Hamilton County Schools “most likely” violated state law by not making public the out-of-court monetary settlements surrounding the 2015 rape and assault of Ooltewah High School basketball players, a state lawyer says.
Unfortunately, the whole sordid incident has been awash in a lack of transparency. It began with the accusation of coaches downplaying the seriousness of the incident, continued with district administration officials initially keeping the incident from school board members, and worsened – many thought – because district administration did not deal seriously with what was said to be a culture of corruption at the school.
In the end, the public’s sense of the administration’s handling of the incident led, at least in part, to the resignation of one school superintendent and the turnover of six of the nine members of the board since the incident occurred in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, during a pre-Christmas tournament three-plus years ago.
The district shifted any blame for the settlements not being public to their being settled by the Tennessee Risk Management Trust, basically a member-owned insurance company covering public entities. Since the insurance trust settled the lawsuits, according to a December letter to the Times Free Press by Hamilton County Board of Education attorney Scott Bennett, the school board did not have to approve them or vote to expend any funds related to them.
The insurance trust’s adjusters and attorneys, according to the school board attorney, had been delegated by the board to handle “all aspects of the defense” of the lawsuits filed against the board over the incident, “including the decision whether to settle these claims.”