Hypothesis: What's up with the special executive session?

Our FHSD school board met last night in a special executive session, which followed the two executive sessions held on the night of the August board meeting. 

The topic: ​Employment or Compensation of a public official.  

The team at AdvocateFHSD discussed, and came up with a working hypothesis, based on input from former board members and community members. We’ve had our eye on actions around these two contracts since late last year — which inspired our January blog post —  since the board is only responsible for hiring the two roles of Treasurer and Superintendent. 

The Forest Hills School District Board of Education has approved contract updates for nearly everyone employed by the district, the only remaining contracts to discuss would be those for the Treasurer and Superintendent, both of whom have contracts ending next year, 2025.
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Responsible leadership would consider risk vs. impact to the district with any significant decision to extend or terminate a contract. 

District Superintendent Larry Hook and District Treasurer Alana Cropper

We hypothesize that the board may be discussing an extension for Mr Hook, and a termination of the Treasurer, based on conversations we had at the end of the year in 2023. Speaking with former board members from previous terms, several advised that Sara Jonas, Katie Stewart and Bob Bibb still had intent to remove people who had been hired during previous board terms. Our sources suggested that Jonas’ strategy to block future board members from making hiring decisions that they would not make themselves if they were unable to be re-elected, or should seats for future Republican party candidates fail in 2025.  We reached out to Board President Jonas for comment today, as of the publication time, we have not heard back. We will update if we receive a comment or quote.

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