果酱视频

ST. LOUIS聽鈥� Three days after the Francis Howell Board of Education voted to pay its newly hired superintendent nearly a year's salary to leave without saying why, the education leader landed a new job.

Shawnee Public Schools in Oklahoma it has hired Mike Dominguez to serve as an assistant superintendent, making it clear he was talking to the Oklahoma school district about that job while negotiating his separation and severance with Francis Howell.

In exchange for his resignation, the Francis Howell Board of Education on Friday agreed to pay Dominguez just under $230,000, which represents 11 months of his $250,000 annual salary.

Francis Howell hired Dominguez in March, but he never spent a day on the job. Four days before he was supposed to begin work, district officials said he could not start due to "unforeseen circumstances."

For the next four weeks, district officials declined to answer any questions regarding Dominguez's employment status. Meanwhile, the board of education held three closed-door meetings in July to discuss personnel and legal issues. Then, on Friday, the district announced Dominguez had tendered his resignation the day before.

In his separation agreement with Francis Howell, the board agreed to respond to questions about Dominguez's departure by saying he resigned and they could not comment further about personnel issues.

"We are excited to welcome him to Shawnee and look forward to the impact he will have on our schools and community,鈥� Shawnee Public Schools Superintendent Jason James said in the district's announcement.聽

Francis Howell's Board of Education President Steven Blair would not say Tuesday morning whether he knew Dominguez was applying for other jobs while on leave from Francis Howell.

A spokesperson for Shawnee Public Schools did not respond to messages asking when Shawnee began considering Dominguez for employment.

Francis Howell has indicated it will not reveal the reason for Dominguez's departure. The separation agreement, signed by Dominguez on Friday, described the separation as a mutually agreed-upon decision between him and the school board.

In exchange for his agreement to resign, Francis Howell paid Dominguez a lump sum of $229,166.67.

"It's clear to me he must have known for a while that he wasn't going to be able to fill the role he was hired to do in Francis Howell," said Jamie Martin, president of the Francis Howell Forward PAC and a postdoctoral research in education. "Anybody in public education knows that a search would have taken some time and the negotiation process for a contract for assistant superintendent would have taken time."

Mary Hendricks-Harris led Francis Howell as superintendent from July 2016 to July 2020. She said settlements historically have been rare for the district.聽

"I'm not sure we had one in my four years as superintendent because we know it's frowned upon in the community," Hendrick-Harris said.

Hendricks-Harris, along with Pam Sloan, another former Francis Howell superintendent; and former Democratic state senator Ted House founded St. Charles County Families for Public Schools PAC in 2023 in response to culture war issues that dominated school boards in the county after the pandemic. The PAC since has supported candidates who won elections and flipped Francis Howell's conservative school board majority in April.

"I think, politically, all the board members understand they're going to take a hit in the community by making that decision (to settle)," Hendricks-Harris said. "There had to be a rationale for them to take a hit to their political careers."

Leaders behind Francis Howell Families, a conservative political action committee that help elect five current and former members to the board, blamed the board's new "liberal majority" for Dominguez's departure.聽

"The board approved a massive payout to a superintendent who never worked a single day聽鈥� underscoring both their failure to hire and keep a superintendent as well as their reckless use of taxpayer money," the group said in an emailed statement.

Meeting minutes from a closed session school board meeting on Thursday showed the board agreed to the separation agreement with a unanimous vote.

Blair, the school board president, said in a statement Friday that Dominguez resigned to "pursue opportunities that better align with the current needs of his family."

In March, before a general election changed the board's makeup, Francis Howell's school board voted 6-1 to replace outgoing Superintendent Kenneth Roumpos with Dominguez, following a three-month search. Superintendent searches frequently take up to a year to find the best candidate.

Dominguez came to Francis Howell from the Garden City, Kansas, school district, which he led from June 2022 to May 31. In his resignation from that job, Dominguez cited 鈥渢he need to be closer to home and support my aging in-laws.鈥�

Harry Harris, the father of a son entering his freshman year of high school in the district, said Francis Howell had just started to heal from years of political arguments. He said he did not want the district to regress.

"We can fight about whether this settlement should have been reached or we fight about if he should have been running in the first place," Harris said. "But at the end of the day, we have got to move forward."