Parent Asks School Board To Provide Oversight Of Administration

John Phillips told the members of the Oconee County Board of Education on Monday that they need to exert direct leadership and oversight of the management of the school district.

He also said the Board should commission an unbiased survey of parents and conduct and commission an independent study of the leadership culture, decision-making, and communications of the current school administration.

Phillips, who has children in the Oconee County school system, owns a consulting firm that he said provides executive services, including leadership training and board training, to nonprofits, universities, and federal agencies.

The recommendations to the Board, Phillips said in the citizen comment section of the Board’s regular meeting on Monday, result from a study he did of community emails that Oconee County Schools received last summer related to its reopening plan.

The analysis of those emails showed no evidence that the plan put into place has majority community support or that there was strong opposition to a mask mandate.

What the study did show, he said, was that emails forwarded to the Board by the administration showed more support for school policy that the emails themselves indicated.

Phillips was one of eight speakers who addressed the Board at Monday’s meeting. All of the others asked the Board to impose a mask mandate, and the five students who spoke said the current policy of only recommending masks is failing.

For more on this story, with a video of the Feb. 8 Board of Education meeting, please go to Oconee County Observations.