LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The Kentucky Department of Education has named several current and former officials at Jefferson County Public Schools, including former Superintendent Donna Hargens, on its witness list as it prepares for the district’s takeover appeal.
Hargens was superintendent when the state launched its audit of JCPS in February 2017, and she resigned effective July 2017 as the board and staff lost faith in her leadership.
Others on the list include current members of the Jefferson County Board of Education, JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio, the father of an autistic boy whose legs were broken as he was restrained, a former FBI investigator who examined the district’s handling of investigations and a representative of the company that found testing irregularities at eight JCPS schools.
What’s more, KDE included a number of documents in its exhibit list that did not appear in the 14-month audit that resulted in interim Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis’s recommendation to place JCPS under state management. No Jefferson County Teachers Association officials are included in the state’s witness list.
Among them, the state wants copies of correspondence between JCPS and teachers’ union officials regarding collective bargaining, school board politics and the state audit.
KDE also wants to include JCPS alternative school monitoring reports completed in March, including a report from Breckinridge Metro High School that found students were sent to a small, dark room in the school’s basement to serve in-school suspension.
The witness and exhibit lists, submitted by KDE Friday and obtained by WDRB News through an open records request, only provide a glimpse of the individuals and documents the state may use in its defense of Lewis’s recommended takeover of JCPS.
The list of potential witnesses includes former Chief Business Officer Tom Hudson, whose contract was not renewed in 2017, and former Chief Academic Officer Dewey Hensley, who resigned in 2015. Both have emerged as harsh critics of the state’s largest school district, which serves more than 100,000 students.
The Jefferson County Board of Education and KDE have been engaged in settlement negotiations to avoid complete state management of JCPS, with the school board holding a special meeting on Friday to possibly discuss the latest proposal from Lewis and KDE behind closed doors.
In his proposal, Lewis scaled back the number of areas in which KDE would have “enhanced oversight” to three: restraint and seclusion, special education, and early childhood education.
KDE would be allowed to submit formal feedback in areas of JCPS operations that it had previously hoped to include in enhanced oversight, such as the district’s student assignment plan and transportation.
Lewis said the slow pace of the talks disappointed him and that the school board could empower Pollio to negotiate a settlement.
Board member Chris Brady said that Lewis’s misgivings about the back-and-forth of current negotiations “shows a lack of understanding about representative democracy.”
The 12-day appeal hearing is set to begin Sept. 10.
Reach reporter Kevin Wheatley at 502-585-0838 and kwheatley@wdrb.com. Follow him on Twitter @KevinWheatleyKY.
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