COLUMBIA, S.C. — Frustration and anger boiled over Tuesday night at Richland School District One's board meeting, as parents as well as board members questioned a recent decision to reassign almost a dozen teachers to different schools.
Dozens of members of the community packed into the auditorium at Hopkins Middle School, most of whom were there to voice their opinion on what happened.
Last week, the district announced that 12 teachers would be reassigned to other schools. The district said the changes came down to student-teacher ratios and the needs that may exist. They said some schools were overstaffed, while others were understaffed.
During the meeting some board members questioned Richland One Superintendent Dr. Craig Witherspoon and other district staffers in charge of human resources how much notification both the teachers and administrators were given before they had to make an abrupt change. Others questioned how a teacher could possibly make the adjustment to a new grade level, as some did, in such a short span of time.
"You're giving them a short window of time, to get those things done, connected, reconnect with a whole new group of people after 45 days, after 9 weeks of building relationships," said Richland One Commissioner Barbara Weston.
For nearly three hours, multiple members of the public took to the microphone to let their opinions be heard, with most criticizing the district, although some felt the board's decisions were needed to get teacher class size under control.
Richland One Commissioner Robert Lominack told Richland One's administration that he felt they weren't listening to concerns of teachers, on this issue or on others in the recent past. He said if they didn't, they'd see further employee turnover.
"Given the utter lack of notice the teachers were provided, the lack of notice the principals were provided on either end of this reassignment spectrum, and the way the teachers were spoken to, I understand that's a personnel matter, but If we ignore that now, we will lose more teachers than we ever thought we were going to lose," Lominack said.
According to the school board the school district lost around 50 percent of their teachers in may of this year. Superintendent Witherspoon says recruitment and retention of teachers are on the top of his priority list.
"As we look at other incentives targeted and otherwise, as we've done before, with overall retention, incentives and all, how do we tailor and specify to meet some of the needs that have been discussed this evening and before, that's something we are committed to taking a look at seeing what and how we can do things differently," Witherspoon said.
The Richland One administration said it would have some meetings to address some of the concerns and to provide the board with more information.