Davidson County Schools issue statement of clarity in light of recent accusations
The Davidson County Schools Communications Department and Brinkley Walser Stoner, PLLC issue the following press release in response to recent information that has been shared during public comment at Davidson County Board of Commissioners’ Meetings, various social media platforms, and within the general public of Davidson County.
A concerned citizen of Davidson County has claimed to the Davidson County Board of Commissioners and posted on her own social media outlets, that the Davidson County Schools used school district money to pay for a Board member’s marital separation documents. Any such claim is unequivocally false, misleading and inflammatory. No school district money has been used whatsoever to pay for a Board member’s private civil action. On this, and prior occasions, this concerned citizen has misconstrued time entries by the school district’s outside legal counsel, Brinkley Walser Stoner, PLLC. The particular issue that is the source of the most recent unfounded complaint centers around questions of the availability of insurance coverage.
The ultimate issue that the attorney at Brinkley Walser Stoner, PLLC was asked to review and investigate was whether or not an employee’s benefit election had been properly administered and processed within the Human Resources Department consistent with the Flexible Benefit Plan as published by Mark III, the school district’s selected employee benefits partner.
Questions concerning the district’s Flexible Benefit Plan are ones which may be directed to its legal counsel regarding any employee, or members of the Board of Education who may be covered by the Plan. The time entries billed to the Davidson School Schools by outside legal counsel reflect this task and investigation performed, which is obvious to anyone that reviews the billing. At no time was outside legal counsel requested to provide, nor did outside legal counsel provide, any legal advice or services related to marital separation documents for any board member. The only misuse which occurred here was the concerned citizen’s misuse of information supplied in response to a public records request in order to make false and
inflammatory, if not defamatory, accusations.
Additionally, this same concerned citizen has claimed to the Davidson County Board of Commissioners, and posted on her own social media outlets that various employees of the Davidson County Schools are improperly using school owned motor vehicles for their own personal use. Again, any such claims are unequivocally false, misleading and inflammatory. While it shall be unlawful for any such employee to use a district owned motor vehicle for a private purpose, the law is clearly established that it is not a private purpose to drive a district owned and assigned vehicle between one’s official work station and one’s home.
The Davidson County Board of Education is subject to a thorough annual audit by an independent outside auditor and has routinely received clean unqualified audits by that outside independent accounting firm. The members of the Board of Education, its staff and those who are hired to assist in carrying out the duties and responsibilities of administering a public school system and serving children and families of Davidson County make every effort to be good stewards of taxpayers' dollars and none have been used in the manner portrayed above in recent public meetings and social media postings.
