Willow Run Board sets closed meeting to discuss Jackson

By Dan DuChene
May. 22, 2009    ·    3:58 a.m.

The Willow Run Board of Education decided to hold a closed session meeting next week to discuss the performance of its superintendent.

The meeting was scheduled by the board at the end of Thursday night’s regular board meeting. The meeting will be held to discuss the recent events surrounding Superintendent Doris Hope-Jackson’s resignation, and her later withdrawal of the resignation.

“We need to sit down and talk together as a board,” Trustee Clifford Smith said during the meeting, “excluding Dr. Jackson.”

Holding a meeting in closed session would allow the board to meet without the public present. It was discussed by the board during Thursday’s meeting to hold the closed session without Jackson present.

Not present at the meeting, Jackson had taken a personal day Thursday and Friday.

Jackson announced her resignation after a strategic planning session held Saturday afternoon. A letter of resignation was submitted Tuesday, and the original agenda, dispersed to the board Friday, was amended to reflect the necessary action.

A day later, Jackson sent an e-mail to the board and rescinded her resignation. She said Board Treasurer Dorothy Stewart had asked her to reconsider her resignation.

“It was affirmed after a person or group vandalized my vehicle at my temporary residence,” Jackson said in Wednesday’s e-mail.

The board was given a third agenda before Thursday night’s meeting with the consideration of Jackson’s resignation removed.

This chain of events is according to e-mails sent to the Citizen by Jackson, as well as statements from Smith, Board Vice President Sheri Washington and Board Secretary Mark Wilde after Thursday’s meeting.

Washington said she was not made aware of any official rescinding of Jackson’s resignation until she received the third agenda Thursday night.

“There are too many rumors out there,” Smith said after Thursday’s meeting. “We need to figure out which is true.

“We need to say something to the public,” he said.

All the board members interviewed Thursday night said they had heard at least some information about the situation by reading reports from the media.

The closed meeting was scheduled for May 29 at the conference room in the district’s administration office. It will be held at 6:30 p.m.

During the meeting, Wilde brought up concerns about holding a closed session meeting to discuss Jackson’s performance without her present. He said he thought she had to be “at least invited” to the meeting.

Under the permissible purposes to hold a meeting in closed session, according to the Michigan Open Meetings Act, a public body can hold a meeting in closed session to discuss personnel evaluations only if the employee in question requests the meeting to be closed to the public. The employee may rescind that request at any time.

Jackson was hired by the board in 2007 to replace out-going superintendent Ron Ciranna. She is in the second year of a three-year contract.

Related Story:
Willow Run Superintendent announces resignation