BERKLEY COUNTY, S.C. – A week after the Berkeley County School Board voted to fire its superintendent, Board Chairman Mac McQuillin issued a lengthy statement Wednesday.
The board voted 6 to 3 to fire Deon Jackson during its regularly scheduled meeting last week. The move prompted some people in attendance, including board members, to walk out of the meeting.
David Barrow, Crystal Wigfall and Yvonne Bradley opposed Jackson’s termination and how quickly his replacement was named.
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In response to Jackson’s termination, McQuillin, issued the following response:
Over the past week, the Berkeley County School District and the members of the Board of Trustees have received many questions about our recent decision to terminate the employment of former Superintendent Deon Jackson. The District absolutely recognizes the public’s right to know about the reasons and process that led to this decision. As a result, I am providing this response to answer many of the legitimate questions that have been raised.
To begin, I acknowledge that the failure to offer reasons for the action at the recent Board meeting could have created the perception that we were not being fully transparent with the public. That is a legitimate criticism, but I want to assure the public that we have nothing to hide. The rationale of our action was not fully explained during open session of the meeting because the public discussion of personnel matters is fraught with legal risks that potentially expose the District to liability that is ultimately borne by taxpayers. In fact, legal claims have previously arisen directly from statements made about District employees in Board meetings. Because of these legal risks, we wanted to handle the discussion of Mr. Jackson’s termination cautiously to limit the District’s legal exposure.
Also, we had limited discussion about the employment action out of a desire to avoid embarrassment to Mr. Jackson and minimize disruption to the District. After the personnel matters were added to the agenda, I reached out to Mr. Jackson, days prior to the meeting, to inform him of the possible action and to request that he consider resigning and working towards an amicable resolution with the District. Mr. Jackson never responded to my request. Unfortunately, it appears that he coordinated with others to ensure that his termination would play out in public regardless of how it would affect the District, its employees, parents, and students.
While we wish Mr. Jackson would have chosen a different path, we realize that the public deserves answers, and the public interest in getting information about his termination outweighs the legitimate legal concerns that led to our more cautious approach to discussing this decision at the recent meeting.
Turning to the reasons that motivated the newly elected Board members to transition to new leadership, they can be summed up simply and concisely: We lacked trust and confidence in Mr. Jackson to lead the District. I will provide more detail below, but it is suffice to say that no superintendent can effectively lead without the support of the elected officials entrusted with overseeing our schools.
The most important job of any school board is to appoint a superintendent that can put students on the path to academic success. The members voting to terminate Mr. Jackson found him lacking in this regard. Since Mr. Jackson took over as superintendent, the academic performance of our schools has declined. Recently reported data indicates that the District performed below the state average in all areas except in the End-of-Course English I assessment. In 2022, thirteen schools rated below average in academic achievement and four rated unsatisfactory. Given the caliber of our teachers and the talent and skills of our students, these results are disconcerting.
While the cause of this academic decline can be debated, there can be no debate that deliberate action is necessary to reverse this trend. And ultimately it is the Board’s responsibility to take action immediately. We simply cannot risk our children’s academic future on the hope that things will get better by adhering to the status quo.
For this reason, among others, we believed that the District needed different leadership. And Dr. Anthony Dixon’s skills, talents, and experience reveal that he was uniquely qualified to lead our District’s students to academic success. Schools under Dr. Dixon’s leadership have earned Palmetto Gold and Silver awards, achieved an all-time high Excellent growth rating, and an Average middle school rating after consecutive years in the bottom ten percent of the State’s school rankings. After recently departing BCSD, Dr. Dixon was selected by the Charleston County School District (“CCSD”) as its Chief of Schools. Dr. Dixon, who previously worked at CCSD, was described by that district as a “visionary with demonstrated results” who has been recognized “for his high-impact and transformational leadership.” These qualities and experience make Dr. Dixon the right choice to turn our schools’ academic performance around.
In addition to wanting to reverse our District’s academic decline, the members of the Board voting to terminate Mr. Jackson did not have confidence that he could perform the job consistently with the values that we cherish because of actions taken during his leadership over the past year and a half. Perhaps most significantly, the District’s relationship with agencies entrusted with protecting children from abuse and neglect have deteriorated during that period. As a Board, we fully expect that our administration will work cooperatively with law enforcement and child protection agencies to protect our most vulnerable students and to prosecute those who would abuse and exploit them. Unfortunately, the cooperation that we expect has recently turned adversarial.
As an example, the District’s response to a recent SLED investigation into sexual crimes allegedly committed by a School Resource Officer at Stratford High School has likely damaged our relationship with SLED and raised questions about the professional judgment of our former leadership, including the former superintendent and former legal counsel. As many will recall, the SRO assigned to Stratford was charged with sexual exploitation of a minor student who attended Stratford. In dealing with similar investigations in the past, the District has endeavored to be as cooperative as we could with law enforcement. Unfortunately, the level of cooperation offered by the District into the investigation of this matter was lacking, as explained below:
- In response to the investigation, at least one high-ranking District employee was instructed by District leadership not to talk with SLED.
- When SLED requested a chain of emails between the principal of Stratford and the SRO, the District’s former legal counsel refused to provide them unless SLED issued a subpoena for them. (Att. A – Email from T. Richardson to SLED Agent Greg.) The purported reason for this position was that the emails were educational records protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act; however, there is judicial precedent indicating that such emails are not considered protected educational records.
- After SLED interviewed school employees, the District’s former legal counsel, with the approval of Mr. Jackson, wrote an email to SLED Chief Mark Keel, accusing SLED of causing the District to violate federal law, “browbeating and intimidation,” and and trying to “take down the district” based on nothing more than “rumors.” (Att. B – Email from T. Richardson to SLED Chief Mark Keel.)
- The District’s response to SLED’s investigation prompted Chief Keel to defend his agents’ actions. In his response, Chief Keel identified factual inaccuracies in the District’s letter and called the allegations unfounded and having “no validity.” (Att. C. – Ltr. from SLED Chief Keel to T. Richardson.)
In addition, we have learned that the District’s relationship with the South Carolina Department of Social Services (“DSS”) had become so frayed that DSS was on the verge of filing civil litigation against the District to enjoin the District’s practices with respect to DSS investigators having access to interview students who are alleged to be the victims of child abuse and neglect. As most know, DSS is the state agency that has the authority and obligation to investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect, and there is specific statutory authority for DSS to conduct interviews of children on “school premises.” S.C. Code Ann. § 63-7-920(C). Despite this statutory authority and a recent opinion issued by the South Carolina Attorney General stating that DSS “cannot be compelled to permit school administrators or other personnel who are not law enforcement officers to be present in interviews,” the District, at the direction of our former legal counsel and superintendent, refused DSS access to students to conduct interviews of child abuse or neglect unless a school counselor or social worker is present in the interview. (Att. D – Email from DSS to B. Gaskins.) The District, under Mr. Jackson’s leadership, had become so stubborn on this issue that DSS was contemplating legal action and was prepared to seek investigative warrants from the family court to get access to students in District schools. However, as a result of the recent change in leadership, legal action has been avoided, and the District will be cooperating with DSS in the future to ensure that it can effectively investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect without unnecessary interference from the District’s former leadership.
Regardless of the motives underlying the District’s actions discussed above under Mr. Jackson’s leadership, it is simply unconscionable that District leadership allowed our relationships with key law enforcement and child protection agencies to deteriorate to this point. We, as a Board, should expect that our District’s leadership should be fostering cooperative relationships with the agencies responsible for investigating child abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Unfortunately, the District’s actions under Mr. Jackson’s leadership harmed rather than strengthened those relationships.
Similarly concerning is the fact that Mr. Jackson failed to advise many Board members of these issues. Instead of informing the full Board and getting direction from the individuals elected by the voters, Mr. Jackson kept most of the Board in the dark. Members who recently voted to terminate Mr. Jackson had to learn of these issues from other sources. While it is unknown if and to what extent former Board leadership was informed of these issues, all Board members should have been apprised of these developments before legal action from DSS became imminent and before the chief law enforcement agency of this state was accused by District leadership of causing violations of federal law, intimidation, and trying to take down the District.
In addition to these issues, the District under Mr. Jackson’s leadership failed to demonstrate a commitment to transparency that the public deserves, especially with respect to providing the public with information as required under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). As an example, the District refused to release all records relating to the demotion of a school principal requested by a local media outlet under a privacy exemption. (Att. E – FOIA Response.) When our former employment and recently rehired attorney learned about this failure to disclose information, he terminated his relationship with the District based on his fundamental disagreement with the District’s position. (Att. F – B. Gaskins Termination Ltr.) Following our former counsel’s termination of his representation of the District, the lawyer for the media outlet requesting the information raised the same objections based on the same principles of law and judicial precedent. (Att. G – Ltr. from Attorney for WCSC.) Although these legal issues were brought to the attention of Mr. Jackson, the District maintained its refusal to disclose the requested documents.
More recently, the District has raised similar objections to a media request regarding allegations of sexual misconduct by District employees. In response to the request, the District, at the direction of its leadership, refused to produce certain documents under purported exemptions that are nowhere to be found in FOIA. And for documents for which no FOIA exemption could be reasonably asserted, the District attempted to charge the media member between $40,000-$50,000 to conduct a search for them. (Att. H – FOIA Request & Response.) Taking these types of positions suggests that the District has something to hide, when in fact we should be an open book, which again raises questions about the professional judgment of our former leadership.
As stated above and as hopefully demonstrated by this statement, the District should endeavor to conduct its business in the open and not hide issues of employee conduct, whether good or bad. The failure of the District to adhere to the principles of transparency and open government under Mr. Jackson, along with his failure to openly communicate important issues to all Board members, demonstrate that our lack of trust and confidence was warranted. In sum, for the District to succeed in the future, it was necessary for Mr. Jackson to have the Board’s complete trust and confidence in him, and he simply did not have it.
Turning to the process that culminated in Mr. Jackson’s termination, I unequivocally deny that the decision was made in a meeting – whether in person, on the phone, virtually, or otherwise – prior to the Board meeting on Tuesday, November 15th. Although some have speculated that a meeting must have occurred beforehand, such speculation has no basis in fact. To begin, Mr. Jackson was not the first choice for superintendent of four members of the Board who were just re-elected and voted to terminate him, and it should come as no surprise that those four members would maintain a preference for leadership other than Mr. Jackson. And when new members were recently elected to the Board, there were one-on-one discussions about the possibility of a change in leadership. Yet there is nothing illegal about those discussions. In fact, such discussions outside of formal meetings are necessary for any school board to effectively govern. To suggest otherwise or pretend that other Board members who disagree with our recent decision never had similar discussions outside of a meeting is simply naïve and disingenuous.
Finally, I would like to address the decision to hire Dr. Dixon. Again, no meeting occurred in which a decision was made to offer the position of superintendent to Dr. Dixon prior to the meeting on Tuesday, November 15th. When it became clear through the one-on-one discussions mentioned above that a change in leadership was likely desired, I reached out to Dr. Dixon to gauge his interest in the position. Dr. Dixon was the first choice of four Board members to become superintendent when we conducted the superintendent search last year, and he was naturally the first person that came to mind when a change appeared possible. As stated above, Dr. Dixon’s skills and experience as an accomplished academic leader and his love for Berkeley County and its schools and students made him the best choice to lead our District. He is a coveted leader in the field of education, and we simply could not risk the possibility of losing the opportunity of having him as our superintendent when he expressed a reciprocal interest in the job. Given our history with Dr. Dixon and his recent candidacy in the most recent superintendent search, there was no need to waste time and money on another search. Decisive action was needed, and we were elected to take it. Put simply, Dr. Dixon is the right man at the right time to lead our District into the future, and we are confident that he will prove the wisdom of our decision for years to come.
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