ROSEDALE, Miss.—On July 11, the West Bolivar Consolidated School Board met in Rosedale, Mississippi, in a rare Saturday special call meeting. But the board called off the meeting shortly after it started.
Only two board members showed up: Board President Jackie Lloyd and Kenneth Bell. Because the board lacked a quorum, it could not conduct business. And business was piling up.
At the time, the district lacked a superintendent and an interim superintendent. The authorization for the district’s temporary designee, Melvin Cook, expired at the end of June. Posts for curriculum director, food service manager and West Bolivar High School principal were also vacant. Even one of the board seats had been vacant since the end of last year.
Lloyd told the Mississippi Free Press on July 14 that the district had been unable to act because the two absent board members, Keith Thomas and Rose Tate, had missed six meetings since the beginning of June. Their reasoning, she said, was that they were opposed to the hire of Montrell Greene, a former interim superintendent, as the district’s new permanent superintendent.
“It is so frustrating and mind-blowing. You were elected to serve your community and the students, and they forgot about the students,” Lloyd said.
News of the July 11 meeting did not remain isolated in Rosedale. Delta News TV published a story on the issue and repeated the claim that both Thomas and Tate had each missed six meetings since June. Magnolia Shine Podcast, a TikTok account with more than 57,000 followers, also picked up on the story, with host Blake Levine saying in a video about the meeting that Tate and Thomas “decided just not to show up. Why, I can’t tell you, but the problem (is) because those two didn’t show up, (the board) actually couldn’t vote on getting these spots hired.”
“Now, I think everyone should share this because honestly, everyone needs to know that this is happening in the state of Mississippi. West Bolivar School District, your board members, get it together and help the kids out because the fact that they don’t have this stuff heading into school is ridiculous,” Levine said.
The Mississippi Free Press spoke with both Thomas and Tate on multiple occasions. Thomas confirmed he skipped meetings, but said he did so in protest of the vacant board seat. Tate said she never missed meetings intentionally or maliciously, and that she informed the board on the one occasion this year when she missed a regularly scheduled meeting.
The Mississippi Free Press confirmed the board met 15 times between April 2 and July 11. Only four of those meetings were regularly scheduled meetings, with the remaining 11 being special call meetings. There were quorums at nine of those meetings.
A Mississippi Free Press reporter attended the board’s July 16 meeting. There, the board named Melvin Cook as interim superintendent and filled several key positions, including West Bolivar principal. It also named Charlie Jackson to the vacant board seat; Jackson previously served on the board until his term expired last year.
Despite these moves, the district is reeling. The Mississippi Free Press also found that the Mississippi Department of Education is investigating the district for numerous alleged violations of district policy and state law.
Difficulty From the Start
The West Bolivar Consolidated School District was founded in 2014 after state-mandated consolidation merged the Rosedale-based West Bolivar School District with the Benoit School District in Benoit, Mississippi, and Shaw School District in Shaw, Mississippi. The district had an enrollment of 862 students as of the most recent school year, a 40% drop since the district’s founding. About 86% of students are Black.
Originally, each town’s respective schools were preserved, but in 2020, the district permanently closed Benoit’s Ray Brooks School in order to save money. The Rosedale and Shaw campuses serve all of the district’s students. The population of the district’s main three towns is around 3,400 people, not counting the surrounding unincorporated areas.
The district has struggled for the entirety of its existence. It has never achieved higher than a D rating and has cycled through superintendents. The board chose not to renew the contract of its most recent permanent superintendent, L’Kenna Whitehead.
But amidst the administrative difficulties, there are still students returning for the school year and parents wanting to support them.
That includes Odio Reese, who has been back-to-school shopping for his three children, all enrolled in the West Bolivar Consolidated School District. The Rosedale native said he was concerned about the district’s vacancies.
“We gotta have a superintendent and a principal. We’re trying to move this district forward with only three weeks left before school starts,” Reese told the Mississippi Free Press on July 16.
Meeting Minutiae
Despite Board President Jackie Lloyd’s claim that Keith Thomas and Rose Tate had each missed six meetings since the start of June, the district’s meeting minutes show Thomas only missed on June 3 and July 11, while Tate only missed on July 11.
Lloyd told the Mississippi Free Press that the problems began after the district approved Montrell Greene, a former interim superintendent for the district, as its next superintendent on April 14. The vote was 3-1, with Rose Tate casting the lone dissenting vote.
Meeting minutes show that Thomas and Tate missed meetings on April 21 (Board member Kenneth Bell also missed this meeting), April 29, May 14, and May 28. Thomas also missed the June 3 meeting. All but May 14 were special call meetings.
Lloyd told the Mississippi Free Press that Tate walked out of that June 3 meeting. Tate confirmed that and explained that she left during the executive session after she saw an item on the agenda regarding a superintendent contract. Tate explained she had not had a chance to review the contract and did not believe it was fair to approve a contract without all board members present. Had all four members been present, she would have stayed and voted against it, she said.
The June 11 regular meeting had perfect attendance, and the board voted 3-1 to rescind the motion hiring Greene and 3-1 to conduct a new superintendent search, with Lloyd voting against both, the board minutes said. The Mississippi School Board Association also advised the board it would not support a second superintendent search after the costs incurred by the first. The board had full attendance at its June 18 special call meeting.
Tate said she called a special meeting for June 30 to discuss the superintendent search. She and Thomas attended, but both Lloyd and Bell were absent. The board’s next regular meeting was on July 9 and had perfect attendance, but the board deadlocked on the agenda with a 2-2 vote and did not move forward.
Lloyd told the Mississippi Free Press that Thomas committed to attending the July 11 meeting only to text her that afternoon that he would miss because he was attending a funeral. Thomas said this was simply an error of getting his days mixed up.
However, Thomas stands by his other absences. He told the Mississippi Free Press on July 28 that he believed it was unfair for a portion of the district’s constituents to not have representation because of the vacant seat.
“How can you have 17 meetings since April and you’re only required to have one a month? I don’t have to play into that,” Thomas said, adding the additional meetings the board held on July 16 and 23. “If somebody is holding 17 meetings (in that time), which is the president of the school board, then that means that somebody must be desperate for something.”
Tate said her relatives have received harassing phone calls and messages about Tate, demanding she resign. One Facebook comment she showed the Mississippi Free Press suggested Tate and Thomas were being offered drugs in order to vote in a certain manner.
“I don’t want innuendo and lies to destroy my reputation,” Tate said. “All the places that I’ve been in this county, people can’t tell you I wasn’t a trustworthy person and I neglected my job. I haven’t neglected anything on this job. I always worked this job and people I’ve worked under could attest to that.”
Missing Seat at the Table
The West Bolivar Consolidated School Board’s vacant seat has been a contentious matter for both Keith Thomas and Rose Tate.
”That’s why we don’t have the right amount of people to hold quorums. We don’t have the right amount of people to break ties,” Thomas said on July 15. “And (Board President Jackie Lloyd) knows this.”
Charlie Jackson’s term expired last year, leaving the seat vacant for nearly six months.
State law mandates that any school board vacancy be filled within 60 days and that the member be a qualified representative of that specific district. If the board is unable to agree on an appointment, the board may notify the county election commission so as to set up a special election. The procedure is confirmed in an attorney general’s opinion issued in 2011 regarding vacancies in Noxubee County.
At the May 22 meeting, Keith Thomas made three separate motions offering three individuals to fill the board seat, including Charlie Jackson. All three motions died for lack of a second. Rose Tate told the Mississippi Free Press on July 21 that it was her understanding the seat could no longer be filled by appointment.
The Mississippi Department of Education had already issued its letter to the district, dated April 15, informing the board of several alleged violations of policy and law, including the board’s failure to fill the vacant seat. Board Attorney Kelvin Pulley acknowledged the failure in the district’s response letter and said the board had chosen to wait until November’s special election to fill the vacancy.
Meeting minutes show that Lloyd told the board that the seat would have to remain vacant until the upcoming election, and that her understanding was that the winner of that election could immediately join the board’s meetings.
Ongoing Investigation
The Mississippi Department of Education’s investigation into the West Bolivar School District includes the following allegations:
- The district failed to follow its own policy and state policy by completing an annual evaluation of the superintendent.
- Board President Jackie Lloyd violated district policies by advertising for a new superintendent on her personal social media page on Feb. 8, posted a superintendent search notice to the district website on Feb. 26 and authorized the publication of a notice for superintendent applications in the Greenwood Commonwealth newspaper on March 7-8 and March 12.
- The board failed to follow district policies by completing annual visits to the Shaw schools.
In Board Attorney Kelvin Pulley’s response to the MDE allegations on May 13, Pulley said the district was in compliance by scheduling an evaluation with L’Kenna Whitehead for April 29, and though he acknowledged that meeting lacked a quorum, he said the district would continue to schedule that evaluation until it was completed.
But the board delayed the evaluation again and again. Whitehead, in a letter addressed to the district on June 2, wrote he was declining to participate in the evaluation, scheduled for June 3, after the board failed to reach a quorum at its May 28 meeting. He also referenced the nonrenewal of his contract, the apparent hire of his successor and announced his intention to take leave for the remainder of his contract. “These actions further support my position that the evaluation process at this stage no longer serves its intended purpose of providing meaningful feedback for professional growth and improvement,” he wrote.
On the allegation that Lloyd violated board policies by posting superintendent search materials, Pulley wrote that the district is in compliance. He said that Lloyd communicated with board members on Jan. 24 and those board members “verbally authorized” Lloyd to initiate the superintendent search process and ratify those actions at the board’s Feb. 12 meeting.
However, there was no meeting on Jan. 24. The most recent meeting to that date was on Jan. 15, when the board agreed unanimously not to renew Whitehead’s contract. No discussion of a superintendent search is included in that meeting’s minutes. On Feb. 12, the board voted 3-1 to approve the consent agenda which included starting a superintendent search. The meeting minutes do not mention Lloyd contacting board members on Jan. 24.
Tate said she does not recall Lloyd contacting her for such a request, and board member Kenneth Bell told the Mississippi Free Press on July 29 that while he does not remember what was said in January, he has never spoken with Lloyd about district business outside regular meeting hours.
But both Thomas and Tate said that Lloyd contacting them to approve district business outside of normal meeting hours is not unusual. Both said that Lloyd recently contacted them to authorize Interim Superintendent Melvin Cook as an approved signatory for the district’s bank accounts. Bell said Lloyd did not contact him on that issue or any issue.
“I can’t believe that. I can’t prove it,” Tate said after being told of Bell’s comments. “I mean, she called me. I don’t know why she wouldn’t call him.”
Leonard Van Slyke, hotline attorney for the Mississippi Press Association and former hotline attorney for the Mississippi Ethics Commission, told the Mississippi Free Press on July 29 that such arrangements could constitute violations of the state’s Open Meetings Act.
“It sounds to me like they are taking actions in lieu of having a meeting,” Van Slyke said. “It seems to me that is inappropriate. If you’re going to authorize actions, you need to be having a board meeting to do that so that the public can watch that being done, and then there should be minutes of that action. It seems to me that it’s just simply inappropriate to be doing business that way.”
Van Slyke added that boards are allowed to hold telephonic or virtual meetings, as long as there is an announced meeting place and the public is allowed to attend the meeting. Past attorney general opinions also establish that board members are allowed to informally discuss district matters on phone calls, but boards have no authority to conduct telephone votes unless the board holds that vote during an official meeting.
Pulley did not return multiple messages requesting comment for this story. Jackie Lloyd declined to answer follow-up questions to Mississippi Free Press reporters on July 16 and 17 and did not respond to a final message requesting comment on July 30.
Even with the ongoing disruption, the district’s new administrators are ready to get to work.
“We need to get back on track, get our school staffed. Get everything in place, so we can have a good, quiet opening at school. Other than that, what we’re trying to do is just kind of keep things in line until they can find a superintendent,” Melvin Cook told the Mississippi Free Press on July 16.
“It’s not about me or any other adult. Matter of fact, it’s not what the board members want. It’s about what the kids want,” parent Odio Reese said.
Kevin Edwards reported from Greenwood, Mississippi. Jaylin R. Smith reported from Rosedale, Mississippi.
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of education and read past stories here.
Mississippi Free Press stories are always free because we believe everyone should have access to quality journalism. Donations from readers like you make that possible. Please click here to give to help sustain and grow vital, people-over-power journalism for Mississippians.
Readers can sign up for our free newsletters here.
