Johnny McDaniel, the embattled Bradley County schools superintendent, seems caught between some tea-party tunnel vision about dollars and the interest most take in education.
It’s clear that he’s caught there by his own apparent inattentiveness to dollars and cents, and now he is so on the outs with rising far-right politicians in Bradley County that he faces the possible buyout of the final 15 months of his $120,000-plus per year contract.
It’s also clear that in his seven years as superintendent, Bradley graduation rates have risen significantly.
But what is less clear is how the self-described fiscal hawks who want McDaniel gone perform their own addition and subtraction.
The hawks’ cause celebre is what they dubbed “travelgate” after schools energy manager Johnny Mull was paid more than $33,000 in tax-free mileage reimbursement over three years ending in 2013 for supposedly driving nearly 100,000 miles over Bradley County. Mull apparently turned in mileage based on round trips to and from administration offices and individual schools. And McDaniel signed off on Mull’s mileage reimbursements.
Mull’s actions seem suspect at one extreme; McDaniel seems gullible at another. Clearly neither was minding pennies.
But that was 2013, and the situation has been remedied now for two years. In the 2013-2014 school year, McDaniel issued to Mull a laptop, a 1998 Chevy van and a school gas card. Both Mull’s travel and his expenses dropped dramatically – about 96 percent. He continues working for the school system because a school board inquiry in the summer of 2013 couldn’t verify whether Mull’s travel records were accurate, and Mull – then and now – says the records honestly depict the work he did and the miles he drove.
So why two years later are board members after McDaniel’s head?
They say it’s because taxpayers will ultimately win with a more fiscally responsible superintendent.
There’s that “fiscally responsible” buzz phrase again. But do the rest of the board’s math: $11,000 a year lost for one man’s mileage versus about $120,000 lost – the cost of the board’s double-paying for a superintendent’s buyout and his replacement for more than a year. What in the world is fiscally responsible about this, folks?
Yet the buyout expenditure – reportedly initiated by McDaniel and expected to get a vote on Tuesday – doesn’t seem to be viewed as wasteful in the eyes of Bradley County Commissioner Dan Rawls, founder of the Tea Party of Southeast Tennessee. Rawls was angered last Sunday after hearing that school board Chairman Nicholas Lillios said in a Friday radio interview that he was soliciting feedback on the buyout offer from his 3rd District constituents and that he would vote in accordance with their wishes.
Rawls sent an email to undisclosed recipients, urging them to read recent Times Free Press news stories about the mileage dust-up and then “contact Nick Lillios and let him know that he needs to regain some courage and vote to remove Johnny McDaniel.”
This brings us to the rising far-right politicians in Bradley County and their previous disagreements with McDaniel.
In September 2012, a tea party-leaning former Free Press editorialist took a jab at McDaniel after he won the state’s superintendent of the year award: “It says something about school superintendents in our state when they believe the very best among them is a guy who tried to justify a tax hike by intentionally bulldozing a perfectly good school.”
It should have been important to note that the “perfectly good” but quite old and very small Blue Springs Elementary School had been closed by a tornado that slammed out its windows and ripped away its roof the year before. Travelers Insurance paid $1.1 million toward its repair or demolition. McDaniel and the then-school board chose to use the insurance money on a $25,000 demolition contract and to buy 20 acres of land for a new school at a cost of $260,000. In hopes of making up the difference toward building a new school, a $32 annual wheel tax was proposed for Bradley County. Voters said no.
Johnny McDanielThen there’s Common Core. Some newly elected board members, commissioners and McDaniel didn’t line up on Common Core – a set of states-made guidelines designed to help students across the nation reach similar education benchmarks.
In October 2013, the county commission on a vote of 13-1 asked the school board to analyze the impact of Common Core on students and teachers. The opposing vote came from Commissioner Jeff Yarber who had been asking his colleagues to notify state legislators and education officials that the commission opposed the adoption of Common Core standards in favor of standards developed at the state and local level.
Then in July 2014, McDaniel got in hot water with the right-wingers when – at Gov. Bill Haslam’s specific request – he and administrators and teachers from five area school systems met in a private meeting with the governor and state education Commissioner Kevin Huffman to share the Common Core implementation experiences of teachers and administrators.
“It’s unfortunate that the governor’s office chose not to include the people elected by the citizens of Bradley County to represent them regarding our education system,” said Vicki Beaty, then-chairwoman of the county school board.
A citizen petition to retain McDaniel on change.org already has garnered more than 1,400 signatures, along with many comments and testimonials to McDaniel’s leadership and mentorship. Troy Weathers, a former school board member and outspoken supporter of McDaniel, has called the buyout announcement “a black eye and a sad day” for Bradley County Schools.
Tuesday’s vote should examine what’s really important amid the debris of this Bradley County saga: ideology or youngsters’ education?