The fall of superintendent Johnny McDaniel

Bradley County's Johnny McDaniel was the 2013 Tennessee Superintendent of the Year and may be backed by teachers, parents and students, but a majority of school board members there soon may decide to buy out his contract.

Opponents give several reasons for such an unusual turnaround in board support, but one is $33,000 in tax-free reimbursement for mileage McDaniel signed off on for school energy manager Johnny Mull from 2010 to 2013.

Mull was hired to be the state's first county schools energy manager and was expected to develop an energy management plan that would save money that could be transferred from the utility budget to the instructional budget. The energy manager, whose salary has risen from $48,000 to $72,000 since 2010, claims he has saved the schools $13 million.

The $33,000 is a drop in the bucket to the unquantifiable millions Mull claims to have saved the county, but the minutiae of his unquantifiable travels has left school board members -- and should leave the public -- with mouths agape. He worked, according to his expense reports, on holidays, paid vacation days and once for 160 days (including weekends) without a day off. His paid travel over the period -- often to schools and back to the central office rather than to several schools at once -- was more than the combined travel compensation of seven other central office administrators who also travel among schools.

When school board members demanded a change -- that he use a school district vehicle and better monitor the travel -- his travel fell off 96 percent.

McDaniel did not respond to questions for a recent Times Free Press report on the controversy swirling around him, but he cannot think what went on with Mull -- now also a Bradley County commissioner -- is just business as usual. If he does, perhaps he is not worthy of all the confidence still placed in him by some.