The good people of Huntsville on Tuesday sent a stinging rebuke of their school board's terrible mishandling of the notorious "bean dipping" and "baptism" scandal by voting to send three of the current seven-member board, including President Danny Thomas, packing.
Also gone is Audra Kimball, the superintendent the board suddenly replaced last week by switching her position with another administrator.
This brings a new dawn and hopefully transparent and brighter approach to governing the Huntsville School District.
Who can the citizens in that charming Ozarks community thank for fueling this positive result?
I and others believe it was Ellen Kreth, editor and publisher of the weekly Madison County Record, and her tenacious General Manager Shannon Hahn, who spent months bringing this ugly mess from the darkness into the light; practicing genuine journalism, rather than filling pages with routine and largely irrelevant process stories.
"Democracy showed accountability was achievable," Kreth told me after the election. "The people held the board accountable for their decisions."
As they should have.
It became clear in recent months that the outgoing board, which lost a lawsuit filed by Fort Smith trial attorney Joey McCutchen on behalf of board candidate Benjamin Rightsell for multiple violations of the Freedom of Information Act (thereby costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars in legal fees), was neither transparent nor capable of properly dealing with the incidents of alleged sexual abuses.
Rightsell is in a runoff with Bobby Ray Gulledge on June 21.
I have neither the time nor inclination to again review the disgraceful details of the school's nationally reported scandal, other than to say multiple despicable locker-room acts by some older middle school athletes allegedly inflicted on teammates in their locker room (resulting in Title IX investigations) have been well covered for months.
Just before the election, this former board (and now former Superintendent Kimball) continued its stunningly poor performance by hurriedly convening a special board meeting that led to a three-hour executive session.
They emerged from their back-room session to immediately approve transferring Kimball (at her request) to become the district's director of personnel and program compliance, while Jonathan Warren, who'd held that job since last summer (when Kimball hired him) was named to replace her.
Neat and tidy. No community input or search committee necessary. Just make the administrative switch at one hastily called executive session.
Readers may recall Kimball has been in the hot seat of late for not reporting the alleged locker-room incidents to the state as one of several mandated reporters of known student abuses. Other mandated reporters among higher-ups in the district also apparently were silent about two years of repeated assaults.
As the Record reported following the administrative switcheroo, one of the most crucial responsibilities of any school board is to select a superintendent to effectively manage the district's varied functions. After all, the buck of accountability flows from atop the administrative pyramid.
Now, with so many changes in the district's administration after the people having their chance to express their opinions at the ballot box, the time is at hand to set new directions upward.
The Record also reported that, rather than explaining to the taxpaying public the reason behind switching Kimball and Warren, some on the board tried placing the blame for this scandal not on their own shoulders, or certain members of the school's staff, but on the newspaper for revealing it.
It's always easier to blame the messenger (rather than one's self) for mistakes one makes. In this case, relentlessly exposing the many whos, whats, whens, wheres, whys and hows behind this scandal.
Kreth and company have been accurately writing about these incidents that spanned more than two years. However, Kreth wasn't legally mandated to report suspected child abuse to the state, as were members of the administration and faculty.
Why should any of us be surprised by this in this world where far too few public figures stand tall and admit when they are wrong? Instead, they turn to Option B to hurriedly convene in private and emerge to blame the messenger of these disgusting and deliberate actions, which fell clearly within the board's responsibilities.
Kreth told me, "Following the official vote, rather than explaining to constituents the reasoning behind hiring Warren, some board members blamed the press for its problems, focusing attention on our general manager."
"One board member for 12 years, Janeal Yancey, faulted the "negative, unethical media," for causing the transfer.
When Kreth asked Yancey just what had been incorrectly reported, rather than engage in a meaningful dialogue, Yancey chose to hang up. Undaunted, Kreth then texted Yancey asking the same question, but never received a response. Yancey lost her re-election by more than 200 votes.
Thomas, the president, finished fourth in a field of four.
Lenora Riedel, a board member for six years with a relative involved in the case (though she refused to disqualify herself from voting on punishments) said there was a "fire" in the district, also blaming the press.
"She said the media was failing to do its job--responsibilities she characterized as emphatically supporting the school district rather than objectively reporting the news," said Kreth.
Someone please inform Riedel that wanting a press that unconditionally supports an institution, rather than questioning it (you know, like a PR agency), amounts to promoting authoritarian structures and invariably fails to hold public officials accountable.
Terry Forsyth, the third board member to lose his seat, joined the chorus of criticism at that pre-election meeting by holding up a copy of the Record and proclaiming that, while the board had bestowed grace on Kimball, the newspaper had not (as if that was the Record's job.)
The publisher explained that her paper's role is not as a cheerleader but to objectively and accurately print the facts. "If we don't print them, do the facts go away? Of course not--consequences always remain. A tree falls on a path in the forest with no one to hear, yet the tree must still be cleared from the path."
To any objective reader, it's obvious it is not the messenger's responsibility for what happened in this community's school district.
There's yet another disturbing aspect to the baptism and bean-dipping incidents. "Victims have told the Record not one board member or the superintendent have reached out to them. If only our reporting could change that fact," Kreth said.
"We would love to report a story that highlighted how our elected officials cared about abuse in our community and not only got justice for our victims, but put proactive, preventive mechanisms in place, too. Though, unfortunately, we both know that this is not at all the case. To the school board's dismay, we do not report lies."
Kreth and her staff performed exactly as journalists (rather than stenographers) should. They sought and reported facts across whomever's doorstep they led. They admirably and accurately informed the community of what was happening in their tax-supported district.
"We have printed all news about the district during the last year--good and bad," Kreth wrote, adding that her plan with a newly structured board and administration remains unchanged. "We will report any news they have with how they are going to fix the district and chart a path forward. We will hold them accountable for succeeding or failing in those goals."
I join Kreth in hoping Warren, with a broad background in education, will prove to be a badly needed wise and calming administrator for the Huntsville district, a breath of fresh air sorely needed at this time in its history.
Over my 51 years in this craft, I lost track long ago of how many times a person, agency or institution decided the best way out of their jam was to blame me for doing basically the same thing Kreth and her small and admirably feisty newspaper have done here: shining light on an otherwise unknown matter of public concern.
She not only understood her role, but doggedly stuck to it regardless of the slings and arrows aimed at diverting her mission.
Alas, I see far too little such commitment to this First Amendment mandate that allows us to remain informed in a democratic republic so we can do precisely that.
When all's said and done, who, if not for a dedicated and determined press, in small and large communities alike, will inform the people of matters that concern their lives without friends to favor or foes to punish?
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at [email protected].