He was sued for racial discrimination. Did a Coast school board know when they hired him?
Nine months before the Jackson County school board hired Dr. John Strycker as the district’s next superintendent in 2019, six of his employees in Butler County, Alabama sued him for racial discrimination.
The administrators and guidance counselors, all of whom are Black, allege they were transferred to positions they regarded as demotions, while white colleagues got to keep their jobs. Strycker, who was superintendent, and the school board said the transfers benefited the district financially, but the plaintiffs claim the real rationale was “discriminatory animus.”
Two Jackson County school board members told the Sun Herald they did not know about the lawsuit, which is still pending in federal court, when they interviewed Strycker for the job.
“Certainly it would have been really an alarm (that) would have went off if we would have been aware of that at that particular time,” said Kenneth Fountain, who served as board chairman until the end of 2019. “I’m fairly comfortable that if that would have been known at the time, it might have had an impact on the interview process.”
That at least two board members did not know about the lawsuit raises questions about the level of vetting applicants received during Jackson County’s search for a superintendent in 2019.
The district spent thousands of dollars on the search service run by the Mississippi School Boards Association. No board member said they recalled a mention of the lawsuit in the report on Strycker compiled by MSBA; one board member said he learned about it through his own conversations with Butler County officials at the time.
No one said they remembered the board collectively discussing the lawsuit or asking Strycker about it during his hiring process. The interviews with candidates took place in executive session.
Strycker declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Now, Strycker and the Jackson County board are facing a new discrimination lawsuit. Former East Central assistant superintendent Mary Tanner sued Strycker and the school board in July, alleging her transfer to the central office was a demotion made because of her age and gender. Like the Butler County plaintiffs, Tanner claims the reason given for her transfer — alleged complaints about her leadership in East Central — was a fig leaf to hide discrimination.
What did the board know?
When Strycker’s application landed in Jackson County, he was on the hunt for a new job because the Butler County board had voted not to renew his contract, which started in 2017.
Current board chairman Troy Frisbie said he learned of the lawsuit during the hiring process, when he contacted Butler County board members to ask about Strycker. In his opinion, the plaintiffs’ claims weren’t valid. He also determined that the board’s vote not to extend Strycker’s contract was based on “politics,” not Strycker’s job performance.
And, Frisbie said, other candidates “were in similar situations” with lawsuits, though he did not give examples.
Frisbie said he couldn’t discuss whether the board had talked about the lawsuit before hiring Strycker.
Fountain, who said he facilitated interviews with all of the candidates but did not vote on the hiring because his term was about to end, learned about the lawsuit well after Strycker was hired.
“If somebody did know about it, they should have referenced me and said something,” he said. “I would have told ‘em exactly what I would have thought right there.”
Board member Glenn Dickerson said he did not know about the lawsuit until after he voted to hire Strycker. Dickerson declined to comment on whether it might have affected the hiring process if he had known about it.
Board member Amy Dobson said she would defer to board chairman Frisbie for comment.
Board member Keith Lee said he believes he knew about the lawsuit during the hiring process but couldn’t recall how he learned about it or exactly when. In any case, it didn’t strike him as a reason not to hire Strycker. Whatever steps Strycker took to improve the struggling school district could have ruffled feathers, he said.
“Any change I‘m sure that was enacted was probably met by some resistance from people who are reluctant to change,” he said.
An ‘enormously expensive’ discrimination lawsuit
The Alabama case has dragged on since December 2018, producing dozens of depositions and thousands upon thousands of pages of documents. The parties have been unable to reach a settlement and are now waiting for the judge to decide whether the case will go to trial or be dismissed.
“This case has been enormously expensive, to everybody,” said attorney James R. Seale, who is representing Strycker’s co-defendants, the members of the Butler County school board.
Because he was sued in his official capacity as Butler County superintendent but left the job at the end of 2019, Strycker was formally replaced as a defendant by the current superintendent, Joseph Eiland, in June 2020. The plaintiffs are seeking from the school district damages and a return to their previous positions. But filings in the case, including the most recent status report in September, list Strycker as a defendant alongside Eiland.
Fred D. Gray, Jr., an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he expects Strycker to attend if the case goes to trial.
Strycker’s attorney, John W. Marsh of Montgomery, did not return phone calls and emails requesting comment.
In legal filings on the case, Strycker denies that race played any role in his decision to transfer the six Black employees.
In an October 2019 deposition, Strycker said that he had made the transfers largely on the recommendations of two other administrators, and that they were intended to “optimize our staffing.”
The plaintiffs’ salaries were not cut with their transfers, but they claim the transfers have hurt their ability to access new opportunities and promotions.
In a deposition, Butler County plaintiff Joseph West, who was transferred from a central office position to assistant principal at an elementary school, said the move had been “demoralizing.”
“That’s one of the reasons I went and got advanced degrees, to be at the top of my profession,” he said. “To be right at Mount Everest’s peak. And then (to have) Dr. Strycker kick me down to the bottom is... I don’t want to go to work, but I know I have to go to work for my family.”
Searching for a superintendent
In 2019, a new state law took effect requiring every superintendent in Mississippi to be appointed by the school board, rather than elected.
The Jackson County board was among 55 around the state that had to appoint a superintendent for the first time.
The board hired the Mississippi School Board Association’s superintendent search service. The self-described “premier superintendent search service in Mississippi” advertises openings nationally, recruits candidates, and checks their qualifications.
The year Jackson County hired MSBA was a busy one for the superintendent search service: Because of the change in the law, many districts were seeking to appoint a new leader by the end of 2019, said Tommye Henderson, who has managed the service since 2017.
The service also conducts an initial background check, which Henderson said involves checking references and a Google search. MSBA compiles a report on each candidate and delivers it to the school board, which then selects and interviews finalists. Henderson said they also give boards information on how to obtain a more extensive background check of finalists.
Henderson declined to say whether the service’s report on Strycker included mention of the lawsuit.
“The information I gave to the board is confidential and that’s what we tell the board: ‘What we’re telling you is confidential because it is personnel,’” she said.
No Jackson County board member said they recalled seeing the lawsuit mentioned in documents they reviewed from MSBA.
Board members interviewed said that they had been impressed by Strycker’s track record in Butler County. During his tenure, he brought the district of about 3,000 students from a D rating up to a C.
Frisbie said the board found Strycker to be a “dynamic figure.”
“He was the type of person that got results,” Frisbie said.
Superintendent search experts: Lawsuit should have been discussed
Two superintendent search consultants interviewed by the Sun Herald said the lawsuit was “absolutely” something the entire board should have known about and discussed during the hiring process.
Like the MSBA superintendent search service, the consultants charge school boards around the country a fee to recruit and vet candidates.
“You want to make sure that you’ve clearly vetted the candidates that the board is gonna consider, and that the board has all the information that they could possibly have about this candidate prior to interviewing them and making their decision,” said Tom Jacobson, chief executive officer of McPherson & Jacobson, a Nebraska-based company that has conducted more than 900 searches over the last 31 years.
Terre Davis, a former superintendent and current search consultant based in Colorado who has worked on more than 100 selection processes, said she always asks applicants whether they have ever been involved in a lawsuit.
Any board members who did find out about the lawsuit during the process should have brought it to the attention of the entire board, Davis said.
“Obviously somebody didn’t do their research,” she said. “If one board member knew about it, he or she had that responsibility to question it.”
Fountain, who spent 24 years on the school board, said that even if the lawsuit’s allegations are ultimately dismissed, he wouldn’t have wanted to invite controversy by hiring someone accused of racial discrimination.
“Regardless of whether the person was right or wrong, you’re not siding with it,” Fountain said. “You’re just saying, we don’t need those distractions because we’re totally focused on education. On kids. That certainly would have been probably a deal breaker right there.”
