NATCHEZ — Natchez-Adams School Board trustees met with area elected officials Tuesday in an effort to open lines of communication and explain how the school district is meant to operate.

Joining the school board were all of the Adams County Board of Supervisors except District 4 Supervisor Darryl Grennell, and Natchez City Aldermen Mark Fortenbery, Dan Dillard and Rickey Gray.

Natchez Mayor Butch Brown and City Clerk Donnie Holloway were present, as was District 32 Sen. Melanie Sojourner.

Much of the discussion centered on the idea that the trustees are supposed to maintain a degree of insulation between themselves and the operations of the schools because the board acts as the body of appeal for decisions made in the district.

“The law places a lot of employment limits — especially in employment contracts —and the law is specific that school boards have to remain unbiased so they can serve as an appeal,” said Michael Waldrop, the executive director of the Mississippi School Board Association, who the district had come to lead the discussion.

“They can’t get involved with what is going on with this school and this principal because it can bias them. Whether or not that’s right is debatable, but it is the law.”

The school board has to accept the recommendation of the superintendent when it comes to employment decisions, Waldrop said.

“If you intervene by recommending people, you violate a process role,” he said.

“If the board by law votes down any recommendation of the superintendent for a licensed employee, they have to go on record with good cause. They can’t just say we don’t accept this recommendation.

“What we tell boards all the time is, if you don’t want to follow your superintendent’s recommendation, you better be ready to defend the decision in court.”

The only authority the board has when it comes to hiring and firing are with the superintendent and its attorney, Waldrop said.

“The responsibility of the board is to have a proper plan to know what you have to monitor, and in this case you monitor the mission of the organization. The mission of the schools is to make sure students are learning,” he said. “A good reason for not accepting the superintendent’s recommendation would be the trend of the school over a period of time.”

Dillard said the arrangement made the school board sound like “a forever sequestered jury.”

Evaluating the results the superintendent brings to the board help them determine if he is doing a good job, Waldrop said.

“The fault I see school boards make in the communication arena is they talk about the processes they are taking when they should be talking about results,” he said

“You don’t communicate to the public by saying here are all the great things we are doing in the Natchez schools. You want to communicate the proof to the community that the school is getting better.”

The discussion Tuesday sometimes veered into personal experience, with elected officials and members of the public alike questioning specific policies of the district, including how they could get involved and the rights of guardians to visit children during school hours. Others said they’ve been inundated with complaints from residents and employees about the operations of the district.

But the discussion was also pointed at times, with Lazarus and others asking the school board why Superintendent Frederick Hill’s contract was renewed this year even as several wrongful termination lawsuits were pending against him.

One of those lawsuits, by former principal Cindy Idom, was found in favor of the plaintiff. Waldrop said lawsuits were not enough, on their face, to not renew someone’s contract.

“An employee can sue you for anything, even if the board upholds the superintendent’s decisions,” he said.

“Until there has been a final disposition on that, you can’t make a determination whether the situation was handled correctly.”

School Board President Tim Blalock echoed those thoughts, noting even though a jury rendered a verdict the judge has not issued a final order in the case.

“He may say it was an unreasonable jury and order a new trial,” Blalock said. “Until he does such, we cannot make any decision.”

School board member Benny Wright said he was the one who made the motion to renew Hill’s contract earlier this year.

“We hired him with the idea he could turn the school district around, and I think he is doing that,” Wright said. “We have for the last 10 years we have been a failing district. Last year our third graders moved up, our drop out rate went down, and our graduation rate went up.

“We know other districts, particularly in Mississippi, are interested in hiring him. We want to keep him because he has done things to move this district forward. It is going to take time to make this the No. 1 district in the state, but it takes time to do that.”

At the end of the meeting, Waldrop encouraged the different attendees to continue the discussion in the coming weeks, come to a consensus on what they would like to see in the school district and communicate better.

NASD Public Relations Director Steven Richardson said the superintendent would be hosting a town hall meeting for the general public at 6 p.m. Oct. 29 at Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church.