Davis: Protect The Brand, Focus on Culture, Environment
COLUMBIA – In a convocation address to Richland Two School District, embattled Superintendent Baron Davis, without mentioning the state investigation of the District, blasted what he called an attack on public education and promised a positive culture in lieu of raises for teachers and staff.
“Public education is under attack, public education teachers
are under attack, administrators are under attack, and everybody that is
attacking public education is not from the outside; some of them are inside the
public education experience,” said Davis, in a speech to kick off the 2022-23
school year.
“Richland School District Two, that brand, that logo, is
under attack,” said Davis, dressed in a black suit and red bow tie on the stage
of Westwood High School.
“It has been tarnished (sic) as an attempt to tarnish it,”
he said, “to say [the district] is not what it used to be, because some of the
things that we focus on that don’t necessarily align with past historical
practices… I would argue that this brand, this flame, shines as bright as it
ever shined.”
The publicly available video of the speech is incomplete,
with an unknown amount of time and content missing from the beginning. A
district spokesman said the livestream site did not record the beginning.
Davis’s comments come a few weeks after the summer break
announcement that Gov. Henry McMaster had requested an investigation of
district leadership following a number of high-conflict incidents and
complaints involving Davis, his wife, and members of the Richland Two school
board.
According to McMaster’s request, the state inspector
general’s office was asked to investigate after the state received evidence of
“organizational or institutional dysfunction or other mismanagement by Richland
Two’s elected and appointed leadership.”
Since 2019, nearly all of the school board members have
either been arrested, cited for ethics violations, recorded cursing a member of
the public, or otherwise crossed obvious ethical boundaries in their public
conduct.
Davis has also been in the thick of the drama, particularly
after a confrontation at a school board meeting that featured his wife, a high
school teacher, reportedly involved in
verbal altercations with several people (including a teen student) and reports
of Davis himself having to be restrained while confronting a parent – all
accusations that he denies.
In a more recent incident of school board dysfunction, a
conversation recorded during a closed-door meeting featured an altercation
between Board Chair Teresa Holmes and board member Lashonda McFadden that
resulted in McFadden being arrested and charged with threatening Holmes.
In the wake of the announced state-level investigation,
three of the four board members who are up for re-election this year opted not
to run; only Holmes has filed to seek another term.
The top priority Davis stated for the new school year during
his convocation speech: “Protect the Brand.”
He says his plan for the 2022-23 school year is to
concentrate and focus on the culture and environment within the district – and
take action to ensure that it is positive for teachers and staff.
“The world stage is full of actors, people pretending to be
something that they’re not. What we have little of is people of action who
actually put the work in to get it done,” he said.
“We don’t need any more people being pretentious about the
roles and responsibilities that they have and displaying things and saying
things and not following [through]. We need people of action, so we’re going to
concentrate on these things.”
In addition to culture and environment, two areas of focus
he noted are achievement and talent.
He then offered some comments on the value and importance of
setting goals – routine material at this kind of event – before explaining his
plan to investigate the culture throughout the district through surveys and
unannounced classroom visits.
He called upon teachers to “create, sustain, and invest in a
culture and environment of excellence” by developing and sharing personal goals
to further the effort.
The five key areas he says are important to the district’s
culture: that it is safe and secure, affirming and inclusive, respectful and
professional, supportive and appreciative, connected and informed.
He said the culture and environment within the district is
critical to retention of teachers and staff, noting that the last time Richland
Two increased teacher pay, surrounding districts did the same in order to
compete for talent.
But in the end, he says, most people won’t leave a district
for a small pay difference when they are happy with their jobs.
He expressed some regret for the last teacher pay increase
because, he said, had the district waited, the state would’ve picked up most of
the tab.
“Two years ago, before the state decided to mandate starting
teacher pay to be $40,000, we raised teacher pay from $37,000 to $41,000,
before the state gave assistance to that,” he said. “Now, had I known the state
was going to give assistance to that, maybe we would’ve waited two years.”
More important than differences in teacher pay between
different school districts, he says, are the intangible elements of their
workplace culture.
“People aren’t going back and forth between districts for
$1,500, most people. They stay because of how you treat them and how they feel:
Do they believe in you as the leaders of the school district, and do we believe
in one another? Is it a good working environment?” he said.
“That’s what people stay for because when you divide $1,500
over 24 checks, you’re not going to see a whole lot of money, but you can’t put
a value on feeling safe and secure and feeling affirmed and appreciated. That’s
a valuable tool, and we have control over that, so that’s what we’re going to
focus on.”
