Melissa Amonette addressed the Board in front of the full meeting room
The Marshall County Board of Education met Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, at 6:00 p.m.
The crowd flowed over into the hallway before the meeting opened. The meeting room was full of people including concerned citizens, as well as former and current students who were standing with handmade signs.
Citizen to address the Board was the first agenda item. Melissa Amonette had a speech prepared.
The following is taken from the statement Amonette read:
“Mrs. Zajac, Principal at LMS chose to cut her music programs to roughly 5 hours every 3 weeks. The band and choir director, Mr. Nathan Hargis, who has his master’s degree, is otherwise assigned to monitor Study Hall 4 days a week and has lunch duty every rotation. All summer he worked on challenging tiered lesson plans for his classes.
What started as a coalition of concerned parents, teachers, administrators, and Board Members working toward a solution to a problem we never should have had, has descended into possible harassment and School Board Policy violations.
Since parents made their voices heard, Mr. Hargis has been pulled into empty rooms and chastised for having a bad attitude, he has been told to keep all conversations about Mrs. Zajac’s decision “in house”, that his “allegiance is to be here with us at LMS” and that “cuts have to be made”.
I wrote an email detailing what I described as possible harassment and within 2 hours, without even talking to Mr. Hargis one single time, Mr. Sorrells added Mrs. Zajac on the email and said he did not believe that she would do anything that I described.
Mr. Hargis was then cornered into an empty auditorium by Mrs. Zajac and another administrator, shown the email on a personal phone, and told to refute the information.
He had classes taken out of the master schedule…all he wanted to do was have enough time to teach his students. Last-minute offers to use 35 minutes of Tiger Time to teach band and choir were given. He was told if he wanted more time to teach, to tell the kids to perform better on tests.
The atmosphere at work was so disrespectful that he feared that even if this situation changed, administrators would resent him for causing problems, instead of just quietly taking a paycheck. Due to these fears and the hostile working environment, he resigned.
You need parents like what you see here to be your eyes and ears and help you know what is important and make you aware when change is necessary. We implore you to act quickly. Give the 73 affected students at Lewisburg Middle School back their music time.”
Under Recognitions, awards were issued. Next, Director Jacob Sorrells recognized three outgoing School Board Members: Susan Hunter, Dr. William Bell, and Patty Hill.
Committee Reports/Schedule Committee Meetings was next on the agenda. There was a Policy Meeting at 5:30 p.m. Sorrells recapped, “We approved a plethora of policies tonight. I believe that has us caught up with everything that we’ve received from TSDA and everything that I think the Board has seen that we needed to address. So, I recommend that we approve those policies now at this Board Meeting.” Motion was made to approve the new policies and seconded. It passed unanimously.
Fall Break will be Oct. 14 – 18 so the October meeting will be on the third Monday of the month- Oct. 21, 2024, at 6:00 p.m.
The Consent Agenda and Federal Budgets both passed unanimously.
Under New Business, Board Member Harvey Jones added “extra-curriculum.”
Part of Jones’ statement is below:
“The reason I put this on there for tonight was because there’s been a lot of talk. Well, the Board approved extra-curriculars before school even started. What we approved as a Board, we expect to be staffed. We expect them to have the available time they need to coach, or direct…whether that’s a Band Director or a coach.”
He went on to say, “It’s not right to not give them efficient time to get their extra-curricular activities. If we cannot meet them for one reason or another, then it needs to come back in front of the Board. Someone needs to let us know why. If there’s not a way to work it out then we [the Board] need to say we can’t.”
I’m not pointing the finger at nobody,” Jones said, “but once we’ve approved it, then we ought to stand behind them having the right amount of time to practice so they can succeed in what they’re doing. It’s not right and no one group got priority over another as far as I’m concerned. But, they all need the opportunity because the more things we can get kids involved in, the better. They make a better student. They learn teamwork. They learn how to work together and you don’t have as many discipline problems. There’s a lot of positives surrounding extra-curricular activities.
“I think we need band. If they want band, then we need to figure out a way to get it back over there. We approved for that band. We approved for that director. I know he resigned but if he thinks he can’t do what he thinks he needs to do, I don’t blame him for resigning,” Jones said.
His bottom line: “We need to support these kids. That’s our future.”
The Board discussed theoretical, high school band using marching as a component of PE, Computer Science requirements, and whether or not the middle school has any flexibility to keep the programs going.
students held signs in support of Mr. Hargis
Sorrells said, “PE is required. Computer Science is required. The state has made these requirements and band is not required. They don’t have to do that. Band is the only extra-curricular activity that’s during the school day. All other extra-curricular activities at LMS are after the school day. Those coaches stay after the school day.”
“We are looking for another band teacher right now,” Sorrells added. Discussion continued on whether or not practice needs to be moved to after school took place along with several other ideas.
Board Member Heidi McElhaney said, “I know it’s not our decision and that we have nothing to do with scheduling, but at every other school, it’s after school; so, that’s what I would suggest.” She pointed out when other schools’ programs like chorus, band, choir and they were all after school hours.
Chair Julie Keny Cathey summarized the thoughts of the Board, “I think that what I’m hearing having listened to all of this is…I understand we’re trying to improve test scores but I also understand the band is a theater program at middle school to go into high school. It’s very important. I also understand the challenge- that we’re trying to come up with a solution and we don’t have a great solution. But, I don’t feel like we’ve exhausted everything from what I’m hearing from everybody.”
Cathey suggested that there is further problem-solving to do and proposed that the Board reconvene with this item at the next meeting, or when they have more information available, “possibly with our new Board Members.”
The meeting adjourned at 6:40 p.m. The next meeting will be Sept. 9, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. at 700 Jones Circle in Lewisburg.
