MADISON TOWNSHIP — The Madison Board of Education voted unanimously to relieve superintendent Shelley Hilderbrand of her duties in an emergency session called hastily on Friday afternoon at the high school.
Hilderbrand was not in attendance at the meeting. When asked at 4:27 p.m. to comment on the result of the meeting, Hilderbrand said, “I don’t know anything about it.”
The action concludes what has been a tumultuous 13-month tenure for the first-time superintendent. Board President Jeff Meyers clarified that the board was in fact relieving Hilderbrand of her superintendent duties, and that she would be placed on paid administrative leave.
Meyers said he has only seen a similar situation with a Madison superintendent one other time in his 23-year tenure with the Madison Board of Education.
“It’s never a good situation for anyone,” Meyers said.
Meyers said the board’s action would be going into immediate effect, or “pretty damn close” to immediate. He noted the next step for the board was to find an interim superintendent.
“We need to have a superintendent,” Meyers said. “We can go a short period of time without one, but very soon.”
For Mike Leeper, president of the Madison Local Education Association, the decision was a long time coming.
“I think a lot of credit goes to a few people in the community and a few people on the board who really thought this wasn’t the direction this community should go,” Leeper said. “And the kids were really wonderful; they handled themselves very well, and they actually made us teachers proud.
“I think we need to do some healing and start looking forward to the future again.”
Hilderbrand has been embroiled in controversy over the last several months.
It came to a head on Wednesday when approximately 200 Madison students walked out of the high school to protest Hilderbrand’s decision to discipline students who directed negative tweets toward the administration on her Twitter feed.
In March a group of parents questioned the STEM curriculum that will become mandatory in the district in the place of other electives.
In May she recommended the board not renew the contract of popular teacher Eddie Walker. More than 150 people attended a May 31 school board meeting and it voted unanimously to disregard Hilderbrand’s recommendation to non-renew Walker’s contract.
Madison Board of Education meetings have drawn significant crowds as the community has questioned a number of decisions. Those concerns led to a Town Hall meeting on July 11.
Last week a number of parents and students expressed outrage when a group of approximately a dozen high school students were punished after tweets that were critical of Hilderbrand. That story drew statewide attention and sparked Wednesday’s protest and walkout.
Hilderbrand signed a three-year contract with the district in August 2017.
“The majority of the student body is hopefully going to be protesting today because of the changes she’s been trying to make over the past two years, said Adin O’Brian, a junior, during Wednesday’s walk-out.
“What the majority of the kids do know is she publicly put kids in in school detention because they spoke out against her on Twitter because of what she has been doing to the district.”
He said students wore black the day after those detentions to support the students who had been punished, and the students were released mid-day.
Zachary Adkins, who helped create the protest with Aiden said it started with the Twitter suspensions, and the protest was a result of students supporting them.
