PRINCIPAL'S FIRING PROMPTS PETITION AT MEADOW HEIGHTS

PATTON -- The scars of a recent scandal had almost healed when Meadow Heights High School Principal Rick Chastain was fired Feb. 15. His contract expires in June.

Now this Bollinger County community is trying to recover from another deep wound. In a tie vote, the school board decided not to renew Chastain's contract, and board president Roy Allen doesn't foresee any change in that decision.

"Personally, I feel that we did render a decision," he said. But some people are hoping for a reversal.

A group of residents, parents and students opposed to the board's action circulated a petition and held a rally Thursday at parent-teacher conferences at the school. The petition asks the board to reconsider Chastain's contract renewal.

Allen was upset that Chastain allowed the rally to disrupt the conferences. "I was appalled that he did allow it and that he participated in it. Some parents were not very pleased," he said.

But Robin Boyd, a parent, was more displeased with the board's prior action. Most people who signed the petition are upset because the school board never gave any reason for firing Chastain, she said.

"We didn't have a clue this would happen until about a week before," she said.

Residents had similar complaints about explanations lacking last June when 302 people signed a petition demanding that Superintendent Tom Waller be fired. The school board never acted on those complaints. Instead, it renewed Waller's contract.

Tom Parker of Patton, who spearheaded the first petition drive, doesn't expect the board to act any differently with this petition than it did last year.

"We presented them with two different petitions; one for Waller, and we all know what they did with that," Parker said, adding that a second petition was sent to the Missouri Ethics Commission and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. It called for the resignation of three school board members and the complaints still are being investigated.

Despite the contract renewal, Waller resigned in July when inflated school attendance figures were discovered. Officials from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education investigated the complaints and found that 17 fake names had been added to the rolls.

The names brought the district about $44,000 more in state money than it should have received during a two-year period. Now the district must repay $30,572 to the state. No payment schedule has been decided.

Rick Chastain told board president Roy Allen about the inflated attendance figures and thinks he was fired in retaliation. But federal law prohibits firing as a revenge for whistle-blowers. As a tenured employee, Chastain should have been told why he was fired, but never was, he says. He is considering a lawsuit against the school board.

Currently, Chastain is the only certified administrator in the district. Superintendent Cheri Fuemmeler is awaiting superintendent certification assessment results. Elementary Principal Tom Seiberg will apply for certification next month and his contract renewal is pending the outcome of that certification, Allen said.

Although Parker contends Chastain was wronged by the board, he said that isn't the most important issue addressed in the petition.

"A lot of people are missing the issue," he said. "The issue is not what they've done to Rick Chastain. It's the way they do things at the school. They have no concept of right or wrong.

"They don't worry about if it's legal or ethical. That doesn't matter. If they want to do it, they just do it."

Board member Millie Yates called Chastain's firing just another action by a board she terms corrupt.

"The board has been corrupt for a long, long time," she said. "You have to go through a process to do something about it (the board)."

Yates voted to renew a one-year contract for Chastain.

"We were never given any indication of problems," she said. "I believe that Mrs. Fuemmeler erred in that she did not advise us of any problems if there were some."