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Southern Boone District gives its Superintendent an improvement plan

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The Southern Boone School District placed Superintendent Charlotte Miller on a professional improvement plan.

Earlier this summer, former Assistant Superintendent Carolyn Deffenbaugh released a letter of resignation – in it she slammed Miller, accusing her of favoritism, careless spending and mismanagement.

School Board President Ellen Kesterson says a committee of board members will meet with Miller every month to follow up with the goals outlined in the plan.

"It’s a confidential personnel document, so I can’t get into the specifics of it," Kesterson says. "But it’s just addressing some areas that the board saw as concerns, that we wanted her to improve upon.”

Kestersen says the school board will not move to fire Miller because of the allegations in Deffenbaugh’s letter, but that Miller will be held accountable in meeting the goals of the plan.

Kesterson says she wasn’t able to comment on how often these professional improvement plans have been used in the past, but says the school district usually issues these plans any time a school official needs assistance in improvement.

An investigative team looked into the allegations outlined in Deffenbaugh’s letter. Two former mid-Missouri superintendents and an attorney worked on the team. Kesterson says the team found no instances where Miller had broken the law.

The School Board also asked for a more thorough audit of the district’s finances this year. Kesterson says the official report from the auditor won’t be released for at least another month.

“If he has anything that’s huge, or we need to make immediate changes on, he lets us know," Kesterson says "That audit concluded in, either the first part or the middle of July, and there was nothing of an immediate nature that we needed to react to.”

Southern Boone Middle School principal Bob Simpson issued a letter of immediate resignation following Deffenbaugh’s letter. In it, Deffenbaugh had accused Miller of favoring Simpson with unfair raises.

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