The superintendent of a small southwestern Alabama school system could be dismissed Friday, one day after she announced Thursday that the school system’s report card were among some of the most improved in the state.

The possible dismissal also comes at a time of ongoing turmoil within the school system. Two board members, including one who is a newspaper publisher, face criminal indictments for revealing grand jury secrets amid an investigation that has sparked an unusual amount of national attention for county with less than 37,000 residents.

Michele McClung, superintendent of Escambia County Schools since 2021, said she faces dismissal during a special-called board meeting at 8:15 a.m. Friday in Atmore. Her immediate removal from the position comes approximately two months after the board voted 4-3 on Oct. 12 to not renew her contract beyond June 2024.

McClung, during the board’s regular monthly meeting Thursday in Brewton, declined to further comment other than to say she made some decisions that were not popular with a majority of the seven-member school board.

“My prayer is that we don’t do something reckless for personal recognition,” said board member Coleman Wallace who, along with three other school board members, praised McClung for leading the school system’s improved school report card grades.

McClung’s possible dismissal comes at a precarious time for the school system. Two of the four board members who voted against her – Sherry Digmon, who is also the publisher of The Atmore News, and Cindy Jackson, the board’s vice-president – have since been indicted by a grand jury for allegedly disclosing grand jury secrets.

The grand jury has also indicted a reporter with The Atmore News and a school system bookkeeper for disclosing grand jury secrets. The cases have roiled Escambia County and put the rural county into the national conversation over press freedoms and a debate over arresting journalists for reporting the news.

Praising report card

None of the criminal cases came up for discussion on Thursday. Instead, McClung released the school system’s report card results, which she says are likely the most improved in the entire state for a single public school system.

“This is what we consider systemic change,” McClung said. “Systemic in the right direction doesn’t happen by chance. It happens by design. I’d like to thank the executive staff in sticking with design and trusting in the process.”

The scores released by Escambia County showed the overall report card improvement from a numerical score of 77 in 2022 to 84 in 2023, and a letter grade going from a C to a B.

Four of the schools saw double-digit numerical gains, according to the system. Those schools would be included among the “most improved” schools in the state, according to last year’s rankings. The Top 25 most improved systems were awarded with $8,000 state grants.

• Escambia County Middle School in Atmore went from a numerical score of 56 and a F letter grade to a 70 and a C.
• W.S. Neal High School in East Brewton saw its score leap from a 67 to an 81, going from a D letter grade to a B.
• W.S. Neal Elementary School in East Brewton saw its numerical score improve from a 70 in 2022 to an 83, going from a C to a B letter grade.
• Pollard McCall Junior High School in Brewton saw its score go from a 73 to an 84, or from a C to a B letter grade.

Of the system’s 10 schools, only two saw a slight dip in its numerical scores since last year. No school dropped a letter grade.

“Our county report grade exceeded the state level as well,” McClung said. “I’d like to thank our students first and foremost. I would like to thank our teachers for the hard work toward implementing the programs with the tools we provided them. And I would like to thank all our employees in the schools and executive staff and our board in trusting in me and the blueprint we knew that it would take to move our schools forward.”

Supporters react

McClung received a standing ovation toward the conclusion of the meeting, but the only board members to speak were the three who voted to extend her contract in October – Wallace, Danny Benjamin and Mike Edwards. The decision to renew her contract was defeated by a 4-3 vote.

“Ms. McClung and her star-studded staff have accomplished this,” said Wallace. “Escambia County loves you and we appreciate you.”

Benjamin, the longest tenured member of the board, said the academic improvements might be the best he has seen during his 35-year tenure with the system.

“I am just so grateful to our superintendent and staff for all of the work that has been done in less than two years,” Benjamin said. “When we rode her around (before she was hired as superintendent) we stopped for lunch and I asked Ms. McClung, ‘how long will it take to get the school system where it needs to be?’ She looked up at me and said, ‘two years.’ And it has (happened0 and hasn’t been two years yet.”

Board president Loumeek White, who voted not to renew her contract in October, declined to comment other than to say the board plans to make a statement on Friday.

McClung, before coming to Escambia County, had served as director of teaching, learning and assessment at the Mobile County Public School System and was awarded with the Alabama ASCD Outstanding Curriculum Leader Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021.

While at Mobile County Schools — the state’s largest school system — McClung was responsible for overseeing curriculum, creating quarterly assessments, and preparing students for mandated state assessments. She also oversaw planning, budgeting, conducting and keeping records of professional development for over 4,000 teachers, as well as administrators and staff, according to the school system’s website.

Criminal cases

The meeting in Brewton was only the second one to take place since a wave of criminal charges and indictments have occurred since McClung’s contract was voted not to be renewed.

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 has declined to comment about the cases. He was not at Thursday’s school board meeting.

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.