[Washington Post] Ex-Montgomery superintendent McKnight to get $1.3M in separation deal

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Just remember: MCPS thought this needed to be settled immediately. The Vigna victims had to litigate. The Gaithersburg sex assault victim had to go all the way to a jury. The Damascus victims had to go through years of litigation while MCPS denied it had any responsibility to provide for safety in school before finally settling after the judge rejected their defenses. What is it about this case that made MCPS handle differently? No one who defends this settlement in any way or who supported this settlement deserves to be on the school board.

To be fair, this was a smaller settlement amount. Even if McKnight wouldn't have won a discrimination lawsuit, she had a good enough case that it could have spent years in litigation. It was cheaper to settle.

The same theory could have applied to the other cases too but MCPS decided to litigate those. A lot of special education claims could be settled for less than this settlement but MCPS litigates those too. This settlement was for more money than she was owed on her contract, so it was no great deal.

Certainly MCPS is willing to spend more on litigation to fight SPED claims, but they do that to scare off additional claims. And it is far from clear that it would have been cheaper to settle the other cases.

I'll admit, the $1.3M was higher than I expected. Some of that might be to reassure future MCPS superintendent applicants that they'll have a golden parachute when they're inevitably fired. Otherwise MCPS would find itself having a very hard time recruiting qualified applicants.

Try as you might, there's no good rationale for this settlement, especially compared to how MCPS handles other potential litigants. The sexual assault defenses served no public policy interests and arguable damaged them as MCPS took outrageous (and unsupportable) positions.

The contract had a generous golden parachute. The settlement was many more times generous. By your rationale, MCPS should have litigated to prevent other superintendents from taking them to the cleaners.

This settlement had one purpose: protect the current board members from having even more of their mismanagement exposed by a disgruntled former employee. That was it.

One-year severance for a position like this is hardly generous. There are relatively few superintendent positions in districts of this scale, and you're almost guaranteed both a long hiring process and a long-distance move.

McKnight thought the board had her back. Right or wrong, the next superintendent won't make the same mistake. I strongly suspect the next contract will have a much larger severance clause for early termination.

And if MCPS would have tried to take her to court over termination for cause, them they definitely would have had a hard time finding a replacement.

I'ts pretty generous. I'm an employment lawyer and i think something between 6 months and a year would have sounded about right to me. She got a lot more than that (closer to 3 years). And MCPS would not have taken her to court. They would have made her an offer, if she rejected it, they would have said, we are invoking the termination for cause provisions of your contract and paying you nothing, and she would have them taken them to court for breach of contract. It is absolutely not clear that she would have won, and she would have had to pay attorneys to bring that suit (or have them work on contingency for a portion of the breach of contract damages.) Since her attorneys apparently charged her 30K just for negotiating the settlement agreement, which seems like kind of a lot to me, I think she would have burned through her damages pretty quickly. It's ridiculous to me that the Board paid out her full contract as if they had zero cause for terminating it. If they really believed they had no cause for termination, they should have kept her on and avoided all this disruption. It's one thing to discount based on litigation risk, but it's totally another just to roll over and give her everything she would have gotten in litigation and more (e.g., allowing her child to attend MCPS schools for free even if she lives out of county).

Right. I fully expected the BOE to let her finish out her term and not renew her contract, but to fire her mid-contract, they had to have cause to do so. And if they had cause, why bend over backwards to appease Monifa's demands? It's because she had dirt on them as well. So it was in everyone's best interests to keep things quiet and just move on from each other.

But they did pay, indicating that the MCPS lawyers didn't think they had cause to terminate. Why did they do so anyway? Because it is an election year and they wanted to push the blame onto McKnight before people started looking closely at them.

Why would you assume the MCPS lawyers are competent or looking out for the best interests of the school system? Their boss was the potential plaintiff in the lawsuit.

That's not how it works. The lawyers were working for the Board.

The board that makes fantastic hiring decisions?

Your apparent theory makes no sense. If McKnight was blackmailing them, why did they fire her at all?

What? Why would McKnight blackmailing the board make her innocent?

I didn't say it would. But if they were scared, why would they have fired her at all?

[Anonymous]

Damn! Y'all still huffing and huffing; crying like bit$hes and witches. Meanwhile Dr. McKnight is probably sipping margueritas, piña coladas somewhere in the Caribbean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Damn! Y'all still huffing and huffing; crying like bit$hes and witches. Meanwhile Dr. McKnight is probably sipping margueritas, piña coladas somewhere in the Caribbean.

Good, the further away she is from MCPS the better.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Just remember: MCPS thought this needed to be settled immediately. The Vigna victims had to litigate. The Gaithersburg sex assault victim had to go all the way to a jury. The Damascus victims had to go through years of litigation while MCPS denied it had any responsibility to provide for safety in school before finally settling after the judge rejected their defenses. What is it about this case that made MCPS handle differently? No one who defends this settlement in any way or who supported this settlement deserves to be on the school board.

To be fair, this was a smaller settlement amount. Even if McKnight wouldn't have won a discrimination lawsuit, she had a good enough case that it could have spent years in litigation. It was cheaper to settle.

The same theory could have applied to the other cases too but MCPS decided to litigate those. A lot of special education claims could be settled for less than this settlement but MCPS litigates those too. This settlement was for more money than she was owed on her contract, so it was no great deal.

Certainly MCPS is willing to spend more on litigation to fight SPED claims, but they do that to scare off additional claims. And it is far from clear that it would have been cheaper to settle the other cases.

I'll admit, the $1.3M was higher than I expected. Some of that might be to reassure future MCPS superintendent applicants that they'll have a golden parachute when they're inevitably fired. Otherwise MCPS would find itself having a very hard time recruiting qualified applicants.

Try as you might, there's no good rationale for this settlement, especially compared to how MCPS handles other potential litigants. The sexual assault defenses served no public policy interests and arguable damaged them as MCPS took outrageous (and unsupportable) positions.

The contract had a generous golden parachute. The settlement was many more times generous. By your rationale, MCPS should have litigated to prevent other superintendents from taking them to the cleaners.

This settlement had one purpose: protect the current board members from having even more of their mismanagement exposed by a disgruntled former employee. That was it.

One-year severance for a position like this is hardly generous. There are relatively few superintendent positions in districts of this scale, and you're almost guaranteed both a long hiring process and a long-distance move.

McKnight thought the board had her back. Right or wrong, the next superintendent won't make the same mistake. I strongly suspect the next contract will have a much larger severance clause for early termination.

And if MCPS would have tried to take her to court over termination for cause, them they definitely would have had a hard time finding a replacement.

I'ts pretty generous. I'm an employment lawyer and i think something between 6 months and a year would have sounded about right to me. She got a lot more than that (closer to 3 years). And MCPS would not have taken her to court. They would have made her an offer, if she rejected it, they would have said, we are invoking the termination for cause provisions of your contract and paying you nothing, and she would have them taken them to court for breach of contract. It is absolutely not clear that she would have won, and she would have had to pay attorneys to bring that suit (or have them work on contingency for a portion of the breach of contract damages.) Since her attorneys apparently charged her 30K just for negotiating the settlement agreement, which seems like kind of a lot to me, I think she would have burned through her damages pretty quickly. It's ridiculous to me that the Board paid out her full contract as if they had zero cause for terminating it. If they really believed they had no cause for termination, they should have kept her on and avoided all this disruption. It's one thing to discount based on litigation risk, but it's totally another just to roll over and give her everything she would have gotten in litigation and more (e.g., allowing her child to attend MCPS schools for free even if she lives out of county).

Right. I fully expected the BOE to let her finish out her term and not renew her contract, but to fire her mid-contract, they had to have cause to do so. And if they had cause, why bend over backwards to appease Monifa's demands? It's because she had dirt on them as well. So it was in everyone's best interests to keep things quiet and just move on from each other.

But they did pay, indicating that the MCPS lawyers didn't think they had cause to terminate. Why did they do so anyway? Because it is an election year and they wanted to push the blame onto McKnight before people started looking closely at them.

But doesn't this payout look worse than unclear blame? This looks like incompetence and demands an explanation. Before, people could buy that they didn't know what was going on.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Hearing from insiders that Felder is even worse. I can't see how that can be true but it is a problem if that is even the perception.

I figured she was no better than Monifa but to hear that she is WORSE is terrifying.

It just goes to show the BoE doesn't want real change when they appoint one of McKnight's proteges who will continue the same misguided policies.

Felder is not one of McKnight's proteges.

She sure is, she just hides it. They were principals together in MCPS and worked in central office together. Felder left MCPS to follow Shawn Joseph to PG and then Nashville. Joseph and his wife (McKnights sorority sister) are very close with both McKnight and Felder. Joseph works for HYA who helped get McKnight hired. Joseph's fraternity presented McKnight with an achievement award. Felder is also part of Joseph's leadership development academy at Howard University. They are all very connected.

Connected, maybe. Protege, no. Felder is older and had already left her principal position before McKnight began hers. Felder was in central office before McKnight was, not at the same time.

Yelp...She is the generation before McKnight and is much more polished. Incredible life story...Don't think she even wants the perm gig. Probably wants to retire and be done with all of it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Just remember: MCPS thought this needed to be settled immediately. The Vigna victims had to litigate. The Gaithersburg sex assault victim had to go all the way to a jury. The Damascus victims had to go through years of litigation while MCPS denied it had any responsibility to provide for safety in school before finally settling after the judge rejected their defenses. What is it about this case that made MCPS handle differently? No one who defends this settlement in any way or who supported this settlement deserves to be on the school board.

To be fair, this was a smaller settlement amount. Even if McKnight wouldn't have won a discrimination lawsuit, she had a good enough case that it could have spent years in litigation. It was cheaper to settle.

The same theory could have applied to the other cases too but MCPS decided to litigate those. A lot of special education claims could be settled for less than this settlement but MCPS litigates those too. This settlement was for more money than she was owed on her contract, so it was no great deal.

Certainly MCPS is willing to spend more on litigation to fight SPED claims, but they do that to scare off additional claims. And it is far from clear that it would have been cheaper to settle the other cases.

I'll admit, the $1.3M was higher than I expected. Some of that might be to reassure future MCPS superintendent applicants that they'll have a golden parachute when they're inevitably fired. Otherwise MCPS would find itself having a very hard time recruiting qualified applicants.

Try as you might, there's no good rationale for this settlement, especially compared to how MCPS handles other potential litigants. The sexual assault defenses served no public policy interests and arguable damaged them as MCPS took outrageous (and unsupportable) positions.

The contract had a generous golden parachute. The settlement was many more times generous. By your rationale, MCPS should have litigated to prevent other superintendents from taking them to the cleaners.

This settlement had one purpose: protect the current board members from having even more of their mismanagement exposed by a disgruntled former employee. That was it.

One-year severance for a position like this is hardly generous. There are relatively few superintendent positions in districts of this scale, and you're almost guaranteed both a long hiring process and a long-distance move.

McKnight thought the board had her back. Right or wrong, the next superintendent won't make the same mistake. I strongly suspect the next contract will have a much larger severance clause for early termination.

And if MCPS would have tried to take her to court over termination for cause, them they definitely would have had a hard time finding a replacement.

I'ts pretty generous. I'm an employment lawyer and i think something between 6 months and a year would have sounded about right to me. She got a lot more than that (closer to 3 years). And MCPS would not have taken her to court. They would have made her an offer, if she rejected it, they would have said, we are invoking the termination for cause provisions of your contract and paying you nothing, and she would have them taken them to court for breach of contract. It is absolutely not clear that she would have won, and she would have had to pay attorneys to bring that suit (or have them work on contingency for a portion of the breach of contract damages.) Since her attorneys apparently charged her 30K just for negotiating the settlement agreement, which seems like kind of a lot to me, I think she would have burned through her damages pretty quickly. It's ridiculous to me that the Board paid out her full contract as if they had zero cause for terminating it. If they really believed they had no cause for termination, they should have kept her on and avoided all this disruption. It's one thing to discount based on litigation risk, but it's totally another just to roll over and give her everything she would have gotten in litigation and more (e.g., allowing her child to attend MCPS schools for free even if she lives out of county).

Right. I fully expected the BOE to let her finish out her term and not renew her contract, but to fire her mid-contract, they had to have cause to do so. And if they had cause, why bend over backwards to appease Monifa's demands? It's because she had dirt on them as well. So it was in everyone's best interests to keep things quiet and just move on from each other.

But they did pay, indicating that the MCPS lawyers didn't think they had cause to terminate. Why did they do so anyway? Because it is an election year and they wanted to push the blame onto McKnight before people started looking closely at them.

Why would you assume the MCPS lawyers are competent or looking out for the best interests of the school system? Their boss was the potential plaintiff in the lawsuit.

That's not how it works. The lawyers were working for the Board.

The board that makes fantastic hiring decisions?

Your apparent theory makes no sense. If McKnight was blackmailing them, why did they fire her at all?

What? Why would McKnight blackmailing the board make her innocent?

I didn't say it would. But if they were scared, why would they have fired her at all?

For the obvious reasons that everyone knows: she promoted her buddy, a known bully and sexual harasser, did nothing to fix a system that had been pointed out numerous times to ignore sexual harassment complaints, had herself at a minimum witnessed improper behavior and done nothing, and at minimum failed to instruct her staff to cooperate with the IG (or herself did not). Staff had no confidence in her and in that situation she cannot lead.

[Anonymous]

What this tells me is that we’re not confident that would win a lawsuit against McKnight. Further, they were more interested in the problem dying down. So instead of letting McKnight stay for the remainder of her contract, they paid out her contract. This allowing them to quiet the noise some and move forward getting a new Super.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What this tells me is that we’re not confident that would win a lawsuit against McKnight. Further, they were more interested in the problem dying down. So instead of letting McKnight stay for the remainder of her contract, they paid out her contract. This allowing them to quiet the noise some and move forward getting a new Super.

They paid substantially more than what was left on her contract.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What this tells me is that we’re not confident that would win a lawsuit against McKnight. Further, they were more interested in the problem dying down. So instead of letting McKnight stay for the remainder of her contract, they paid out her contract. This allowing them to quiet the noise some and move forward getting a new Super.

What this tells me is that the BOE did not want McKnight speak publicly about her thoughts on the BOE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hearing from insiders that Felder is even worse. I can't see how that can be true but it is a problem if that is even the perception.

I figured she was no better than Monifa but to hear that she is WORSE is terrifying.

It just goes to show the BoE doesn't want real change when they appoint one of McKnight's proteges who will continue the same misguided policies.

Felder is not one of McKnight's proteges.

She sure is, she just hides it. They were principals together in MCPS and worked in central office together. Felder left MCPS to follow Shawn Joseph to PG and then Nashville. Joseph and his wife (McKnights sorority sister) are very close with both McKnight and Felder. Joseph works for HYA who helped get McKnight hired. Joseph's fraternity presented McKnight with an achievement award. Felder is also part of Joseph's leadership development academy at Howard University. They are all very connected.

Connected, maybe. Protege, no. Felder is older and had already left her principal position before McKnight began hers. Felder was in central office before McKnight was, not at the same time.

Yelp...She is the generation before McKnight and is much more polished. Incredible life story...Don't think she even wants the perm gig. Probably wants to retire and be done with all of it.

That would be the smart move. If she takes the perm gig, she'll be strapped with a similar outcome to McKnight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Were they a DEI hire?

What do you think?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I see that DCUM is still crying over the fact that Dr. McKnight is smiling all the way to the bank.
Keep crying 😢

Ripping iff children makes you so happy.

I'd direct my anger toward the board since they used her as a scapegoat and it cost them.

She helped cover up for a serial sexual harasser and did everything she could to make sure he was successful and tried to bury the information like it's the 1960s and the internet and emails don't exist. The Board is a bunch of buffoons and instead of having a backbone and showing they're going to stand up to this type of corruption, they cowered and gave her the bag because they don't want to be perceived as racist. If she threatened her a lawsuit, let's go to court and put her on blast for her behavior. Even if she won, the settlement wouldn't have been much more than what she got. Should have stood up for what's right and fired her for cause and showed that type of behavior won't be tolerated anymore. But they didn't...vote them all out over the next few elections. Actions need to have consequences.

That wasn't clear from the report. Sure, there were a few anonymous complaints, but it's hard to give that much weight.

Which they were investigating.

It's really not clear McKnight did anything improper here.

You are correct, but the McKnight haters will label you a troll for relying on facts.

Find a taxpayer happy she got $1.3M for nothing.

Not nothing, that level of corruption and professional and reputational assault on SA victims takes a lot of effort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Damn! Y'all still huffing and huffing; crying like bit$hes and witches. Meanwhile Dr. McKnight is probably sipping margueritas, piña coladas somewhere in the Caribbean.

You sound like you're about to throw out the term "Black Excellence" next.

[Anonymous]

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/lsu-coach-kim-mulkey-threatens-sue-the-washington-post-rumored-hit-piece-im-fed-up.amp

I hope the mcps employees in this case attacked by the Washington post sue these relentless reporters for defamation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just remember: MCPS thought this needed to be settled immediately. The Vigna victims had to litigate. The Gaithersburg sex assault victim had to go all the way to a jury. The Damascus victims had to go through years of litigation while MCPS denied it had any responsibility to provide for safety in school before finally settling after the judge rejected their defenses. What is it about this case that made MCPS handle differently? No one who defends this settlement in any way or who supported this settlement deserves to be on the school board.

To be fair, this was a smaller settlement amount. Even if McKnight wouldn't have won a discrimination lawsuit, she had a good enough case that it could have spent years in litigation. It was cheaper to settle.

The same theory could have applied to the other cases too but MCPS decided to litigate those. A lot of special education claims could be settled for less than this settlement but MCPS litigates those too. This settlement was for more money than she was owed on her contract, so it was no great deal.

Certainly MCPS is willing to spend more on litigation to fight SPED claims, but they do that to scare off additional claims. And it is far from clear that it would have been cheaper to settle the other cases.

I'll admit, the $1.3M was higher than I expected. Some of that might be to reassure future MCPS superintendent applicants that they'll have a golden parachute when they're inevitably fired. Otherwise MCPS would find itself having a very hard time recruiting qualified applicants.

Try as you might, there's no good rationale for this settlement, especially compared to how MCPS handles other potential litigants. The sexual assault defenses served no public policy interests and arguable damaged them as MCPS took outrageous (and unsupportable) positions.

The contract had a generous golden parachute. The settlement was many more times generous. By your rationale, MCPS should have litigated to prevent other superintendents from taking them to the cleaners.

This settlement had one purpose: protect the current board members from having even more of their mismanagement exposed by a disgruntled former employee. That was it.

One-year severance for a position like this is hardly generous. There are relatively few superintendent positions in districts of this scale, and you're almost guaranteed both a long hiring process and a long-distance move.

McKnight thought the board had her back. Right or wrong, the next superintendent won't make the same mistake. I strongly suspect the next contract will have a much larger severance clause for early termination.

And if MCPS would have tried to take her to court over termination for cause, them they definitely would have had a hard time finding a replacement.

I'ts pretty generous. I'm an employment lawyer and i think something between 6 months and a year would have sounded about right to me. She got a lot more than that (closer to 3 years). And MCPS would not have taken her to court. They would have made her an offer, if she rejected it, they would have said, we are invoking the termination for cause provisions of your contract and paying you nothing, and she would have them taken them to court for breach of contract. It is absolutely not clear that she would have won, and she would have had to pay attorneys to bring that suit (or have them work on contingency for a portion of the breach of contract damages.) Since her attorneys apparently charged her 30K just for negotiating the settlement agreement, which seems like kind of a lot to me, I think she would have burned through her damages pretty quickly. It's ridiculous to me that the Board paid out her full contract as if they had zero cause for terminating it. If they really believed they had no cause for termination, they should have kept her on and avoided all this disruption. It's one thing to discount based on litigation risk, but it's totally another just to roll over and give her everything she would have gotten in litigation and more (e.g., allowing her child to attend MCPS schools for free even if she lives out of county).

This. I am an employment lawyer too and almost thought I wrote this and forgot. I keep hearing people say this is typical …. no, unless she had some pretty strong claims against the BOE and they didn’t bother to document anything. The redacted Jackson Lewis report had enough to create at least a question of fact, and if they had done their job right, they should have had a lot more. They had more than enough time to document their concerns. And had a law firm to help them (I don’t understand why people excuse them because they are part time - Jackson Lewis was hired to advise them; it’s not as though they had to do the work themselves). The contract itself limited damages to one year even if the Board BREACHED their side of the contract. They would argue they didn’t breach and she violated a term when she withheld information about Beidleman. So the number should have been less than a year if they had an argument for cause. If they did not, then they should not have fired her!