| Work Detail |
Maury County Public Schools Superintendent Chris Marczak may say it’s the wrong time for a change, but his bosses think otherwise.
After more than four years of serving as superintendent of Maury County Public Schools, his contract will not be renewed this June following a 7-3 vote made by the board Tuesday night.
The decision was made during a special called meeting at Horace O. Porter School in Columbia with board members Chad Howell, Denny Beaver, Bettye Kinser, Kristin Parker, Will Sims, Michael Fulbright and David Moore voting in favor of a motion not to renew Marczak’s contract. The motion was made by Moore and seconded by Howell.
“It is time for us to look in a different direction,” Moore said.
Members Natasha Hopkins, Nathan Adkison and Donna Morency voted in opposition to the motion.
Tommy Dudley was not present for the meeting to do an injury.
Parker and Sims pushed for the board to end the contract immediately with a buyout of the superintendent’s contract while Moore and Marczak’s supporters put their faith in the superintendent to fulfill his obligations for the remainder of his term.
“He is a professional,” Moore said. “I would encourage my fellow board members to let this play out and let Dr. Marczak continue to do his job throughout the rest of his contract. If it were up to me this would have moved in another direction. While I do feel pressure to move forward as a school board and as a county, I have no desire to terminate that contract. We can take this time to maintain a stable environment, while he finishes out his contract. I encourage my fellow board members to let this play its course out and let us focus more on moving ahead which is selecting the next person to lead this district.”
An estimate from the county’s finance department indicates a buyout, including health coverage for the superintendent and his family, would cost the district about $100,000.
“I do think it would be fair to him and everybody else to break ranks and go our separate ways,” Fulbright said. “We can move on. However, I do feel very uncomfortable voting on something without knowing the dollar figure. Not knowing the dollar figure really does trouble me.”
He recommended the board table the buyout.
Morency agreed.
“I know this board does not have a plan,” Morency said. “I don’t see how we could go forward without a plan. I suggest we wait on this. It’s a lot of money and we don’t have a lot of extra money to spend.”
Kinser, the board’s chair, also said she was uncomfortable with approving the buyout blind.
“I think this is something we can pick up at another time with more information,” Kinser said.
Following a failed vote to buyout the soon-to-be former superintendent, as it stands, Marczak will remain in the position until his contract expires this summer, but the board plans to hold a work session on the matter in the weeks to come.
“He is doing his job and will continue to do what needs to be done,” Hopkins said.
Parker thought otherwise.
“I think we have to remember, as board members, what our mission is,” Parker said. “My concern is the things that we have coming up. Hiring is something that has been a concern for me with Dr. Marczak. We struggled to find a finance director. We are still looking for an HR director and a data coordinator. I’ll be honest. I don’t know if I want Dr. Marczak making those hires if we have decided to go a different course. It is a lot of money, but I think we will get that money back from the county commission.”
Following the meeting, Marczak told The Daily Herald he promises to fulfill the duties of his contract.
“I am excited to spend five more months in the district and just keep doing what they hired me to do which is impact education for kids and fulfill the mission of the district,” Marczak said.
Before the vote Tuesday, Marczak urged the school board continue with him in charge and extend his contract in an interview with The Daily Herald.
“Do they want to continue the work that we have been doing, keeping the strategic plan moving forward, or go another direction? I think it would be the wrong time,” Marczak said.
“ACT scores are up. Scholarships are up. Academics are up,” Marczak said. “Enrollment is up. Funding from the state is up. Do they want to keep that momentum moving forward? Or is it time to move forward with another superintendent of schools? That is what they have to ultimately have to make a decision on.”
In June 2015, Marczak was unanimously selected to served as the county’s next superintendent in 10-0 vote.
He officially became the new director of Maury County Public Schools a month later in August 2015, after signing a five-year contract, with an annual salary of $175,000, later increased to $180,000.
During an August 2019 review, Marczak was given a cumulative rating of three out of five by the board, which also expressed deep concerns for the district’s finances, test scores and his leadership abilities.
Nonetheless, the annual survey’s scale defined the recent score as “proficient and satisfactory.”
Written observations submitted by board members to the superintendent touched on an eroding relationship between the school district and its funding body, the county commission, as well as concern for district leadership and school culture.
“We have a lot ahead of us,” Kinser previously told The Daily Herald. “We are starting work on the school budget for next year. We are a hard working board, and we are ready to get into the weeds and move the county forward.”
In categories of literacy, numeracy and social studies, the local school district earned the same Level 1 ranking, determining the composite score.
The Tennessee Department of Education lists Maury County as one of seven counties that fall within the bottom 5% percent of all districts across the state. These school systems have been designated as “In Need of Improvement” districts.
The same results indicate that 16 of Maury County Public Schools’ 20 campuses have shown an overall increase in academic performance, according to the results of last year’s statewide examinations, with both Woodard Elementary School and Santa Fe Unit School earning the celebrated “Reward” status based on their performance. A third local school remains under review for the status.
Marczak’s tenure with the school district has been an uncanny balance between efforts to bring the school district into the 21st century and a series of unfortunate situations that have seemingly kept the institution from achieving its full potential.
In May 2018, a motion to dismiss the superintendent failed 6-5 during a special called meeting.
The motion was made by board member Denny Beaver and seconded by Kinser, who was vice chair at the time. It received approval from Chair Kristin Parker, Jyuana Martin, Beaver, Kinser and Carey Powers.
Members Jim Pennings, David Moore, David Bates, Tommy Dudley, Nathan Adkison and Donna Morency cast the dissenting votes.
Early in his tenure at MCPS, Marczak launched the the “Keys to College and Career Readiness,” seven community-selected goals to prepare students for life outside of their hometown’s classrooms.
The “Keys” were selected from more than more than 9,000 submissions from parents, students, teachers, principals, administrators, school board members and community members.
Months later, Marczak, and newly-hired Principal Ryan Jackson announced that Mt. Pleasant would become the nation’s first public K-12 STEAM campus, embracing the district’s move to hands-on learning opportunities for students.
Marczak’s first major upset with educators and board leadership occurred in December 2016, when the school district’s employees, including teachers, support staff and bus drivers, did not receive their regularly scheduled paychecks before one of the largest shopping weekends of the year.
An estimated 250 of the school district’s more than 1,500 employees filed inquiries and claims on the matter, using a form sent to employees by email from the central office.
In emails to employees and interviews with The Daily Herald, the superintendent called the situation a “communication error,” and stressed that neither the school district nor Skyward Payroll, the contracted payroll management service used by school district employees, were at fault.
After holding three town hall meetings as an opportunity for educators to share concerns regarding the payroll system, Marczak said he was confident that the majority of the school district’s employees are satisfied and no other issues continued to affect those working in the classroom.
Educators, however, continued to share concerns and school board members said they have received messages from staff members that the payroll errors continue.
The situation sparked ongoing concerns for the management of the school district’s finances that followed a series of annual audit findings by the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury’s Office and played a major role in the Maury County Commission’s decision to place all county finances under a single governing body.
The Maury County Education Association, an organization composed of a team of local educators, voiced concerns about the superintendent and his administration. Particularly, MCEA leaders shared concerns of communication issues between educators and central office personnel.
Now former MCEA Vice President Mark Orman spoke before the school board, requesting that the board and central office work to ensure no major changes in personnel and policy for the remainder of the school year.
“We have been caught in a revolving door of personnel and policy for almost four years,” Orman said in February 2017.
In the spring of 2017, MCPS was placed at the center spotlight of nationwide manhunt for 15-year-old Elizabeth Thomas who went missing in and was found on the opposite side of the country with 50-year-old Tad Cummins.
With the teenager still missing, members of the Maury County chapter of Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment, a civic involvement and collective action group, called for Marczak to resign.
Then came the termination of Whitthorne Middle School Principal Doug Cappella midway through the academic year in 2018 following an internal scandal.
In March 2019, Marczak was the subject of a major lawsuit involving his previous position as assistant superintendent at Oak Ridge Schools where a court determined a former educator, John Edward Anderson, should receive $1.7 million in damages for a hostile work environment following concerns for sleeping arrangements during a track team trip.
The lawsuit stated that Marczak or someone acting at his direction contacted local news agencies notifying them of Anderson’s termination and made false, misleading, incomplete and disparaging statements about the former teacher to “place him in a false light before the public.”
That same month, parents at Whitthorne Middle School voiced their outrage after learning of a school assignment that involved students answering questions as if they were slave owners and slaves themselves.
“Would you rather be a slave or be shot and killed?” read one question presented to the students.
“If you are a slave owner and one of your slaves is doing nothing, what should the punishment be? (You can have more than one answer)”. |
