Knox County Schools parents' complaint: School board members violated policy and state law - Knoxville News Sentinel
A Knox County Schools parent group has filed an ethics complaint against three school board members, saying they acted against the school board's own policy and potentially violated the Tennessee Open Meetings Act.
A parent named Amanda Collins, chair of the group Knox County Schools Parent Advocates for School Safety, says board members Betsy Henderson, Susan Horn and Kirsti Kristy broke the rules when they solicited the Knox County Commission to hire private attorneys even though the whole board voted to continue working with the Knox County Law Director's Office. And the parent says the board members violated the open meetings law in doing so.
The school board members went out on their own this week to ask Knox County Law Director David Buuck to hire private lawyers to fight a mask lawsuit facing the school district.
The parents' group also alleges Henderson, Horn and Kristy secretly worked together to coordinate their appearance at this week's county commission meeting, violating the Tennessee Open Meetings Act.
“By privately arranging their actions related to the commission meeting and then also only selectively sharing their intent to appear at commission, it looks like Henderson, Horn, and Kristy might have violated Sunshine Laws, especially the need for adequate public notice – not just adequate notice to those who support us,” Collins said in a press release.
In a text message, Henderson told Knox News the complaints are "politics at its worst, and I will never back down from fighting for parents and kids."
The group sent the complaints to school board ethics committee members are Evetty Satterfield, Jennifer Owen and Mike McMillan. According to the press release from KCS PASS, Owen forwarded several complaints to Buuck to investigate the allegations related to Tennessee Open Meetings Act violations.
Kristy told Knox News she is motivated by a wish to have a federal judge's school mask rule removed.
"I continue to hear absolutely heartbreaking stories from parents about how universal masking is having a negative impact on their child’s mental health, social and emotional well being, ability to learn, ability to focus, is causing skin issues, is worsening speech delays … the list continues to grow," she said.
How we got here
On Wednesday, the school board took a vote of confidence to empower the county law director's office to continue litigating the mask lawsuit on behalf the board. Some members raised concerns that the law director's work wasn't robust enough, but the board itself does not have power over the law director, who is an elected official.
Kristy and Henderson voted against the vote of confidence, and Horn passed on voting on the motion.
During the meeting, Henderson said she wrote a letter to Buuck requesting he hire a private lawyer to help with the case and welcomed board members to sign it. Kristy signed, and Henderson shared the letter on her Facebook page.
Buuck refused to hire a private attorney, so Henderson and Kristy went to the county commission to ask members to pass a resolution that would allow the county to bring in outside lawyers to help with the case. The commission will vote on the resolution Tuesday.
Kristy, Horn and Henderson attended the county commission meeting and spoke to members.
Knox News Children's Issues reporter Natalie Parks contributed to this story.
source: https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/education/2022/02/18/knox-county-schools-parents-school-board-members-violated-state-law/6843338001/
Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.