by Teresa Eubanks, Journal Editor
“I’ve dedicated many years here only to be pushed out the door,” says Jason Fowler, 35, who served as technology supervisor and special assignment teacher for the Liberty County School District until he decided it was time to go.
He left his position May 22. The next day, he started working at Tallahassee Community College.
Fowler and new School Superintendent Gloria “Gay” Uzzell clashed soon after she took office last October. It was no secret that he supported the incumbent School Superintendent.
At that time Fowler, who was in charge of the school’s email system, was surprised in December when Uzzell changed the password on a current employee’s email account “not knowing they had blocked her out of the account for a reason.”
And while employee emails are public record, it concerned him that Uzzell was personally monitoring communication between staff members without the school board’s knowledge.
“I didn’t agree with her leadership style,” Fowler said. “She told me who to talk to and what I should say when people asked how she was as a superintendent.”
He said many other employees got that message as well.
Something as casual as clicking “LIKE” on a friend’s Facebook post could result in an angry call from Uzzell, as was done when employee Joan Hall congratulated Fowler and his wife on their anniversary on their Facebook page, he said. Hall addressed the issue at the last school board meeting.
Uzzell contacted the sheriff’s office in an effort to have trespass warnings issued against Fowler and others. “She’s made posts on Facebook that I had stalked her and called her on a number she said I wasn’t supposed to have, which is a flatout lie,” Fowler states emphatically. “She tried to have criminal chargs brought against me on June 3, nearly two weeks after I resigned.”
He decided to resign on May 17 and wanted to tell her personally. He said he called the office at 4 p.m. to schedule a meeting with the superintendent. He and his wife were about five minutes away in their truck, heading home, but planned to stop and speak with Uzzell. He was told she had just left to go to Hosford School. When he drove by the school board office, he saw her and another school employee leaving the parking lot in separate vehicles.
Fowler said he continued on to his home to collect the items he needed to turn in, which included computers and keys. He returned to the office to hand in his letter of resignation and the school property to Gay Lewis, Director of Instruction.
He left a voice mail with the superintendent’s secretary to let Uzzell know the items had been handed in.
As he drove down Pea Ridge Road on his way home, he saw Uzzell’s car at her parents’ house. He made a second call to Uzzell’s office and left another voice mail with her secretary in which he pointed out that although he had been told a few minutes earlier she was going to Hosford, she was actually already home.
Uzzell later gave the voice messages to the sheriff’s office as proof when she accused Fowler of stalking and harassing her.
Even though he’s got a new job, Fowler says his problems are not over.“She’s sent me a message that she would contact my new employer and report ‘my misconduct.’” He said one of her “many allegations” against him was that he had withheld a corrective action plan required by the Department of Education. “I didn’t even write it,” he said. “That was another employee’s responsibility.” After she found out someone else wrote it, he said Uzzell dropped the issue.
“A lot has been thrown out with my name in it,” he said. “I have never stalked or harassed anyone, and am grateful that the sheriff’s office performed their duties with due diligence and refused to file criminal charges against me; there is a laughable lack of evidence of any of the things she’s said about me. I’ve never had an issue with anyone, and hope to never have to deal with anything like this again. Folks ought to be allowed to have an opinion without being persecuted by their employer.”
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The superintendent says she’s the one being bullied, not the employees.
In a lengthy message posted on Facebook last weekend, the embattled superintendent said she and her family had “endured the unthinkable” with “gangs showing up at public meetings to intimidate us, having nails put in our driveway and flattened tires, numerous hateful anonymous letters, phone calls and emails from fake accounts, employees threatening and cursing my assistant and me at work….”
She called the June 4 school board meeting a “witch hunt” and “public stoning.” At that meeting, School Board Chairman Kyle Peddie questioned her at length on over more than $12,000 she charged to a county credit card that she had issued to her office without consulting the board. It included thousands of dollars charged to clothing shops, hotels and restaurants as well as online stores.
The credit card charges included several days at Tallahassee hotels, where she was scheduled to attend a two-and-a-half day conference for new superintendents.
“I was yelled at, accused, and even quoted scripture by the school board chairman for nearly an hour and a half. He even quoted the verse about “If your right hand offends you, then cut it off” at a public school board meeting, which is a violation of church and state, along with several other instances of scripture quoting and mudslinging that night.”
She described the chairman as “…lifting his hand as if to hit me while he quoted scripture to me and yelled at me during a public school board meeting.”
After refusing to explain her long list of purchases made at Dillard’s to the board chairman, Uzzell asked for a restroom break and left in the middle of the meeting.
In her lengthy Facebook post, she wrote that she was intimidated that “over seven deputies came in one-by-one in five minute intervals,” during that meeting, which was standing-room only.
She made it clear that she didn’t want one of the newest members of the sheriff’s office at the meetings, speaking about Sgt. John Summers, son of former Superintendent Sue Summers. She wrote, “…our board chairman had Mr. Summers show up in uniform at the past three school board meetings to maintain order. I didn’t call and request for him to be there, nor do I want him there. The people elected ME as Superintendent, and I arrange for a deputy to attend our meetings.”
When she called the sheriff’s office to charge an employee with stalking her, she pointed out that Summers was the officer who responded.
“All I want is to be able to run Liberty County School District without constantly being bogged-down with issues from former employees and their families and our school board chairman who clearly is on a mission to destroy my career, my reputation, and attempt to take over the school district (he is now visiting our offices and schools at least three times a week, micro-managing our personnel, which is crossing the line in his duties as a school board member. I am the Chief Executive Officer and in charge of operations and personnel at LCSB),” she wrote on her Facebook page. “I simply want to do my job.”
She asked her Facebook friends, “Why do you think the school board chair is making such a big deal out of a credit card?” Then she gave her answer: “Because he wants a distraction from all the things I’ve uncovered that have been going on for years in the school district!”
While she gave no specifics of wrongdoing, she said people would be shocked at what was in school board email. “I’m talking sex, lies and evidence of improper bids, conflict of interest and failure to report at least one teacher’s misconduct,” she wrote.
“I can’t effectively run a school district with these continued attacks, out of control school board meetings, and continued stalking and harassment…School starts in just over a month, and I have a lot to do.”
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School Board Finance Officer Stephanie Hofheinz left the job last December after an angry Uzzell argued with her at a football game in front of witnesses.
In January, Paula Parrish agreed to quit her state job and take a pay cut to work at home.
The cut turned out to be deeper than she had expected. The job was supposed to pay $65,000, but after she was hired she said Uzzell told her she would be making $12,000 less because she didn’t have a degree.
There was another surprise. Before accepting the job, she asked about insurance. She was paying $30 a month through her state job for family coverage. The superintendent told her the insurance would be $50.
But when she got there to fill out the paperwork, she was told, “We don’t have $50 a month insurance.” When she asked what it would cost to cover her family, she found out she would be paying $900 a month.
“I couldn’t afford it,” she said, so the four months she worked there, her family was uninsured. She said it was a shock, because she had given up her job after more than 21 years with the Department of Revenue.
There were other issues she declined to discuss but she finally decided to quit after realizing, “It was too unstable for me and I’m not comfortable in this environment.”
She said employees knew to be careful about who they talked to. “She did tell us we were not allowed to talk to the previous finance officer,” she said.
She applied for her old job back with the state and when she was hired, she gave the superintendent her two weeks’ notice. That same day, Director of Administration Kathy Nobles called to let her know that would be her last day.
Although she was able to return to her state job a few days earlier than planned, the abrupt end to her position with the district office cost her a week’s pay. She said the superintendent had told others that she had not given two week’s notice.
Parrish was surprised to see in the school board’s published minutes that she had thanked Uzzell for allowing her to leave without giving two weeks’ notice.