Keisha Scarlett Will Not be Fired

I cannot afford to back this bet up with cash, but it's a good bet

What little I know of betting is that you should not simply bet on things that you think will happen. To be a successful gambler, you should bet on things where the odds are wrong. If the odds call for a blowout loss, and you think a loss is merely likely, you should bet on the side you think will lose. I do not think Saint Louis school board politics have made it into the online betting markets (yet). If they had, I would place this bet, which I believe would go against the odds: the much-touted outside investigation into superintendent Dr. Keisha Scarlett will not find her to have done anything wrong, so she will not be fired.

What did Keisha do?

Here is some brief context for people reading this who are not following the current (September 2024) news about Saint Louis Public Schools: our district faces a transportation crisis, budget deficit, and long-running performance failure. The mayor has called for an audit by the state, which is currently underway. After a particularly bad news cycle in July, our superintendent, Dr. Keisha Scarlett, has been placed on paid leave pending an outside investigation. The investigation is now ongoing (it was meant to be done earlier this month) and focuses on hiring and spending, but an undercurrent in the press has been her short time in Saint Louis, negative comments about the talent pool here, and her preference for hiring outsiders, especially colleagues from Seattle. Longtime administrators have been cheering her downfall even as she remains under contract, and her second-in-command (Dr. Millicent Borishade, also a Seattleite who has been subject to abuse in the press) has filled the superintendent role while Dr. Scarlett is investigated.

Things are still very much up in the air, but I wanted to make my prediction about Dr. Scarlett before it was too late to make a fair bet. I feel that everyone has written her off as corrupt, and the odds would, therefore, be that an investigation would confirm this. I think the odds are wrong. I am not a betting man, mostly because I know even good bets go bad (and good bets are hard to find). Even if the news tomorrow means I lose my theoretical bet, I would like to explain my reason for making it, which will stand regardless.

Before I do, I would like to make a second and less contentious prediction: Dr. Scarlett will not be the superintendent by year's end. So all together, I am predicting the board will not be able to fire her for cause, but will want to replace her as soon as possible. Since she clearly cannot go back to work regardless of what the investigators find,  I predict other means will be found to end her contract. I expect news of an "amicable arrangement," no admission of fault on any side, and an NDA. They could, of course, just pay out her contract and move on. Doing so would mean admitting that all the smears and the months of paid leave were a sham and would leave taxpayers with the bill, so I imagine they will avoid that as long as possible.

How to fire a public servant

The more specific the prediction, the more likely it is to fail, so let me just focus on the big part: no outside investigator will give cause to end her contract.

Teachers have contracts and are subject to investigations and termination at SLPS and elsewhere all the time. So do administrators. If you are a teacher or a non-senior administrator, the bar is pretty low on what you can be fired for. While people have an idea about the law protecting contract employees from being fired without cause, the truth is it only protects you in retrospect; employees must wait to be fired and then sue. Often, the firing process is drawn out and painful enough that employees give up and quit, opting to spend their time finding a better job. It is very hard to sue if you quit. Missouri does not make suing easy, but there have been some notable successes. If it goes all the way through the system and ends in termination, it is a small matter. Even a principal at a big school does not make the press for being fired. If a teacher's contract is violated, no one will know unless it goes to court, even if they are in the right and raise holy hell throughout the whole process.

By contrast, Dr. Scarlett has a big enough contract and public persona that the district cannot take the "unprofessionalism" route and fire her for raising her voice in meetings. There has been talk (but little clarity) about an outside investigation into Dr. Scarlett. "Outside investigator" is just a euphemism for a lawyer, and a non-SLPS lawyer will be investigating with an eye to behavior that can justify ending her contract. They will try to find what they are paid to find, but they will not put their license and reputation on the line to back spurious or ad hominem charges. Lawyers have to take contracts seriously for their own sake. If a lawyer can not justify ending the contract in court, the district will be left with the option of reinstating Dr. Scarlett or paying out her contract. If they are in that spot now, I bet they are looking for an alternative.

Against the odds

If you have been following along and find Dr. Scarlett's innocence unbelievable, I understand. The board and the press have treated the matter as closed, and Dr. Scarlett's guilt as obvious. Journalists have blamed her for a deficit, bus crisis, and firing top staffers, but she was placed on leave for none of that. In announcing her leave, only two items were announced as being investigated: hiring practices and spending on consultants.

A slightly outdated statement from Matt Davis, the vice president of the school board

The hires that got so much publicity are pretty clearly not illegal. Most of the coverage boils down to personal attacks on the candidates and implications of cronyism. The practice of hiring from your professional network (including your friends, who are often also colleagues) is not illegal or in violation of board policy. While this may seem icky or ill-advised, it is a common practice in the education field (and elsewhere). In addition, the board admits to signing off on these supposedly questionable hires.

As for spending on consultants, that seems utterly unremarkable. I am not a long-timer at SLPS, but in my brief tenure before Scarlett arrived, I have been to a lot of meetings led by very questionable consultants. I have heard tell of even more who are purely engaged to work with administrators. Again, the practice may be bad, but it is not her practice alone and it is not illegal. Unless it turns out the consultants were a shell company or some other unexpected skeleton emerges, I expect an investigation will find everything in order.

People who make hiring decisions or spend company cash sometimes make bad choices when they do so. That does not mean they broke the law or even failed at their job. Just ask the SLPS board president and vice president who wrote an op-ed claiming that they did a great job in their positions with one exception: the hiring of Dr. Keisha Scarlett.

This is called “owning up” by some people

The board's publicly admitted regret for her hire makes it very hard for Dr. Scarlett to be exonerated and return to work. And, for the reasons I discussed, I find it unlikely that the publicly stated cause of her leave will lead to a voided contract. Hence, I predict some background wrangling to force her exit without paying the full value of her contract. I wish the lawyers luck in finding a third way.

But do we have to pay her to drag her?

Finally, I have seen a lot of upset about Dr. Scarlett continuing to get paid while on leave. Her yearly salary is about $270,000 dollars, so the weekly paychecks she is getting come to eye-watering amounts to teachers and tax-payers. Consider, however, that $270,000 was the salary that Kelvin Adams got two years ago, which had continuously increased over his 14 years in the district. Dr. Scarlett took no raise (unique among administrators) and has a contract guaranteeing her income unless and until the contract is broken. She would have to be a fool to simply walk away from the contract, and the paid leave falls on the board who approved it, not Dr. Scarlett, who presumably wanted to keep working.

Being on leave for an investigation is a strange process. By contract, the district cannot simply place an employee on unpaid leave. However, they can (and do) place people on paid leave and make that leave conditional on things such as participating in an investigation and handing over records. One condition they insist on is that the investigated employee cannot publicly discuss the circumstances of their leave. A violation of the conditions of leave is grounds for dismissal. So even if there is no legitimate reason for initially being placed on leave, if you talk about what is happening, they may finally have cause to fire you.

If you are upset that Dr. Scarlett is paid some $20,000 a month to do nothing, remember that she is actually paid to keep her mouth shut. The board is under no such restriction, which is why they have been able to so openly criticize her despite, as yet, no proven wrongdoing. Similarly, the press is under no such restriction, which is why so many outlets freely blame her for SLPS's problems, echoing complaints they are hearing from longtime administrators and union officials (not to mention board members and other members of the media).

I do not know her, but I have lots of sympathy for Keisha Scarlett. If you are going to be publicly dragged by your colleagues and the press while forbidden from speaking, it is only fair that you be paid for it. If I ran into her, I would not hassle her about money. I would apologize for how Saint Louis has treated her and wish her well in her next career move.