Beaufort Co. school board votes to hire attorney after asking member to leave meeting
Beaufort County’s school board voted Tuesday night to hire a Columbia-based attorney, but members refused to say why, and one member was asked to leave the room for the discussion.
Board chair Christina Gwozdz asked William Smith, who represents St. Helena and Lady’s Island, to leave at the start of the board’s hourlong closed session to discuss hiring attorney Andrea White, Smith said Wednesday.
The school board, in its 10-0 vote Tuesday, did not specify the legal issue for which White was being hired, merely that she was being asked “to advise the board regarding a legal matter.” Smith recused himself and was the only board member who didn’t participate.
Tuesday night’s vote was the second time the board has hired White. In 2019, she was hired to handle four employee complaints lodged against Smith. The public still doesn’t know whether those complaints were resolved.
Gwozdz responded with “no comment” to the following questions:
- Why was Smith asked to leave the meeting?
- Was Smith told why he was asked to leave the meeting?
- Why was White hired?
- What is the general topic on which White was expected to advise the board?
- Was White’s hiring related to her 2019 hiring to advise the board on employee complaints lodged against Smith?
Mel Campbell, the board’s vice chairperson, also offered no comment on what was discussed during the closed session.
Smith said Gwozdz asked him to recuse himself from the closed session “so they could discuss legal matters.”
He declined to say whether he knew the topic of the closed meeting or whether he planned to take legal action against the district, referring a reporter to his attorney, Maureen Coffey.
Coffey did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
On Oct. 21 — the same day school board members voted to publicly reprimand Smith for violating a board policy that says members cannot make official visits to schools without notifying the school’s principal — Coffey wrote the school district, demanding it “cease and desist” any “disparaging statement about or concerning Smith.”
Asked in November whether Smith planned to take legal action against the district or any board members, Coffey said it was a “complicated situation.”
“We’re exploring things that may have to be resolved in court,” she said. “But the true goal here is really for the school board to focus on educating all of the children, including the ones that they’re trying to silence (through) Will and his district.”
Tuesday night, as Smith entered the district’s lobby, where members of the public were asked to wait during the closed session, a sheriff’s deputy followed him.
Corporal Mabrena Garst with the sheriff’s office, who attended the meeting to provide security, told Smith that district attorney Wendy Cartledge wanted to know whether he was leaving the building or simply waiting in the lobby until the board reconvened in public session.
“I thought she might have implied that I needed to leave the building at first,” Smith said Wednesday. He said he “felt intimidated” by the exchange and paced the lobby, saying he was too nervous to sit.
Garst came back a few minutes later saying there had been a miscommunication on her end and that Cartledge was making sure Smith stayed for the public session.
What happened in 2019
White’s firm, White & Story, was originally hired by the board in June 2019 to “to assess and review employee grievances that have been filed regarding the Board.”
In August, the board voted to “accept the recommendation presented by its legal counsel in reference to the grievances that were filed regarding the board.”
It held no public discussion on the motion.
The board and district never revealed that Smith was the subject of the complaints or what the complaints said. Both of those details were obtained and made public by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette in the year following White’s hiring.
Nearly two years later, the public still does not know what the board did in that closed-door session in August 2019 to resolve these complaints.
Also unknown: Whether Smith was disciplined in August 2019 as a result of the complaints, or what drove then-superintendent Herb Berg to order a seemingly illegal concealed weapon permit check on Smith in June 2019.