BOE Hearing for Joanna Burt-Kinderman

On August 10^th, the Pocahontas County Board of Education’s (BOE) special meeting was held to conduct a personnel hearing on the superintendent’s recommendation to suspend Joanna Burt Kinderman for 30 days without pay as a disciplinary action. Burt-Kinderman was represented by local attorney Michael Doss, while Superintendent Dr. Leatha Williams and the school district were represented by Attorney Trey Marrone of the law firm, Bowels Rice, LLP.

This personnel matter, which had been investigated over a several month period, involved two allegations.

1. That Burt-Kinderman, the Math Coach for the Pocahontas Schools, had pressured teachers and principals to not follow the state’s transcript policy, but to remove some grades from the transcripts of students taking, and then withdrawing from the 8^th Grade Math 1 course
2. And that she used county school money without authorization to purchase t-shirts for adult volunteers at the Math Field Day.

Burt Kinderman has denied both of these allegations.

The hearing was open to the public at Burt-Kinderman’s request, and about 25 members of the public attended it. It began with opening statements by the attorneys. Attorney Marrone, in his opening statement said that just as the superintendent was avoiding a special circumstance state takeover of the schools in January of 2026 by assuring the State Board of Education that all the transcript issues they had identified at Pocahontas County High School had been fixed, three staff members of the schools alleged to her that Burt-Kinderman had been involved in transcript violations. They said that Burt-Kinderman had defied the transcript policy by using her expertise and influence to pressure teachers to allow 8^th grade students who were taking the 9^th grade Math-1 course, but whose grade for that course was below a “B,” to withdraw from that course and then to remove those student’s nine-week and/or semester grades for that course from their transcripts. This, according to Attorney Marrone, violated state policy and a directive by the superintendent. Marrone also brought up the t-shirt/Math field Day issue.

He said that an independent investigation by Charles Everet Kingery, a retired police investigator, substantiated the allegations, after which the Superintendent made her recommendation of the disciplinary thirty-day suspension for Burt-Kinderman. He said 23 students had been encouraged to drop the course and had any reference to their grades while taking the course removed from their transcripts.

In response, Attorney Doss complained that he was not allowed access to the investigation findings until this hearing, and he emphasized that Burt-Kinderman had no power or ability to change transcripts or to direct anyone else to do that.

Investigator Kingery testified, summarizing witness statements, in which some people said Burt-Kinderman did use her respected position and expertise to pressure that the transcript changes be made. However, he did not present their exact statements. He did present some emails written by Burt-Kinderman over the past year which seemed to say she believes that doing away with the practice of allowing those grades to be dropped from the transcripts will hurt students by lowing their Grade Point Averages (GPAs) making it harder for them to eventually receive the state Promise In-State College Scholarship.

Superintendent Williams testified as to why she recommended the suspension, and was cross examined about that. Burt-Kinderman also testified and was cross examined, saying she never changed any transcripts, not had the ability to pressure teachers to do so, and that she ended up paying for the four adult t-shirts for volunteers herself.

After the testimony and closing statements by both attorneys, the board members went into an about hour-long executive session, came out and passed a motion by a 4 to 1 vote to not approve the superintendent’s recommendation of a thirty-day suspension of Burt-Kinderman, who will now be able to return to work as normally scheduled later this month. The majority of the board members did not believe the allegations were proven to be true.