The Duncan Banner

Local News

July 18, 2010

Bray-Doyle principal refutes allegations

DUNCAN — Jack Williams’ side of what happened at an April 12 board meeting is quite different from that of Bray-Doyle Superintendent Kevin McKinley’s version.

Williams, the high school principal and athletic director at Bray-Doyle also makes some accusations of his own about McKinley.

According to Williams, it was McKinley that had a “screaming fit” at the board meeting.

“There was a question about a basketball coach (Darian Dickson) and he (McKinley) had been promising Darian that he was going to be rehired.

“There was a player that had stopped playing on the team and in an effort to get him to come back, they were going to fire Darian. I asked a simple yes-or-no question just like I’ve done at 300 school board meetings I’ve been to. All the principals ask questions without being on the agenda. He had a screaming fit and it got worse in executive session. I asked if there had been a meeting on (April 10) with the president (Kent Spivey), him (McKinley) and a student. That is when he told me I was out of order.”

When contacted about the issue, Spivey said that he had no comment on the issue.

According to Williams, the issue revolves around McKinley’s “ego.”

“It is just an ego thing with him,” Williams said. “I don’t know how many schools cut out the high school principal and athletic director out of coaching decisions, but he (McKinley) likes to hire the coaches so he can say he hired them and they owe him.”

Williams also alleges that McKinley has miss treated female employees in his presence.

“He sat and yelled at a female coach for more than an hour, and we (the coach and Williams) were both just stunned at the way he was acting,” Williams said. “I was also present when he was yelling at a 70-year-old female secretary. He doesn’t do that to the men.”

Even though Williams says the “yelling” doesn’t happen to male employees, he does make some serious accusations about the way that he has been treated.

“I’ve had cancer surgery, and my PSA (Prostate-Specific Antigen) has doubled,” Williams noted. “I had a doctors appointment and a meeting with (McKinley). I asked him if we could move our meeting up and he said ‘no.’ When I asked why, he said because he was the boss — ‘I’m in charge.’”

McKinley had even taken to doing the evaluations for coaches, Williams said.

“The reason for that is he wanted me to put what he said in the evaluations, and I’m not going to bad mouth a coach that was in the state playoffs.”

Also in dealing with evaluations, Williams said that McKinley had ordered coaches not to share what their evaluations stated with anyone “including their spouses.”

There was also an incident involving one of Williams’ subordinates as a witness in one meeting.

“If he does that he has to give me a copy of the confidentiality statement that the subordinate has signed stating they won’t say anything about what was said in the meeting and he hasn’t done that.”

Williams also alleges that McKinley violated the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act when he canceled the meeting that was scheduled for July 12.

“He said that two of the board members had family medical issues, and I asked him how many board members does it take to have a meeting?”

Under the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act, a quorum is the majority of the board. That would have been three members for the Bray-Doyle Board of Education.

“If there wasn’t enough members to have the meeting, the proper way to cancel the meeting is to have the meeting and then adjourn it if there aren’t enough members to have the meeting.”

Two of the witnesses against Williams were to be students, which Williams says he finds distasteful.

“If I have to go to trial, I’ll tell exactly what I said. I don’t have anything to hide,” Williams said. “This is just his way of handling a personal vendetta. I wasn’t trying to use the kids, and I won’t set back and let someone else use the kids this way. For any school administrator to use kids to settle a vendetta is offensive.”

Williams also said that the original charges that led to his suspension have been dropped and that there will be new ones levied against him.

Calls to McKinley’s home were not returned Saturday.



— Ron Booth is the managing editor for The Duncan Banner. He can be reached at 580-255-5354, Ext. 166, or via e-mail at ron.booth@duncanbanner.com.

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