Beaufort Co. school district checked one board member’s gun records, emails show
While the Beaufort County Board of Education continues to keep hidden the circumstances that led to the costly investigation of one of its own members, newly released emails from the summer reveal that the school district checked whether that member had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and requested extra police presence during at least one board meeting.
The emails also show that district employees were reporting sightings of and interactions with board secretary William Smith to then-interim superintendent Herb Berg.
Then-chief Instructional Services officer Bonnie Almond emailed Berg on June 3 to tell him that Smith “was looking for him” to discuss the graduation attire policy at Battery Creek High School, and that Smith had said “that he was your boss Dr. Berg, and was going to find you and have you change it.”
“All I have to say is wow,” she wrote in the email, which Berg forwarded to Human Resources Director Alice Walton and school board chairwoman Christina Gwozdz two minutes after receiving it. “He was very passionate about this.”
On Thursday, Smith — who represents parts of St. Helena Island and Beaufort — said he was disappointed by the emails.
“Dr. Berg pulled that info illegally, without my authority,” he said of the check into his concealed weapons permit, noting that this was the first he was hearing about it.
Jim Foster, spokesperson for the school district, said he was not aware of any perceived threats from Smith that would have led the district to check on Smith’s concealed weapons permit but confirmed that Berg “did both those things on his own initiative.”
Smith appears to be the only board member whose permit status was checked, according to Foster.
According to a June 25 email from Berg to Gwozdz, the district’s director of security Dave Grissom informed Berg that “Will has NO concealed permit.”
“His job requires him to interact with law enforcement officers every day,” Foster said of Grissom. “He looked into this last spring at the direction of Dr. Berg.”
Gwozdz declined to say Thursday whether she thought conducting a concealed carry permit check on Smith was appropriate.
“I’m not going to pass judgment on that,” she said. “I don’t want to second-guess someone else’s judgment on security.”
Smith said Thursday that he never threatened anyone at the district nor on the board but that he currently has a concealed weapons permit, and had one at the time of Grissom’s check.
The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette could not confirm whether this was the case because concealed weapons permits are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act in South Carolina.
According to state law, Grissom should not have been able to confirm that Smith had or didn’t have a permit, as he is not a law enforcement officer.
South Carolina Law Enforcement Division maintains a list of all concealed weapon permit holders in the state. But per state law, “SLED may release the list of permit holders or verify an individual’s permit status only if the request is made by a law enforcement agency to aid in an official investigation, or if the list is required to be released pursuant to a subpoena or court order.”
Foster said Friday that Grissom “wasn’t aware of that particular statute” when he asked a law enforcement officer to look up Smith’s name.
During a security discussion at a September board meeting, board members Rachel Wisnefski and JoAnn Orischak revealed that they have concealed weapon permits.
Per state law, concealed weapon permit holders cannot bring weapons to an “office of or the business meeting of the governing body of a county, public school district, municipality, or special purpose district.”
Questions remain
Smith was the subject of four unknown grievances filed by district employees in June. For nearly seven months, the board has kept the public in the dark about the nature of the complaints and the seriousness of any allegations being made.
Andrea White, the board’s lawyer for the employee complaints, had advised the board in July not to publicly name Smith — an elected official who is beholden to voters and is not entitled to the same identity protections as a district employee would be in similar circumstances.
Smith’s identity was disclosed in internal board emails obtained and published by The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette in August.
It is still not known whether Smith was disciplined in the matter. He has kept his position as the board’s secretary, and as a member of the operations committee.
In early August and behind closed doors, the board received verbal advice from White on how to resolve the employee complaints made against Smith.
The board publicly voted to accept that advice but never publicly disclosed what that advice was.
After the Packet and the Gazette filed a FOIA request in early August for details on what the board had voted to accept, the school district responded by saying that the advice was never put in writing and therefore it had no relevant documents to release.
All in all, the district paid more than $16,000 to the Columbia law firm Story & White to represent the board in the grievance cases — part of which went to hiring a private investigator to conduct a background check on Smith.
‘Of course there is a William story’
The 185-page email release, the result of a FOIA request by Hilton Head Island resident Tony Cambria, sheds some light on an employee grievance case that has been kept largely private from the public and has prompted back-and-forth with the state attorney general.
Berg emailed Gwozdz on June 14 to inform her of a second employee grievance, and a fourth on June 20. Both of these emails are heavily redacted.
Berg had previously emailed Gwozdz on June 1 about setting up meetings between board members and his replacement, Frank Rodriguez. He included a line about graduation:
“Both graduations so far went off smoothly ... ” he wrote. “Of course there is a William story at each but more on that later.”
Other emails show that at least two district administrators, Almond and director of data services Daniel Fallon, had complained to Berg and district HR director Walton, respectively, about Smith’s behavior. As an elected official, Smith is not a district employee.
On June 12, Fallon emailed Walton: “At 6:45 this evening I drove past the district office to check on a lot we own to see about flooding. As I passed I noticed a car parked in the front and someone standing at the doors. When I got closer I saw it was Will Smith. I wanted to let someone know since it was after hours.”
Berg emailed Smith the next day: “Will: Is there something I can help with? Herb.”
Smith replied: “Who is Will Smith.”
This story was originally published January 19, 2020 at 4:55 AM.