I was barely seated in the waiting room outside the Buffalo Board of Education meeting chamber last Thursday before the scheduled meeting of the board’s Executive Affairs Committee when WIVB TV newsman Rich Newberg asked me if I was a parent. This might have been a hopeful question. The only people in the room were from the media. There were no parents or “concerned citizens” (to adopt a board agenda term) to interview.

When we filed into the meeting room at 5:30pm, there were still no parents or “citizens.” This was a little surprising since this was the first public meeting of the board or any of its committees since the release of special investigator David L. Edmunds’ report on the scandalous controversy involving McKinley High School principal Crystal Barton and Jayvonna Kincannon, the student Barton suspended for seven weeks earlier this year, improperly according to Edmunds’ report.

Schools Superintendent James Williams was present, which was scarcely a surprise. He occupies the center of this affair, much more than either Barton or Kincannon, a fact that became obvious as the meeting progressed.

I had never been this close to Williams before and I was struck by the imposing quality of his presence, a quality he seems to be aware of, and may try to use to his advantage. The superintendent is a tall, bulky but fit-looking guy. He looks a little like an aging linebacker.

Williams didn’t seem to spend a lot of time sitting still before or during the meeting. He got up repeatedly, and moved back and forth along a wall, leaving the room and returning two or three times after the meeting began. At one point he approached and loomed over Buffalo News columnist Donn Esmonde, seated in the visitors section.

“Hey, here’s the man whose picture I see on the front page all the time,” Williams offered heartily. Esmonde, whose columns haven’t been portraying Williams’ role in the McKinley mess in a heroic light recently, smiled wanly, as if he found this perhaps inauthentic friendliness disconcerting.

When the meeting started, the sharp divide between board factions became discernible. Committee Chair and West District member Ralph Hernandez got things going by expressing his dissatisfaction with the redactions by school staff of portions of Edmunds’ report, including his six recommendations. He objected strongly to the classifying of these sections as “confidential.”

Hernandez read a statement proposing the board seek a “declaratory judgment” from “an impartial third party” to “confirm any redaction” from the report. (As Hernandez finished reading the statement, Lead Community Superintendent Mark Frazier swiveled in his chair near the board’s conference table and said dismissively, to no one in particular, “He wants an investigation of the investigator!”) Hernandez’s point, of course, was that the exclusions of material could raise questions about concealment of important information.

The other topic that brought the board’s divisions into sharper focus was North District member Catherine Panepinto’s resolution proposing that since Williams and Associate Superintendent of Educational Services Will Keresztes were “aware of the student’s situation as early as November,” they should be suspended without pay for 15 days. At-large member Christopher Jacobs called this “vindictive.” Panepinto replied that there “should be consequences for actions.” (Williams had left the room before she spoke.)

In the five ensuing days before the full board met Tuesday, Hernandez told me in a phone conversation that it was his “gut feeling” that Panepinto’s resolution would fail. This wasn’t a startling prediction, given the board’s usual 5-4 split in Williams’ favor. And on Tuesday, the members instead voted to hire “an expert in education law” to recommend whether or not anyone named in Edmunds’ report could be disciplined.

Wednesday morning, Hernandez told me one thing was clear: “A majority of the board doesn’t have the political will to impose sanctions on Barton or the superintendent. It’s that simple.”

—george sax