Marcus Gladney is seeking a face-to-face meeting with the Calhoun County School Board and aims to appeal their decision not to hire him as a language arts teacher at Calhoun City.
The board met with Calhoun City Middle School Principal Stacia Parker for nearly 20 minutes in executive session last Tuesday night (May 29) about the potential hiring of Gladney, after which Board President Will Fleming announced, after opening the meeting back up to the public, the board had decided to “uphold the district policy.”
The decision made behind closed doors was a 3-2 vote with board members Precious Thompson, of Calhoun City, and Janice Golliday, of Bruce, voting in favor of waiving the policy and hiring Gladney.
The policy states applicants are ineligible for employment if they have a felony conviction on their record for a list of crimes including “possession or sale of drugs.”
Gladney was sentenced in 2010 on two counts of sale of marijuana. His sentence was soon after reduced to house arrest and his probation was officially terminated in 2017.
Gladney, who already had a bachelors degree, has since earned a masters degree. He has been granted a AA certified rating from the state department of education.
The board was asked to approve his hire as an eighth grade teacher in Calhoun City, but separated it from the other personnel hires on last Tuesday’s agenda to discuss it behind closed doors.
“I’m frustrated I never had the opportunity to speak to the board,” Gladney said when contacted by The Journal on Monday. “I don’t know any of them besides Precious and Janice.”
“I made a mistake 11 years ago, but I did my time and have done everything asked of me since,” he said. “That’s the only demerit on my record. I would like to have been given an opportunity to talk to them face-to-face to answer their questions and explain anything they wanted to know.”
Gladney has worked at Southern Motion in Pontotoc the past six years. He said he plans to appeal the school board’s decision to whatever means available and hopefully address the district policy.
In other news from last Tuesday’s meeting, BHS Principal Dallas Gore presented a job description for an assistant principal’s position for the board to consider.
Last year they approved two “lead teachers” at Bruce. Sandy Aron and Willie Mays served in those roles. Mays has taken a job in Coffeeville for next school year.
Gore suggested he would rather the position be changed to a single assistant principal and he would like to offer it to Aron.
He explained with 7th-12th grades at BHS, supervising the overall facility, handling discipline and all the extra curricular activities that require an administrator be present limits his time to work individually with teachers.
“I do a lot of walk-throughs, but actually working with individual teachers to improve instruction is a timely job that takes someone doing that every day,” Gore said.
He said the new position wouldn’t add a new unit and Aron would still be available to teach in the classroom in any areas needed.
“She will teach as much as I have to have her to teach,” Gore said. “She’s willing to do whatever to help our organization, and that’s a great asset to have I don’t want to lose.”
The board took no official action.
Dr. Lisa Langford, principal at CCES, introduced officers of her P-16 Council – Dr. Julia Brandon as president, Rexanne Collins as vice president, and Katie Hill as secretary.
The board also set the regular meeting date for June as Monday, June 25.
Supt. Jean Ann Casey told the board exit interviews had been given to a number of staff that departed the district this year. She said that information would be provided to the board when it was all returned.