The Escambia County School board voted Friday to buy out the remainder of Superintendent Michele McClung’s contract, placing her on immediate paid leave that ends on Jan. 31.

Terms of the buyout were not available. The board had voted 4-3 two months ago not to renew her contract beyond June 30, which was its original expiration date. The buyout includes the remainder of her entire contract through June.

McClung declined to make an immediate comment after the meeting, saying she will make a statement later today.

The vote on Friday came one day after McClung, during the board’s regularly scheduled monthly meeting, shared details about the school system’s state report card that showed a one-year improvement of its numerical and letter-grade score from a C to a B. Escambia County consists of 10 public schools spread over several small towns in a rural southwestern Alabama.

Michele Collier, an assistant superintendent, was appointed as acting superintendent effective Friday.

Board turmoil

The decision comes at a time of turmoil on the school board. The board’s vote in October ignited a series of criminal charges and indictments against two of the board’s members – Sherry Digmon, the publisher of The Atmore News, and Cindy Jackson, the board’s vice-president – for allegedly sharing grand jury secrets.

“It’s almost like we won the national championship in school performances and our grades may well be the most improved in the state,” said longtime board member Danny Benjamin, a McClung supporters. “It’s almost like we won the national championship and fired the coach. That is what is happening now. Shame on us.”

The buyout vote was unanimous, though Benjamin and board members Coleman Wallace and Mike Edwards said they did not support losing McClung as the district’s permanent superintendent.

“I want her to get paid and get to some normalcy in her life for a change,” said Wallace. “But I am appalled as to why it’s happening.”

The four board members who voted not to renew McClung’s contract on Oct. 12, declined to make a statement during the board meeting. Digmon declined to comment after the meeting, and Jackson and board president Loumeek White could not be reached for comment. Board member Kevin Hoomes declined to comment.

“The problem is here we don’t share our opinions,” Edwards said. “We can respect our opinions, but we have to know each other’s opinions. For instance, we are here this morning to do a contract for our superintendent, Ms. McClung, and ending her contract. No one put forward why we are doing that. Silence. No opinions. Why are we doing this?”

White told Edwards it was time for the school system to move on.

Digmon, in October, said the reason she voted against McClung’s contract was because teachers and school system employees she spoke with requested new leadership, according to local news accounts in October.

Edwards told AL.com after the meeting that the controversy stems over the handling of the county’s accounting system which he claimed was being used by previous superintendents to “hide corruption and mismanagement.” He claimed that Digmon “demanded money from the previous superintendent and CFO to support her newspaper,” in the amount of $800 a month for “an undetermined period.” He also said that Digmon and Jackson were part of a propaganda campaign against McClung in “fabricated untruths they shared against the county.”

Criminal charges

In late October, 72-year-old Digmon was charged with revealing grand jury secrets and with two counts of an ethics violation stemming from her dual roles as a school board member and as a newspaper publisher.

Digmon’s ethics violations are allegedly related to using her school board position “for personal gain by selling ads” in the Atmore Magazine and/or Grace Publishing LLC. Digmon reportedly has a financial stake in both entities and received a financial gain in excess of $2,500, which authorities claim is a violation of Alabama ethics law.

Digmon also faces a rare impeachment charge; no local school board member has been impeached in Alabama in 17 years.

The sole reporter at The Atmore News, Don Fletcher, 69, is also facing a criminal indictment for revealing grand jury secrets. The charge is related to a story that ran on Oct. 25 in The Atmore News about the school system’s handling of COVID-19 funds.

Jackson, 72, was arrested on Dec. 4, and indicted on a charge of allegedly obtaining and disclosing information from a grand jury subpoena. Also charged with revealing grand jury evidence is Ashley Fore, 47, a bookkeeper at the school system.

Escambia County District Attorney Steve Billy, who vocally supported McClung during the October meeting, has declined to comment about the cases. He was not at the board’s meetings on Thursday or Friday.

Billy has come under fire by press freedom groups and from the Alabama Association of School Boards (AASB), which called Digmon’s impeachment proceeding as “corrupt.”

An impeachment indictment, filed on Oct. 27 and provided to AL.com by White and the AASB accuses Digmon of violating the 11-year-old School Board Governance Improvement Act of 2012 that establishes training requirements, and accountability measures for all local school board members.

Under the indictment, Digmon is accused – among other things – of ignoring “all the positive things” that McClung had accomplished since her hiring in 2021. The indictment also accuses Digmon of not providing a basis for her “No” vote “except to say she was concerned because she had been contacted by employees, which clearly reflected her lack of concern for children,” which Billy claims is also a violation of the 2012 school board law.

The impeachment indictment also accuses Digmon of violating her duty as an elected school board member “by refusing to publish articles which promoted the school system and the superintendent, which were written by a contract writer of the school system.”

Digmon also “never abstained from voting to approve payments to her own business” while serving as a school board member, the indictment reads. McClung, according to the indictment, had previously questioned payments to Digmon’s business, and that Digmon “turned against McClung because she questioned payment made to her business” from the Escambia County School Board.

The AASB has since claimed that Billy is not using the 2012 state law as it was originally intended. That law was adopted at the end of the Great Recession and at a time when school boards were wrestling with contract renewals of school officials amid “horrific budget situations,” Sally Smith, executive director with the AASB, told AL.com earlier this month.