Showtime in Walker County: School Board Trial Set to Unfold This Thursday
Setting the scene for this unprecedented legal showdown.
This Thursday, March 28th, the good people of Walker County will be treated to a spectacle rarely seen in any court, much less in Northwest Georgia. Two Walker County School board members, Mike Carruth and Karen Harden, will find themselves in the dock, facing a quo warranto writ that questions their very right to hold office. It's the finale in a years-long drama, rife with hints of nepotism and creative job titling by the superintendent.
For those unfamiliar with the arcane world of legal jargon, a quo warranto writ is essentially a fancy way of saying, "Hey, what gives you the right to hold that office?" It's a question that any plucky citizen or taxpayer can ask of an elected official. Last year, a citizen did just that, which began the current legal process. Before that, though, in December 2022, I wrote an article that challenged the eligibility of both Carruth and Harden and raised some uncomfortable questions.
You see, Georgia law has a rather quaint notion that a person should not serve on a school board if they have an immediate family member also on the board, serving as superintendent, principal, assistant principal, or in a "system administrative staff position." It's a simple concept, really: let's keep the family business out of the school business.
Enter Mike Carruth and Karen Harden. Carruth's son, Justin, became an assistant principal in 2018 and then ascended to become the vocational or CTAE Director in 2021, while Harden's son, Scott, was promoted to the lofty position of Technology Director in 2017. Naturally, I found all this very curious and decided to ask Superintendent Raines about it.
Here's where things got interesting. While the titles I used for the Carruth and Harden sons are indeed the ones listed in state salary records and their personnel files, the superintendent insisted that these were mere window-dressing. In Walker County, it seems, a director is not always a director. Instead, they have been bestowed with the rather less impressive titles of "CTAE Coordinator" and "Coordinator of Technology." One can only imagine the hours of creative thought that went into this bit of titular gymnastics.
Thus, we find ourselves on the precipice of a trial that will hinge on the definition of "system administrative staff" and whether the Carruth and Harden sons fit the bill. The plaintiffs will likely have many arguments ready. One of which might be that the Georgia Department of Education's interpretation since 2010 that system administrative staff is “commonly referred to employees of the local school district assigned to duties other than instructing students.” The defense, in a display of legal conjuring, will no doubt insist that a coordinator—if they are indeed coordinators— is a mere underling, unworthy of the exalted status of a director.
And therein lies the rub. As I pointed out in my December 2022 article, both Justin Carruth and Scott Harden are compensated quite handsomely, often more than their counterparts in other districts who bear the same director title. If they are not truly directors, one wonders why Walker County has been so generous with the public purse.
Some have chosen to interpret this whole case and my article as a personal attack on the competence and integrity of the Carruth and Harden families. It's not. But such pearl-clutching misses the point entirely. The real head-scratcher is the defense's own implication that their children have not risen to positions of authority, influence, and achievement within the school system. It's a bold strategy, Cotton—let's see if it pays off for them.
In the end, we may never fully grasp the Machiavellian motivations behind this sordid little tale. But one thing is certain: the trial on Thursday promises to be a legal display unseen before in a Georgia Courtroom. Will the court find that a director by any other name would smell as sweet? Or will the superintendent’s and defense's creative titling carry the day? We will know soon enough.