PUSD: Will They Ever Learn? – Arizona Independent

PUSD Superintendent Emails Show Intent To Avoid Consequences Of Election

[Editor’s Note: Prescott eNews thanks Arizona Independent for the permission to republish this article.]

Less than a week after releasing a bombshell memo that appeared to show a senior Prescott Unified School District administrator leveraging taxpayer money to force employees to get the COVID shot, candidate for the Prescott Unified School District Governing Board, Brooks Compton, released another internal communication that had been provided to him. This one suggests that the people in charge believe the voters are about to make serious changes, and they have a plan to thwart what voters might want to do.

As part of his employment agreement, Howard is to give the board six-months notice so they can have ample time to line up a replacement. However, if Howard waited until six months before his retirement date, he would be presenting his notice to the new school board, and that is something he is working hard to avoid.

Compton issued the following statement in response:

Last week, I shared an email that had come to me from someone deeply concerned about our school district and how it was conducting its business. It has garnered tremendous attention and the interest parents and taxpayers are showing is helping to encourage others to share other useful information.

I recently received an e-mail that was sent by Prescott Schools Superintendent Joe Howard to faculty and staff. It represents an effort to thwart the will of parents/voters in an offensive and truly cynical way.

Apparently, Mr. Howard wants to retire in one year’s time, but he does not want to let the next board pick his replacement in case our district’s parents/voters want to go a different direction than the current board. So, he is attempting to resign now, and is encouraging the current board to pick his replacement now, for a transition that will not occur for an entire year. He specifically writes that he is doing this now because it is an election season, and he does not know who the board will be come January.

I believe the only way Mr. Howard can be replaced now is if he vacates his position now. Any attempts by the current board to sign a contract that would not be effective until late next year will not likely stand and will be little more than an effort to improperly enrich a candidate of their choice with a contract that might entitle them to compensation, even though they fully expect that candidate will never assume the position he is being “hired” for.

I am told by several in the district that the board intends to hire Clark Tenney as the next Superintendent, or at least hand him a contract that would guarantee him payments should the next board void the contract and terminate his employment. Given Mr. Tenney’s increasingly controversial tenure, it would be incredibly inappropriate for the current board to attempt to feather his nest in such a fashion.

As always, parents in our school district need to pay attention and make their voices heard at district meetings and at the ballot box. These are not casual sums of money involved, and we will all be the ones paying the bills for the games being played by our current board and senior staff.

To be clear, our current Superintendent believes voters want to take the school district in a new direction by replacing members of the School Board. He wants to pre-empt the will of the voters and have the current board make decisions to bind the district in a direction the parents/voters of this district do not want. And our current Board appears willing to go along with these shenanigans.

Voters are right to be outraged by these tactics and would do well to remember those responsible come election day.

In a recent opinion piece in the Prescott eNews, Buzz Williams plainly called out the machinations of Howard and Tenney and asked important questions.

“The current School Governing Board will, no doubt, be very different than the one that will be seated in January,” wrote Williams. “If School Superintendent Joe Howard isn’t retiring until a year from now, why should the current School Governing Board have anything to do with setting “a new leadership direction”? Could the current Board, which is essentially a lame duck board, contractually hire a multi-year replacement for Joe Howard that the new School Governing Board would have to accept? Could the new board negate that contract and hire their own choice for Superintendent, without costing the PUSD hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees?

“Whatever the answers are to those questions, it is irresponsible, illogical and smacks of political chicanery, if any decision is made on a new PUSD Superintendent before the new School Governing Board is seated next January,” concluded Williams.