The Geary USD 475 Board of Education has voted 6-1 to renew the contracts for Junction City High School Principal Melissa Sharp and Junction City Middle School Principal Mary Wright for the 2018-19 school year.

Board members Ferrell Miller, David Walker, LaDonna Junghans, Anwar Khoury, Sara Talley and Rina Neal voted yes on the motion to renew the contracts, while Board member Tom Brungardt voted no.

Miller made the motion to renew the contracts and in the process noted that the Board has had a systematic process they have been using the last several weeks. “It was a good process in my opinion, we’ve worked through that process. You know that we value good leadership, quality leadership and we support quality leaders.”

The decision to renew the contracts followed executive sessions totaling about one hour and 50-minutes on Monday evening at the Devin Center. That followed a series of lengthy executive sessions last Monday night.

Last night during the closed door meetings Board members met with school district attorney Mark Edwards present, but the members of the administrative staff did not meet with the Board during that time.

Sharp and Wright’s status for the 2018-19 school year had been unknown in recent weeks. At a meeting in early February there was a motion on the BOE agenda to adopt a resolution for the non-renewal of Wright’s contract, but after about one hour of executive session testimony in support of the City Middle School administrator and BOE deliberation, the non-renewal item was removed from the agenda. The Board at that time also approved a motion to rescind the resignation of Sharp which had been on the personnel report that was approved earlier in the meeting. That resignation would have been effective at the end of the current school year.

During the February session the Board also approved a motion to have the Superintendent Corbin Witt or his designee address the performance issues of both Wright and Sharp, and through an evaluation process develop goals and share the progress toward those goals with the Board.  More than 100 people packed into the Devin Center in support of the two administrators that evening.