stopped receiving legal advice from Brostron after the April election, with Brostron reporting only to the four-member board majority.
“This appears to us to be just another case of the interest of adults winning out over the interests of children,” said Jeff Rainford, Mayor Francis G. Slay’s chief of staff.
“I think that it’s clear Creg Williams believed the district was spending too much on legal fees. But William Purdy cut him off at the knees.”
Williams wanted to settle the case involving millions of dollars pending from the desegregation lawsuit. Yes, the district had prevailed in the first round of litigation, but a judge later ruled that the case would have to be heard. Talk about a situation that cried out for negotiated settlement. Attorney General Jeremiah “Jay” Nixon, whose errant attacks on the deseg program helped ruin his 1996 senatorial bid against Christopher “Kit” Bond, has been quite wary of the case. Now that he is seeking the governor’s office, he certainly would have been open to settlement.
But Brostron apparently would have no part of it. Why take the risk, the EYE asks? Money could have been pumped back into the public schools, and the legal bills would have halted. Well, SLPS lost the case and its opportunity to settle.
But the influence of Lashly has continued. It was the legal team that hired Diana Bourisaw to audit the district, not district board members. In fact, board president Veronica O’Brien was reportedly notified of Bourisaw’s hiring as auditor on a letter printed on a Lashly letterhead. Having Bourisaw’s audit of the district handled through its legal counsel could have put any information about Williams’ tenure in the district gathered by the audit safely under the protection of attorney-client privilege.
This leads some credence to the suspicion that the new board majority and its legal counsel had Williams’ ouster in its plans as far back as late May. And it would suggest that the secrecy in which the details of Williams’ resignation have been shrouded was crafted in advance.
A ball of confusion
The most amazing thing is that it only took a leather cover and about two pounds of air to throw SLPS into this upheaval.
A basketball. It’s at the center of the latest controversy that could throw the state’s largest school district into the hands of neo-conservatives, voucher backers and straight-out haters of all things urban.
In a nutshell – and nuts is the right term in dealing with the current SLPS board of education majority – the board pulled the wool over Vashon coach Floyd Irons’ eyes in a secretive meeting last Tuesday night and stripped him of his title and coaching position.
Williams lashed out at the board majority, along with board members Robert Archibald, Flint Fowler and Ron Jackson.
Little did an unsuspecting St. Louis know that O’Brien, Peter Downs, Donna Jones and (especially) Purdy were just getting started. At some point Friday, they browbeat a disheartened Williams into resigning. Yet another fiery closed-door meeting followed, then O’Brien announced that Williams was no longer the superintendent. This energetic black man with a plan had been replaced by a re-tread white woman, Diane Bourisaw. In 2000, she had been asked to hit the bricks and get to steppin’ from the affluent Fox School District.
What has she been doing for the last six years? Probably kickin’ it on the $375,000 settlement that attorney Chet Pleban helped her secure from Fox.
What is Williams doing today? Probably kickin’ it in Chicago with part of the $250,000 salary he negotiated to receive to leave his post.
Meanwhile, school starts in six weeks and the district is a complete disaster – again.
Williams waltzes away
The EYE understands that financial settlements of some contracts call on both parties to be silent upon resolution. That being said, it almost seems like Williams was hoping to get fired. Like many superintendents across the nation, they come, they see, they get fired, they get a fat check to go away.
Williams apparently was headed north on I-55 before his signature dried on his resignation.
While Bill Haas sometimes is lost in his own rhetoric, he explains in a letter in today’s American (attempting to speak for the board majority) that the candidate for superintendent that was Williams was not the Williams that took over the job 15 months ago. He was openly rude to the board minority and seemed to be taking orders directly from the mayor’s office, even after the board majority changed. This is almost a sure way to get a pink slip.
While he made $275,000 a year, Williams demanded to be chauffeured around town, including a recent reported jaunt with Irons to the Casino Queen while his driver and car awaited out on the parking lot.
Like Floyd Crues and Pamela Randall Hughes, Williams seemed promising. He had great plans and great energy when he arrived in St. Louis. In the final analysis, he left all too quietly (as did they), as if another opportunity awaited him. By the way, rumor has it that Williams is building a home in the Chicago area. That would have been a long commute to and from St. Louis each day.
At the same time, where was the district’s formal evaluation of Williams’ performance? How about an exit interview of a man paid handsomely to get out of Dodge? If Williams was a mistake, in the board majority’s eyes, why not attempt to learn from the mistake?
Appointment with destiny
In one of the craziest moments in City Hall history, Mayor Slay appointed Veronica O’Brien to the school board when the totally out-there Rochell Moore was removed from her seat. Now O’Brien is the bane of Slay’s existence.
While she vowed to keep the two factions of the school board from destroying progress being made, she instigated the volcanic eruptions of last week. As protestors shouted outside her home on Monday night, she sat on the front steps and spoke on a cell phone. Leadership in action. Get serious, Veronica, you’re the captain of an academic Titanic and the icebergs are all around you. Playing the violin on deck as the ship sinks is your legacy.
The EYE wonders to whom O’Brien was speaking, at the time. It would make perfect sense if it were Bill “Moving Forward to the Past” Purdy on the other end of the line. Purdy certainly seems to be playing the master in the new plantation politics of this board.
Speak up or get out
OK, Ron Jackson might get a bit out-of-control sometimes, but at least he is trying to protect the integrity of the district. He voiced outrage at Williams’ resignation, and rightfully so. It is time for Robert Archibald and Flint Fowler to join him and get just as loud and just as indignant. It’s time to stop missing meetings, being out of town and missing critical votes. When Slay gave Percy Green the axe from his job with the city, Green was at the press conference. When Bourisaw was introduced to the public in a dog-and-pony show that would make Barnum & Bailey proud, the new board minority was absent. Not acceptable.
If Archibald and Fowler are too timid to take on the board majority, they should step down and let Slay appoint two people who are up to the task.
Green with envy
Percy Green’s out-and-out hatred of Slay has led him to fan the fires of discontent, regardless of reason. His work to undermine Williams had nothing to do with the former superintendent’s efforts to improve the unaccredited school district. It had everything to do with spite and bitterness aimed at Slay.
This is why when Green told the American on Monday that he thought Slay and other “sore losers” would now work to see to it that the new board majority fails, the winds of hypocrisy almost blew the walls down at Clyde C. Miller Academy.
Green and his pack of “sore losers” are more interested in the status quo than education reform. While Green has repeatedly blamed the SLPS turmoil on the powerful, rich and white, he has helped turn the district over to two dominant white men, board members Peter Downs and William Purdy, and a white woman, Diane Bourisaw. Black power, indeed, Brother Green.
Make no mistake, all black St. Louisans owe Green a debt of gratitude for taking on racist practices in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Make no mistake about it; he has made a major mistake in helping torpedo the reform efforts of Creg Williams.
Young black minds are the losers this time, not white racists.
Even more terrifying
While the mayor and others might be calling on a state takeover of SLPS, that might be a mistake. Shortly after his election, Governor Matt Blunt told a crowd that “Democrats only live where no one wants to.” That sums up his lack of respect for urban areas and the education of its children. His administration has no respect for African Americans. The thought of his office in direct control of the education of the city’s black children is indeed even more horrible than the current tumult the district finds itself in. If the mayor is even thinking of trying to cut his losses in his troubled attempt to instigate reform in SLPS by handing the grenade to this governor, he should think again.
