By Dick Mason

Staff Writer

Heads are about to roll at the Union-Baker Education Service District.

The ESD board took steps Wednesday to secure the resignations of three of its top administrators, including Superintendent Ed Schumacher, and terminate the ESD’s contract with its top consultant.

The board passed three motions involving ESD administrators. One motion states that Schumacher will continue working for the ESD until an interim superintendent is found. Schumacher, who will resign, is in his seventh year as superintendent.

The board also approved a motion authorizing Schumacher to extend the paid administrative leave of Lyle Mann, vocational technical director, and Jude Lehner, a teacher who manages some of the ESD’s alternative education programs. Mann was put on paid administrative leave late last week, and Lehner was placed on leave Monday.

The board asked Schumacher to request that Mann and Lehner resign. The board’s motion also states that "if resignation discussions are not successful, the board expects the superintendent to recommend termination.”

This means that if Mann and Lehner do not agree to resign, they will be fired after being given 20 days notice, said Rich Cason, chairman of the ESD board.

Mann has worked for the ESD since 1989. Lehner has worked for the ESD for less than 10 years.

Also on Wednesday, the board passed a motion asking Schumacher to enter into a mutual agreement with Lenny Williams to terminate his contract. Williams is paid $96,000 a year as a consultant via a contract that expires in 2006. Williams was the ESD’s administrative assistant until March 2003, when he became a consultant.

The board took its steps because of the results of an investigative audit conducted by the CPA firm of Dickey & Tremper of Pendleton. The audit reveals problems with public contracting, bidding, credit card use, travel expenses and student attendance in programs and the reporting of it, the Family Medical Leave Act and additional days paid for vacation.

The audit was conducted in conjunction with an Oregon State Police investigation. The investigation was started after the Education Workforce Development Committee, a citizens’ group, presented information about the ESD to the OSP.

Ray Stinnett of the committee said the board took the type of action Wednesday that it should have taken a long time ago including the steps to get Schumacher, Mann and Williams to leave the ESD.

The committee will continue its drive to recall ESD board members Kelly Anderes, Rich Cason and Don Starr despite what the board did Wednesday, Stinnett said.

"We want to ensure that there will be different board members in case they do not resign,” Stinnett said.

The audit, paid for by the ESD, has triggered further investigations by state and federal authorities.

"I don’t know what they will find. I hope they don’t find too much. I have only so much hair,” Cason said.

Cason said the board’s decisions are difficult to make because he is a friend of Schumacher, Mann and Lehner.

"You are talking about people’s lives,” Cason said.

He said it is unfortunate that the board has had to focus on these issues.

"We should be looking at what we can do for kids instead of this,” Cason said.

Much of the audit centers on the incorrect reporting of attendance figures at the ESD’s alternative education centers. Cason said that the value and what these centers mean to students is sometimes overlooked.

To make his point, he told a story about the ESD’s alternative education center in The Dalles. This year a boy at the center was so excited about the first day of school there that he slept in the parking lot the night before the center opened. He didn’t want to be late for the first day of school, Cason said.

"This is the only thing some of these kids have,” Cason said. "The best meal of the day is the one they get there (at the alternative education center).”

ESD board member Don Starr also said that his decisions were heart wrenching. He noted, for example, that it is tough to let someone like Mann go after all of the things he has done to help young people.

"He put 25 years of his life into this (developing programs for young people). We just ended his career,” Starr said.

Starr said that an editorial in The Observer Wednesday calling for he and four other board members to step down was unwarranted. The editorial criticized the board for not addressing the problems revealed by the audit earlier.

Starr said the board did not have concrete information to work with before the audit was released.

"If we are responsible, we cannot make snap decisions,” Starr said.

Starr added that it is easy for people with 20/20 hindsight to talk about what the board should have done.

Starr said he has long been impressed with the quality of work done by teachers at the ESD alternative education centers.

"I have never seen a more dedicated group of teachers so committed to kids,” Starr said.

Board member Thelma Hansen voted against the motion to seek an interim superintendent to replace Schumacher.

"I really think that we’re losing a good man," she said after the meeting. "I’ve watched him in the last few weeks really recognizing the problem and getting to work on it, and he has already put things in place to correct some of the things that have turned up. I shall miss him."

Hansen, whose term expires July 1, has served on the board for the past 34 years.

Board member Deon Strommer said the board’s support for new leadership Wednesday night was a turning point.

"This was a monumental night for this board," he said.

In a related matter Wednesday, the ESD grounded its airplane. The board passed a motion to sell the airplane it purchased about a year ago. The single-engine prop plane was used by ESD administrators to fly to some far-reaching places the district offers services. These include Florence, Albany and Eugene.

The ESD, which paid about $145,000 for the plane, will sell it because it now has nobody to fly it, Cason said.

The plane was flown by Mann and former ESD Administrator Toby Koehn, who left the ESD in August to become the principal of Cove High School.

"It was a good tool,” Cason said.