By Billy Davis

Robert King, North Panola’s state-appointed conservator, conducted business without a school board present Monday night, the result of a vote by the Mississippi Board of Education that abolished the board.

King, seated at the table where board members normally sit, explained in the public meeting that the state school board had taken action after Gov. Phil Bryant signed legislation May 16.

King said the legislation was Senate Bill 2737, which addressed low-performing public school districts, and which state officials interpreted as allowing them to take appropriate action.

The new state law updated the Mississippi Code for public school accreditation, which includes state oversight of low-performing districts.

School boards were also dissolved at other school districts that are under conservatorship, including Indianola, and the elected superintendent was removed in Tate County, King went on to say.

The North Panola School Board includes board president Rosa Wilson and fellow trustees Pearl McGlothian, Verna Hunter, Tracy Thompson and Lydia Smith.

The school board has virtually no authority while North Panola operates under state control but King has been praised by school board trustees for respecting their positions nonetheless.

Hunter attended the school board meeting in the library, where she sat at a table with a reporter and took notes as King moved through the agenda.

At one point Hunter asked if she could speak. King immediately said she could and she asked child nutrition director Pamela George about her just-completed report of improved diets in school cafeterias.

“Can you tell a difference in childhood obesity between then and now?” Hunter asked, to which King responded that the improved meals were only recently introduced.

“There hasn’t been enough time to see changes,” King told Hunter.

George was on the agenda to speak about the nutrition program and Rogers Smith, the technology director, also spoke briefly about the E-rate funding program at North Panola.

The rest of the agenda — which included approving claims, and approving hirings and resignations — fell under “Conservator Action.”

The meeting agenda listed the hiring of a bus driver and the resignation or retirement of 16 teachers and two principals, North Panola Junior High principal Milton Hardrict and Benjamin Lundy, the principal at Como Elementary.

King returned to the matter of the school board abolishment under “Conservator’s Report” toward the end of the agenda.

He explained the amended state law is being “fleshed out” by the Department of Education and said more details could be coming as state officials read the law and act on it.

“I said almost a year ago I wanted to work myself out of a job,” King said. “That’s still my goal.”

 “I appreciate your leadership,” Hunter said from the back of the library. “That’s my goal, too, to move you out of a job.”