Ukaoma denied request to officiate graduation tonight
By Bill Beene
Of the St. Louis American
For the first time since Riverview Gardens High School students protested against their principal’s ouster about a month ago, Clem Ukaoma spoke up for himself Monday at a press conference.
Ukaoma said he wants his job back and his good name cleared. He also wants to hand out diplomas at the school’s graduation ceremony this evening, Thursday, May 19.
During a previous student protest, senior Samantha Speed said, “If he ain’t on stage when I walk across, I’m not shaking anyone’s hand.”
On Monday, Ukaoma’s attorney, C. John Pleban, faxed a letter to the district’s school board president, Marlene Terry, that stated, “If the district does not justify its decision to suspend Mr. Ukaoma by providing him with the due process hearing he requested for graduation, Mr. Ukaoma should be afforded the opportunity to officiate at the graduation.”
It continued, “Mr. Ukaoma’s personal encouragement of the students has increased retention and graduation rates at Riverview Gardens High School. To deny Mr. Ukaoma and his students the right to celebrate this accomplishment together is simply evidence of the district’s bad faith efforts to retaliate against him and to punish the students as well.”
On Tuesday, Pleban said an attorney for the school board responded negatively to this and other requests concerning Ukaoma. The due process hearing and reinstatement of Ukaoma as principal also were denied.
In response, Pleban said his only alternative is to file a lawsuit against the district.
Pleban said filing the suit will give him subpoena power, “which will allow us to get into some of their (the school board’s) records.”
Getting into the records, Pleban said, will enable him to get documentation to clarify financial issues about the district that Ukaoma has raised.
Pleban said that Ukaoma was dismissed because he questioned school funding that he thought was unaccounted for and thus became a “whistle blower.”
According to a report by an independent management team sent into the district by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), $3,500 was expended from the $10,000 grant for the high school’s 2003-2004 school year, and a balance of $6,500 was not returned to DESE. Therefore, the district was not eligible to receive a grant of $10,000 for the following year.
The report’s introduction also commended Ukaoma’s performance as principal of the high school.
It read: “It will become apparent to the careful reader of these documents that Mr. Ukaoma consistently led the staff of the Riverview Gardens High School toward improvement; that he took the recommendations seriously and responded appropriately to them; and that, given the accomplishments of his staff, he continued to have and uphold a vision for the students and staff of the high school.”
Students attest to Ukaoma’s upgrading of the school, which now is provisionally accredited.
“We worked hard this year because of him,” senior Brittany Leper. “There was a credit recovery program that put us in place so we could graduate.”
Ukaoma said that because he increased the number of graduating students and reduced the dropout rate after one year at the school, he should not have been ousted. The dropout rate among blacks at the school was reduced by 48 percent under his tenure.
Yet, he is without a job in the Riverview Gardens School District.
Of the non-renewal of his contract, he said, “It’s feels like a slap in the face after almost two years of working hard on the problems of that school and bringing staff and students along.”