New Hope High School Principal Lynn Wright was terminated, and the contract of former baseball coach Stacy Hester was non-renewed by the Lowndes County School District board, over the improper purchase of a lawnmower in 2007.
Both men have filed written requests for appeals. Lowndes County School District Superintendent Mike Halford said the issue was a personnel matter and declined comment. Board attorney Jeff Smith confirmed the firings. Wright was also unavailable for comment.
Hester, who was removed from his position as varsity head baseball coach in 2009 after 18 years, worked as a physical education teacher at New Hope Elementary School and a bus driver for the past year. He said he has retained a lawyer to represent him at his hearing.
Smith wouldn”t go into detail regarding the purchase of the mower, but said the state auditor”s office and the attorney general”s office have been contacted about the situation. He said no criminal charges are pending.
Both men are entitled to a hearing within 30 days of their written appeal requests.
Hester says documentation will show he paid for the mower with funds from his private landscaping company, as well as funds from the New Hope Diamond Club, an independent booster club. At no point, he says, did the school pay any money toward the purchase or maintenance of the mower.
When the $15,000 mower was purchased from a dealer in Tennessee, Hester says the financing company, Wells Fargo, demanded Wright join Hester in signing the five-year rent-to-own agreement as acknowledgment the mower would be used at New Hope High School. He says the leasing agent may have mistakenly included NHHS as a lessee.
After losing his coaching position, Hester took the mower and a variety of tools he claims he purchased independently for the NHHS baseball field to his home. He says Wright later asked him to return the mower to the school and the lease responsibility was turned over to the Diamond Club. A Lowndes County Sheriff”s Office investigator spoke with Hester regarding the remaining equipment last year, but Hester says the investigator found no fault and he was allowed to keep the equipment.
Hester believes his non-renewal is the extension of personal grudges on behalf of district officials and parents which led to his removal as varsity baseball coach.
“It”s kinda like double jeopardy. They already took me out of baseball. Now I”m fired from teaching and driving a bus,” said Hester. “It”s a bad deal. Not only for myself, but for the principal who”s been there the last three years.
“They said we didn”t follow state policy and purchasing laws (when buying the mower). If I did it when I was coaching baseball, why not fire me then?”
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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