By Cain Madden

The Natchez Democrat

NATCHEZ — With the exception of a current Natchez-Adams School Board member present, the consensus among all present at the joint meeting of Natchez alderman and Adams County supervisors was the area needs an elected school board, versus the current system of appointing board members.

After the end of a more than one-hour meeting on the subject Monday morning, both city aldermen and county supervisors voted unanimously to ask the state Legislature to make Natchez-Adams County School Board positions elected ones in the future.

The decision came after much discussion on the matter.

Larry Jackson said he gave more than 30 years to the Natchez school system, and back then, he said, people were crossing the river to get into city schools. Now, he said the reverse is true.

“Are you satisfied by the decisions made by the school board of Natchez?” Jackson said. “If you can say yes, then there’s no problem. But if you aren’t satisfied, we need to make a change.

“As far as I’m concerned, we need to make a change.”

What was ostensibly a discussion of the process of how to select school board members quickly turned to a discussion laced with frustration by some over the continued employment of Natchez-Adams School Superintendent Frederick Hill.

He was not present at the meeting, but a recent federal lawsuit in which a former district principal successfully argued that Hill and his assistant superintendent Tanisha Smith, both of whom are black, had racially discriminated against the former employee, who is white.

Other residents, including Natalie Dunn who used to teach in the system, echoed similar sentiments. She said the administration, which is supported by the school board, has caused morale amongst teachers to dip.

“It’s embarrassing to tell my daughter, who wants to be a teacher, that you can’t teach in Natchez — it’ll ruin your career,” she said. “It’s not a place any professional wants to be a part of.”

Alderwoman Joyce Arceneaux-Mathis said she agreed. She led the meeting in absence of Mayor Butch Brown, who is recovering from a stroke.

“Think about someone who graduated cum laude in education,” she said. “With this situation out there, are we going to be able to attract that person to be a part of this district?”

Dr. Benny Wright, vice president of the school board, said data that he has seen suggests that how the school board is selected has no significant effect on how students perform in the classroom.

“What we have got to have is a school (board) and an administration that is on the same page, with the same objective, and that’s what the school board selects the superintendent to do,” Wright said. “That’s what we have today.

“Recently, we voted to extend the superintendent’s contract because we thought he was doing a good job. Recently, we have had an increase in some of our test scores.”

Wright said the system would work if the city and county would untie the hands of the school board members.

Supervisor Mike Lazarus said if a county employee was found guilty of discrimination, he or she would have been fired that day.

“No ifs, ands or buts, it will not be tolerated,” he said.

Supervisor Ricky Gray said he took offense to Wright’s suggestion that he had prevented a school board member from doing his or her job.

“I never told a school board member how to do his job,” he said.

Speaking about the data Wright brought up, supervisor Angela Hutchins wondered about data that Superintendent Dr. Frederick Hill has presented in the past.

“He brought in all the stats, data, all the scores that told how everything was going to be, and he laid it all out that we were going to have a passing school district this year,” she said. “Then the scores come back, and we still have a failing school system today.”

Hutchins said she then read in The Natchez Democrat that Hill said he knew the test scores were going to happen.

“How does he know this, but came and showed us all this data about a passing school district?” she asked.

“One that tells the truth,” Wright replied about the kind of superintendent who would do that.

Hutchins replied, “Well, he didn’t tell us at the board meeting.”

Supervisor David Carter said working with the public school students in the Natchez-Adams County Chamber of Commerce’s Youth Leadership Natchez program suggests to him good teachers and administrators are in the system, but that he had concerns with the top administrators.

“I think the public trust is gone,” he said. “Until something changes, it won’t be restored.”

Another issue brought up by members of the community, including former mayor Phillip West, was the taxation without representation aspect of the current appointed school board makeup.

“People are concerned with what kind of people we will get,” West said. “People have the right to be right, and the right to be wrong.

“They can levee taxes without any accountability of the taxpaying citizens. When you have the authority to tax people, you ought to be accountable to the people.”

West said he knew the whole state was considering moving to elected school boards throughout Mississippi, but West said Natchez was unique and ought to take its own path.

“We don’t have to wait on what the state may or may not do,” he said.

“I don’t think there is any doubt where we are headed,” Lazarus said. “We are throwing all of our eggs in the basket. We are not waiting on the state.”

An issue that has to be addressed down the road is compensation, as currently school board members make $100 a month, and a campaign could cost thousands of dollars, one person in the audience suggested. Another issue will be how to implement it — elect fresh all at once or stagger it?

“The devil’s in the details,” said Robert Pernell of Natchez who was in favor of electing a school board. “I suggest staggering it so you won’t lose all of the institutional knowledge at one time.”

Lazarus said that while neither elected nor appointed systems were perfect, he felt the elections process would provide more insight into the character of school board candidates.

“We try to pick the best people,” he said. “But trust me, you will learn more about school board members during a campaign than we do in a 30-minute interview.”