Beaufort County School District, South Carolina
From Sunshine Review
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The Beaufort County School District is one of 85 public school districts in South Carolina. The district is arranged into four different clusters -- Battery Creek, Hilton Head, Beaufort, and Bluffton -- that include 28 different schools. There are about 19,000 students in the district.
In 2008, the district's voters approved a $162.7 million referendum.
Per pupil expenditures in the district in 2008 are about $14,100. In 2007, the figure for per-pupil spending was $13,032. There were a total of 2477 total staff in the district in 2007, including 1459 teachers.[1],[2]
[edit] District office salaries
A chart of the six highest-salaried employees in the district's administrative office as of the end of 2008, according to the Beaufort Gazette[3]
| Name | Salary | Years | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valerie Truesdale | 205,600 | 1 | Superintendent |
| Mary Seamon | 123,000 | 1 | Chief instructional services officer |
| Phyllis White | 123,000 | 2 | Chief operations services officer |
| James Finger | 113,000 | 0 | Instructional technology services officer |
| Jaqueline Rosswurm | 103,245 | 1 | Human resources services officer |
| Cynthia Hayes | 102,517 | 8 | Student services officer |
| Randy Wall | 102,517 | 3 | Academic improvement officer |
[edit] Website revamp
The school board hired Atlanta-based company Groundrush Media to overhaul the district's website for $55,000. "It's due for an upgrade, school board member Joan Deery said. 'It's unusable," she said. "I think that people just give up. ... It's just too frustrating.'" [4]
[edit] Issues with open records
[edit] Jim Bequette e-mails
The Beaufort County School District received a South Carolina Freedom of Information Act request June 3, 2008 for all incoming and outgoing e-mails from Beaufort County Board of Education member Jim Bequette's e-mail account. The request came from Randy Bates, an informal staffer of incumbent Sen. Catherine Ceips. Bequette is claiming that the request amounts to harassment. Bates is contending that Bequette was sending politically motivated e-mails campaigning for Sen. Ceips' opponent from a publicly provided system, amounting to misuse of taxpayer resources.[5]
[edit] $55,300 for records
- Main article: Notably high fee requests
In November 2008, the school district said it would need a check of $214,580 to provide public documents in response to an open records request from the South Carolina Policy Council (SCPC). The SCPC requested documents on employee travel, catered meals and training services. The county later acknowledged a clerical error and revised its figure to $55,388. The Beaufort district said it would be six months of staff time to collect the records.
The same request was made of all 85 school districts in the state. Two districts, Sumter and Aiken, said they'd be able to provide the requested documents at no charge. [6],[7],[8]
In November 2008, some members of the Beaufort County school board asked to be exempted from a rule that says Beaufort County school employees are not to be reimbursed for hotel stays at conferences or meetings held in the county.[9]
[edit] Shannon Brown lawsuit
In 2006, the district settled and paid a sexual harrassment lawsuit. The district admitted no wrongdoing but settled with Shannon Brown after she filed a 2005 lawsuit in which she claimed explicit comments by then-school principal Terry Bennett created a hostile work environment at Lady’s Island Elementary School between 2000 and 2003.
Brown’s lawsuit said that she had lost her job at Lady’s Island Elementary after she "rejected and opposed" sexual harassment by Bennett and reported him to the Beaufort County Education Association.
An investigation by the district in 2003 into the charges said that Brown's allegations "did not reach the level of sexual harassment, it did raise some concerns". In the report, director for human resources Darah Latourelle wrote to principal Bennett, "It appears that in your endeavors to create a 'fun workplace,' with a sense of community, there has been a practice of allowing inappropriate comments, which have sometimes crossed the line." Brown resigned from her teaching position at the school in 2007, about a year after she was arrested on a charge of providing alcohol to minors.[10]
[edit] Secret settlement
In May 2007, the district made a secret $60,000 settlement with former St. Helena Elementary principal LaVerne Davis, triggering a dispute with the media about disclosure of out-of-court settlements. The district released details of that case in November 2007 after the S.C. Attorney General's Office issued an opinion that agreements involving public bodies are public information.[11]
[edit] External links
- Website of the Beaufort County School District
- Battery Creek Cluster
- Hilton Head cluster
- Beaufort Cluster
- Bluffton Cluster
[edit] References
- ↑ Beaufort County School District 2007 Annual Report
- ↑ Voice for School Choice, "Cuts for you, not for us", November 18, 2008
- ↑ Beaufort Gazette, "School district to examine salary discrepancies", December 4, 2008
- ↑ School district to revamp its Web page, Beaufort Gazette, December 25, 2008
- ↑ School board member accuses Ceips' aide of harassment Beaufort Gazette, June 6, 2008
- ↑ South Carolina Policy Council, "SC School Districts Demand $400,000 for Public Expense Records", December 8, 2008
- ↑ Greenville Online, "School data charges vary widely among districts, panel finds", December 9, 2008
- ↑ Palmetto Scoop, "Freedom of Information isn't free", December 8, 2008
- ↑ Beaufort Gazette, "Should school board members be exempt from travel rules?", November 18, 2008
- ↑ Beaufort County school district settles sexual harrassment lawsuit
- ↑ Beaufort Gazette, "Request unlocks details from 2006 school lawsuit settlement", November 25, 2008
