One news story last week thrilled and mortified me simultaneously.

The story centered on the verdict in a federal lawsuit.

Jurors decided Friday to side with a former public school principal who felt black school administrators treated her differently because she was white and ultimately forced her to resign.

I only know the plaintiff, Cindy Idom, by reputation. She was always considered to be a good principal by those who knew her, thus it came as a shock when she first left the district and then a further shock when she filed the lawsuit against the Natchez-Adams School District.

What thrilled me most about the outcome wasn’t that Idom won, particularly, but in the manner that she won. The reality is in such cases even the “winners” have had to go through extreme stress and hardship to see the lawsuit through to fruition.

Given that the matter involved a serious allegation, based in part on race, the court’s decision could have had catastrophic ramifications, racially. Fortunately the jury almost perfectly represented our county’s racial population — majority black.

After hearing days of evidence, jurors unanimously sided with Idom and awarded her compensation for lost wages, lost retirement benefits and some punitive damages as well.

That’s the good news.

For Idom and her family, two years of fighting to right a wrong was finally over.

But where does that leave the public school district and how on earth does it begin to pick up the pieces now?

Clearly, Superintendent Frederick Hill and Assistant Superintendent Tanisha Smith have no business continuing to serve the district.

The federal jury in siding with Idom suggested both had overstepped their authority and mistreated her based on race. Logic follows that if the duo mistreated one administrator, they likely mistreated others, too.

Hill and Smith should resign their positions, as should three of the five members of the Natchez-Adams School Board — Tim Blalock, Benny Wright and Thelma Newsome.

Those three members hurriedly voted in June to extend Hill’s employment contract, even though the existing contract had not yet expired.

They did so, knowing the district was engaged in Idom’s lawsuit and another pending lawsuit over similar allegations. The vote appeared to be tied to at least a few school board members’ knowledge that Hill had, just days earlier, been on an interview for the superintendent position in a Michigan school district.

At this point the district’s credibility — at least that of those in the top administration offices at Braden School, the district’s headquarters — is gone in the public eye.

With no creditability and for the sake of the students, teachers and parents in the district, a complete restructuring of the district’s leadership is in order.

While a myriad of employee and administrative departures and subsequent lawsuits and such were discounted at first as simply — people disgruntled over change — through Idom’s bravery for standing up and taking the matter to court, we’ve learned something vastly different.

The system’s woes were not merely a few disgruntled people, as Hill and others would have us believe, but a systematic breakdown of leadership and common sense and decency which at first seems to start at Hill’s office door, until you realize, the school board has the lone ability to hire and fire Hill.

Instead of reprimanding him or putting him on probation, the three controlling school board members effectively gave him their personal stamp of approval by voting to extend his contract for three additional years. The drama and shenanigans in the school district must end. What’s been happening in our public school’s administration should mortify us all. The district is amongst our largest employers as well as the most important factor in educating our community’s future.

The time to clean house at Braden has come.

 

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.