Audience protests hiring process

By: Steve Welker | Morganton News Herald
Published: September 29, 2009

In silent protest Tuesday night, more than 250 people turned their backs on the Burke County Board of Education and walked out of Patton High School's auditorium while Board Chair Tracy Norman read a press release introducing the new superintendent.

Minutes earlier, following a last-ditch effort to put a $100,000 cap on any buy-out of the new superintendent's nearly four-year-long contract, the board voted 5-2 to hire Dr. Art Stellar, 62, of Taunton, Mass., as the new school superintendent.

Board members Buddy Armour and Sam Wilkinson voted against the contract. Both stressed their votes were not against Stellar.

Armour said he feared the board's action would jeopardize its position with SACS CASI, the national accrediting association that told the school board to expand its search for a superintendent and to include greater input from the citizens, businesses, educators and parents.

Armour warned that the board might be committing the district to spend money it does not have and cannot obtain from the Burke County Board of Commissioners.

"I'm very concerned that we're in dire, desperate straits," he said.

Armour also said it's his opinion that the board may be violating North Carolina's Fiscal Control Act, making the board members "jointly and individually" responsible for their spending on the superintendent's salary.

Both Armour and Wilkinson said no one has explained why the selection process was done so quickly.
Special counsel Richard Schwartz told the board in May that it's not unusual for a superintendent search to require six months' work.

The board completed this task in less than three months since it requested and received former superintendent David Burleson's resignation.

As the board members voted on the question, five – including John Aulgur, who was on a conference phone – said "aye."

Hundreds of the 350 to 400 people in the auditorium audience joined Armour in Wilkinson in shouting, "No!"

Only scattered applause — the loudest from four board members — greeted Stellar in his first public appearance.

He succeeds Rick Sherrill, who will return to his position as associate superintendent, and Burleson, whose contract ended June 30.