Watch Now: Board member calls for superintendent's resignation after contentious TPS meeting with walkout

Tulsa Public Schools board member Jerry Griffin issued a public call Tuesday morning for the immediate resignation of Superintendent Deborah Gist.

“Good leaders know when it is time to leave and it is time for her to go,” he said, noting that he is prepared to circulate a petition among board members to seek her removal from office if necessary.

Griffin’s demand came less than 12 hours after he and two other board members walked out of a meeting in response to Gist using the superintendent’s report portion of the agenda to criticize some of the board’s votes on items that did not receive the majority required for passage.

Below is an earlier version of the meeting story.

Tempers boiled over Monday night at Tulsa Public Schools’ Board of Education meeting after Superintendent Deborah Gist voiced her concerns about some of the board's decisions.

Board members Jennettie Marshall, E’Lena Ashley and Jerry Griffin walked out of the meeting after Gist began using the superintendent's report portion of the agenda to lay out her objections about some of the board’s votes on items that did not receive the required majority for adoption.

“What she is saying is an attack on this board,” Marshall said, speaking over Gist and drawing applause and cheers from one side of the room. “This is an attack on the board for taking the actions that they saw fit. The board had the right to vote the way it wanted to. … I will absolutely not stand for this.”

Between the three walk-outs and board member Judith Barba Perez’s absence, the meeting ended early due to a lack of quorum.

Among the consent agenda items that did not pass Monday night were the district’s 2022-23 agreement with Reading Partners to place volunteer reading coaches at 18 elementary schools, contracts for new teachers and support personnel, staffing moves within the district, recruitment stipends and summer pay for some members of the district’s transportation department.

Ashley and Marshall voted against everything on the consent agenda, while Griffin voted against 12 of the 28 items on the consent agenda. With Barba Perez absent, it was a tie vote for those 12 items.

Marshall specifically noted during the consent agenda that she did not have any objections specifically to Reading Partners but did want additional clarification about its work with the district.

Citing guidance from a professional development session conducted by the Oklahoma State School Board Association, Marshall has previously stated that she will not carve out individual consent agenda items for votes but will consider that portion of the docket as a whole.

After the meeting, interim Chief Talent Officer Andrea Castañeda said that because the board tied, the future and current employees whose contracts were on Monday night’s agenda are now in procedural limbo because their status was neither approved nor denied.

“It can come (back before the board), and it is incumbent upon the board to take the time to deeply consider the actions of tonight, consider the implications of what may happen if they persist,” she said.

The earliest the staffing issues could come back before the board is at a special meeting previously scheduled for 1 p.m. Thursday. That agenda has not yet been released.

Further compounding the tension were references during the course of the evening from board members and public speakers to a Facebook post Gist made Sunday afternoon.

Along with calling out state-level officials in the post, she also referred to a board member as "blatantly bigoted." Gist later confirmed that she was referring to Ashley, who previously shared a meme about same-sex relationships and a post claiming that women's sports are under attack from transgender athletes. 

After the meeting, Gist posted a live video to Facebook, taking responsibility for her role in Monday's meeting and asking the board to come back together to address the immediate issues facing the district. 

"We need to come back to the table on Thursday," she said. "We have to prioritize the needs of students, teachers, everyone in our city. We all have a role to play and none of us can walk away from the table. Our students deserve more than that, and I am confident we can rectify the situation. I am confident we can repair what happened tonight."

In addition to the items that could come back before the board as soon as Thursday, a recommendation to award $6.2 million of the technology portion of the district’s 2021 bond package to the Bank of Oklahoma also failed to receive the required majority needed for passage.

Gist’s husband, Ronnie Jobe, is an employee of the bank. Despite Gist’s repeated statements that his scope of work has nothing to do with school bonds and that the bidding process was overseen by an outside party, Marshall, Griffin and Ashley voted against awarding the bid.

When questioned by board members, the district’s financial adviser, Rick Smith with Edmond-based Municipal Finance Services Inc., said the bidding process was competitive as required by law and that Bank of Oklahoma had the lowest bid by more than $46,000.

“Because it (the resolution) does not pass, … we will not be able to issue these bonds and we will have to go back to the market,” he said. “However, I do think that will create concern among bidders about the district moving forward.”

Among the consent agenda items that did receive approval Monday was the formal cancellation of TPS’ previously approved 2022-23 $150,000 contract with Snickelbox LLC.

Snickelbox had previously contracted with the district to “update and refine talent management practices” in order to recruit and retain teachers.

However, as part of a special board meeting last Thursday, the district disclosed that an investigation is underway into claims that the Atlanta-based contractor made payments to TPS employees and that the district had already stopped using the contractor’s services.

In addition to the now canceled agreement, the district had a $300,000 contract with Snickelbox for the 2021-22 school year and a $200,000 contract for the 2020-21 school year.

On July 1, TPS officials announced the discovery of almost $20,000 in irregularities tied to a vendor contract within the district’s personnel office. Those irregularities are alleged to have happened more than two years ago but were brought to administrators’ attention within the last month and turned over to local law enforcement on June 27, Gist said.

As of the close of business Monday, the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office has not received a police report on the matter.

In light of those irregularities, a recommendation went before the board Monday night as an action item for the district to put out a request for proposals for a third party accountant to conduct an audit in addition to the probe ordered Thursday by Gov. Kevin Stitt in response to a letter from Marshall and Ashley.

However, that recommendation was rejected, in part over concerns that it could jeopardize or interfere with the efforts of State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd's office.  

"The TPD is investigating," board Vice President John Croisant said. "The state auditor is coming in. To me, like Dr. Marshall said, you allow the professionals to come in, give us a recommendation and let us know what they need. We will cooperate fully with them, because that's what we should do.

"Whether someone's asked for it or not doesn't matter. We have an audit coming, and they need to be able to do a full investigation."