Columbus school board member speaks out on leaked recordings
COLUMBUS, Ohio ( WCMH ) — Columbus Board of Education member Jennifer Adair is speaking out after a recording between herself and board member Brandon Simmons went public.
Simmons is the board member at the center of a controversial leaked memo related to future school closings. The memo, which detailed strategies to control the narrative as to which district buildings would close, included suggestions such as dividing the teachers' union from staff and moving meeting locations last minute.
He claims the document was a collaboration. The board has adamantly denied this, saying Simmons is the sole author.
The recording we first showed you Tuesday details a conversation about this document between Adair and Simmons. Now, Adair is speaking with NBC4 Investigates on behalf of herself, not the board.
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She said she is speaking out now because she said the Board of Education as a whole has not had the greatest track record of trust and she wants to overcome that.
Board member Sarah Ingles leaked the " Controlling the Task Force Narrative " document after Adair sent it to her. Adair called Simmons after this happened.
On the phone call Simmons secretly recorded between himself and Adair, Adair said, "Obviously I shared it with Sarah, but I didn't know that she was going to do that. And that wasn't even the context in which we were talking."
On Thursday, Adair said she called Simmons to apologize. She felt every board member had a right to know what happened in the meeting about the document and she did not know Ingles would send it on.
"There are seven of us that govern and each of us has to try to build a trusting relationship with one another, and so that's what I was doing in that call. I was taking accountability, letting him know the truth," Adair said.
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She said in the meeting where Simmons presented the document, she was adamant about her lack of support for it.
"There were points in the conversation where I interrupted him," Adair said. "I paused. I maybe had a few snarky comments to him, but there were things that were very, very troubling, and I was not quiet about that."
In a second recording with Board Vice President Dr. Tina Pierce, Pierce is heard saying to Simmons that he will have support when this document is leaked.
On the call, Pierce said, "You were taking ideas from everybody. This was literally a briefing."
Pierce did not make time for an interview with NBC4 Investigates on Thursday, so we asked Adair if she knew what Pierce meant.
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"I can't speak to that," she said. "Dr. Pierce was not in the meeting and so I know, sitting in the meeting, there was really no collaboration about the document he shared. There was discussion about how the board of education should properly be involved in the communication strategy. I wasn't too worried about it because truth be told, it is not the job of the Board of Education to come up with a communication strategy. That is the job of the superintendent and her team."
Adair acknowledged the community's lack of trust in the board and NBC4 Investigates asked her about a comment she made on the recording about trust.
"At the end of the call, you say, you know, hey, I don't trust any of you on the board. If you don't trust people on the board, why should the community trust the board right now?" NBC4 Investigates Isabel Cleary said.
"You know, I think that there are personal relationships that I do have a strain with, and I think that some of that through this process is probably very public," Adair said. "I think that that statement, while true and those feelings and emotions I was feeling in that moment. Again, we are seven people not chosen by each other, coming through political processes that pit us against each other, there is inherent intrust, or no trust that is created in these relationships sometimes."
She added she thinks there is a difference between individual relationships and the trustworthiness of the work.
"I think we have a strong track record of what we have done, including creating the goals and guardrails, which has shown the superintendent a path forward," Adair said.
On Monday, the board called for Simmons to resign . This comes after the board has censured him twice and released an investigation that found Simmons to be the only author of the document.
Simmons has not returned a request for comment Thursday.
Simmons sent the two recordings of himself and Pierce and Adair to the Ohio Auditor of State. So far, he is standing behind his claims that the document was a collaboration.
