I recently wrote a column about the firing of Champ Ligon as basketball coach at Lexington's Bryan Station High School, noting that he had compiled the best three-year (2004-06) record of all the teams (5 of them) at Lexington's public schools, and that for a time during the last season his team was rated second in the state. In the year prior to his five-year stint at Bryan Station, the school won only two games.
In none of the articles published in the Lexington Herald-Leader relating to this matter was the information that Fayette Schools Superintendent Stu Silberman was involved. Ligon said that he was told by Bryan Station Gladys Peoples, as she fired him, that the team had to be taken to the next level, hard to do because it was already at the top level. She had nothing to say at the time. Schools operating under the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 may hire their own principals, notwithstanding any objections by the elected superintendent and school-board. They also may devise their own curricula and do just about anything else they desire. Councils, according to law, are made up of the principal, two parents, and three teachers (at least at the beginning), although it appears that some schools may have done as they pleased with that regulation.
A comment was posted to my article by a principal calling to my attention that this can't happen. This is the comment: As a high school principal, let me correct two incorrect statements here. I know nothing of the coach or the principal, but do know school council laws. The council has no authority, nor input, nor responsibility for evaluations, terminations or any personnel action, other than hiring the principal. They do not have the authority to evaluate or fire a principal. That is done by the superintendent. I just wanted to let the public know how the council really works.
Ligon was rehired as coach, following an outcry from the players and others, as well as a petition-drive to keep him in place. This is part of a Herald-Leader article of June 16: Ligon was also supposed to meet with Fayette County Superintendent Stu Silberman, but Silberman encouraged Ligon to meet with Peoples because it was a "school-level situation."
Since the Bryan Station School Council also was never mentioned in this matter, it would appear that Principal Peoples did both the firing and the re-hiring. If that's not the case, someone in the school system should explain exactly what happened. It's a lead-pipe cinch that the superintendent not only had nothing to do with this mess, but also had no intention of getting into it. Apparently, he felt that Peoples or the school council did have the authority to do what the principal's comment (noted above) indicated they couldn't do.
The team is virtually all black, as is the principal. Ligon happens to be white. In the same article mentioned above, Peoples was quoted: "He understands that the program has not been meeting the high expectations and standards we have for our students up to this point. But he is sincere in his desire to help our students and to move the program to the next level. We have decided that we can work together next year and elevate our boys' basketball program." In other words, everything is back to square-one and none of the mess should have happened, in the first place. She heads a school having the following percentage of students rated proficient/distinguished in 2006 by the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System in these areas: math, 25%; reading, 23%; Science, 22%. These are the abysmal marks after 16 years of KERA, and it's doubtful that the boys' basketball coach can do very much to change things.
According to the H-L, Ligon said this in the re-hiring statement: "The standards we are talking about go beyond wins and losses. We want our students to achieve at a high level academically with the ultimate expectation of going on to college and completing a college degree. We also want the boys' basketball team to set the standard for the students in our school in terms of behavior." So, apparently Ligon is aware that his team is supposed to enhance academics and behavior as well as sports; but, isn't it the principal's job to see to those things?
This is the kind of mumbo-jumbo that causes one to be unsurprised at the fact that education has not been reformed in Kentucky. It's also an example of how teachers/coaches can be at the mercy and/or the whim of their superiors, notwithstanding anything the law specifies, allows, or prohibits. I take the communicating principal's word that he has set the record straight and appreciate that, as well as stand corrected, but it doesn't seem to wash in this matter, unless someone is simply sweeping things under the rug.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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