FAIRMONT – As it turns out, Donna Heston won’t be cleaning out her desk at the end of June after all.
Meeting in special session Thursday afternoon, the Marion County Board of Education reversed its earlier decision to oust the superintendent – granting a 1-year extension to her current contract, instead.
She’ll now remain in her job through June 2027.
Last month, the BOE voted 3-2 not to renew the contract of Heston, who began her career as a teacher of Advanced Placement English and was hired in 2021 for the top administrative post in Marion County’s school district.
Emerging then from a lengthy administrative session, George Boyles, the board’s president, voted in favor of the superintendent’s continued employment in the county, joined by Tom Dragich.
Kevin Rogers, Donna Costello and the Rev. James Saunders, though, voted nay.
The board then tentatively discussed plans to launch an in-state search, with the idea of having a new superintendent hired by May 1.
Said vote came despite Heston having received a positive evaluation by the BOE on her job performance and infrastructure measures – which include the current construction of Safe Schools entrances for 19 of Marion’s mostly aging buildings.
After mulling it over, Saunders, however, said last week he wanted to reconsider.
On Thursday, he did – and after another executive session lasting nearly 90 minutes, he emerged to say yea to the superintendent, along with Boyles and Dragich.
Rogers and Costello remained steady in their votes to not renew.
“So, it’s 3-2, to go into that discussion,” said Boyles, who isn’t seeking reelection in May.
Saunders, the senior BOE incumbent whose off-and-on elected tenure goes back to the 1990s, said a county board is not bound by a job evaluation – good or bad – when considering a superintendent’s continued employment.
That’s per state code, he said, which also maintains a board doesn’t have to give an on-the-record reason as to why, should it vote to not to keep a superintendent on the job.
He also wanted to quell social media chatter generated by the ongoing superintendent saga, he said.
“Too many people are making the wrong assumptions by reading comments from people who don’t know what they’re talking about,” he continued. “I wanted to make that clear.”
Meanwhile, Dragich, a former teacher and principal in Marion County Schools, was clear in his support of Heston on Thursday.
“The bottom line is her instructional leadership,” he said.
