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Chambers County Board of Education’s central office was transformed into a courtroom on Wednesday for the personnel hearing of LaFayette High School Counselor LaWendy Willis. After receiving a termination letter from the superintendent over the summer, Willis requested a public hearing to plead her case against the termination recommendation. 

The hearing, which began at the end of the regularly scheduled board meeting and lasted well past midnight, will resume on Oct. 8.

Willis was represented by Stanley Gray of Gray Law Center in Tuskegee. According to Chambers County BOE Attorney Bob Meadows, the reasons for terminating included a failure to perform duties satisfactorily, insubordination and “other good and just cause.” 

Willis has worked as a counselor for the school district since 2011. Since the summer of 2021, she has worked for LaFayette High. Willis has also been an active member of the Chambers County Equity Initiative (CCEI), a protest group, formerly known as LaFayette Teachers Against Displacement. 

The group has been protesting the Valley location for the county’s new consolidated high school in the ongoing desegregation case. Members of CCEI were in the audience to support Willis and live-streamed the hearing.

Though several issues were discussed, the primary issue cited by Superintendent Casey Chambley was the erroneous ranking of LaFayette High’s 2024 top three students. 

On that topic, Gray and Meadows questioned the following witnesses: Assistant Superintendent David Owen, Director of Testing Fran Groover, VHS Counselor Dr. Tolandra Harris and LHS Principal Christy Brock-Johnson. 

Two LaFayette High parents also spoke as character witnesses for Willis.

Top three ranking

In May, the top three rankings for LaFayette High School had an error. The students in second and third place had to be switched. The CCSD changed the student policy just one summer earlier due to a similar issue at Valley High School.

In 2023, a Valley High School student claimed that she was told she would be Valedictorian who ended up not placing in the top three ranking. Valley High Counselor Dr. Tolandra Harris and the school board maintained that the conversation did not take place. 

To avoid repeating the incident, however, the new policy stipulated that at least four pairs of eyes should review the ranking before they’re announced. After the counselor calculates the rankings, it needs to be approved by the math department head, the school principal, and either the assistant superintendent or the director of counseling.

According to evidence presented by the defense, Groover sent an email notifying the principal of the May 13 deadline. However, another email from Owen had the deadline for rankings at May 17. From Brock-Johnson’s testimony, Willis thought the deadline was May 17 and she thought the deadline was May 13. 

So, when Cookie Thomas, executive assistant to the superintendent, called Brock-Johnson for the class rankings on May 13, Brock-Johnson asked Willis for them, which she did not have. 

Brock-Johnson argued, “Had she submitted the grades or stored the grades on the 10th like she was supposed to, and it went to the 24 hours over the weekend [to be finalized on the 13th]…Then we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Gray submitted another email from Brock-Johnson to Brooks — sent on May 13 — saying that one of the LHS teachers had not submitted their class grades but would do it the following day. This was after Thomas asked for class rankings.

“So you expected Ms. Willis to turn in or to have the grades stored on May 13, 2024, although all of the grades were not in,” Gray said. 

Brock-Johnson argued that the top three would not have been affected by the grades that were not submitted by the teacher. Gray replied, asking if Willis should have stopped to check if it would have mattered or if she should have waited for the correct grades. Brock Johnson conceded that she should have waited for it to be corrected on the 14th. 

Willis sent an email on the 14th asking Brooks to store the grades. 

Brock-Johnson said multiple times during her testimony that she had not been aware of her role in the new policy. In fact, she said no one told her about the policy at all. When asked if Willis had come to her to verify, she said no. 

Gray asked Owen what his responsibility was for checking student weight and ranking. Owen responded that he “reviewed” the information and found no issue. Groover, the director of counseling, said she did not review the rankings because she didn’t receive the email. 

Both said they did not confirm whether anyone else reviewed it.

“Nothing was preventing you from following this policy that was written as a result of the problem that you had in Valley High School just a year earlier. Correct?” Gray asked Owen. 

Owens responded that they followed it “to the best of our ability, to my knowledge.”

Brock-Johnson said she was called into Willis’ office where she had been told that “the numbers had changed.” This was when, according to Brock-Johnson, she found out that the rankings were wrong. The women then called Brooks and Owen. 

“It was later revealed that she had to wait for it to be stored for 24 hours…It wasn’t stored,” said Brock-Johnson on why the rankings were incorrect. 

According to Meadows, the school’s software program requires 24 hours to run the report. Meadows argued that Willis should have known how to calculate the weight and ranking based on the provided training. 

However, Harris and Brock-Johnson said that they were not aware that that was a requirement. Gray said that the program also has an option for populating the new data “after the grades are stored,” which may have caused confusion.

According to Meadows, Harris had no problem getting the VHS rankings turned in. Harris said that the counselors were told that they had to wait for the grades to be stored. She also said she hand-calculated her grades and double-checked them before sending them to be reviewed.

After she alerted Brock-Johnson of the error, Willis was told to notify the parents of the affected students and Willis refused. 

“She was insubordinate. She told me she wasn’t going to do it,” said Brock Johnson. 

This was the instance of “insubordination” cited in the notice of termination.

Gray asked why Willis never received disciplinary action for this or other instances cited in the notice of termination.

“I never wrote Ms. Willis up even though I was instructed to do so,” Owen said. “…I didn’t feel like creating a hostile relationship with Ms. Willis.”

Brock-Johnson said the same in her examination. During last year’s principal’s meeting, however, she told Chambley, “I don’t trust her…Well, I don’t trust she can do her job.” 

Brock Johnson said Willis had not been able to meet some deadlines, refused to pull transcripts and had been complaining. 

When asked how she learned about the planned termination, Groover said, “I was asked if there were any issues that I was aware of with Ms. Willis.” 

Groover continued that the day of or the day before the letter was sent, Chambley asked her about “what [Willis] had not done in a satisfactory manner.” 

Meadows said that “personal work-related emails” between Willis and Brooks were posted on social media. Gray asked Owen if there was any policy explicitly that prohibits sharing emails between employees, to which he said no. 

Other good and just cause

There were several other instances cited as errors made by Willis since 2022. Two of these included students not completing a required course or completing the wrong course for their graduation plan. In both instances, the issue was resolved and the students graduated.

Groover also mentioned that Willis had missed deadlines and failed to send documents that the BOE needed for state compliance monitoring in 2024.