Published in the October 16 Edition
If the whole debacle unraveling in the Fox C-6 School District seems like a case of déjà vu, those who think so should check their history books.
The current fiasco swirling around the tenure of Superintendent Dianne Critchlow has some similarities to the 2000 departure of Superintendent Diana Bourisaw.
Both supes were women – Bourisaw the first ever to hold the job at Fox. They had similar first names and they both hired celebrity lawyer Chet Pleban to represent them on their way out the door. Both left in a hailstorm of bad publicity for the district.
The differences, however, are greater than the similarities.
Bourisaw was fired by a knuckleheaded school board a few months after her three-year contract had been renewed. Her main offense seemed to be that she was a female, and a kind of uppity, didn’t-know-her-place female at that, at least in the perception of the five conservative, religiously bent members of the board who sacked her.
They got bent out of shape when she changed the name of Christmas break to winter break – stuff like that.
Pleban insisted on a public hearing to appeal the firing. The hearing turned into a multi-day circus during which he flayed, filleted and dissected district witnesses. In the end, the district took a pounding in the press, eventually cried, “Uncle!” and paid every penny of the $373,000 remaining on her contract.
If further proof of that bad judgment were needed, Bourisaw provided it in her subsequent jobs. The woman who was deemed unfit to run the Fox School District was hired by the Missouri Department of Secondary and Elementary Education and served as an interim superintendent of the St. Louis Public Schools. She also served on the Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education. Enough said.
Flash forward 14 years and we have a much different story.
Dianne Critchlow, according to Fox’s new chief financial officer, used district funds to make a number of questionable purchases. The CFO, John Brazeal, is a Fox graduate himself and a former city administrator for the city of Arnold, so he’s familiar with the turf and has a measure of ownership in the district and its reputation.
Over the past four months, he’s been combing through the financial records of the district. This began shortly after Critchlow announced her early retirement following an investigation into an Internet name-calling scandal that was linked to computers at the Critchlow home.
Her husband, Jamie, also an administrator, was fired by the district in June. Dianne Critchlow was allowed to take paid leave with an official retirement of Oct. 31.
Brazeal has made public the questionable purchases he’s found. They have been documented in detail in this newspaper and other media.
The most damning item so far was reported last week – a request for reimbursement by Dianne Critchlow for $420 for a golf tournament entry fee that she never paid. Worse, Brazeal alleged that Critchlow sent the district a “mocked-up” personal check she purportedly had written for the fees, but the check had never been presented to her bank for payment. The fees, Brazeal said, actually had been paid by the Friends of Fox booster club, not Critchlow.
Close behind that item was the purchase of $354 worth of logging equipment discovered at the Critchlow home. Jamie Critchlow claimed in a statement to Brazeal it was needed for alternative school students to use in a service project to clean dead timber from an Arnold park, the Jefferson County Youth Association football league property and a Rockport Heights Elementary School nature trail.
Coincidentally, the Critchlows set up a Missouri limited liability corporation called Cash Landings that stated one of its purposes as land timber improvement and sales. Amazingly, the equipment was purchased in April of this year, the same month the LLC was filed with the state!
The logging equipment has been returned, unopened in its boxes, to the district.
Brazeal also has unearthed seemingly extravagant hotel bills to attend a professional development seminar in Florida and Dianne Critchlow’s liberal use of a district credit card to pay for meals that may or may not have been business-related, such as an $11.79 tab at McDonald’s incurred while Critchlow was on family medical leave.
I used to work for a newspaper owner who was fond of quoting Lord Acton, a 19th century British writer and politician. Acton’s most famous quote was this:
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Lord Acton, who died in 1902, couldn’t have been talking about Fox, but he did seem to hit upon a timeless truth with that one.
The next person likely to step into this unholy spotlight will be Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Forrest Wegge, who will have to decide whether anything criminal has occurred at Fox. That drumbeat already has started. Don’t rule out Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, either.
The actions of the school board in 2000 can be safely judged with the benefit of hindsight and history. The school board of 2014 made its supe the third-highest paid in the state and apparently didn’t check the expenses as closely as it should.
Her high salary, and the Brazeal revelations, continue to stoke outrage in the villagers, but so far, it appears to be a far different deal than in 2000.
