Assemblyman blasts school district

WASILLA — Mat-Su Borough Assemblyman Mark Ewing held up his Wasilla High School diploma and gave school district Superintendent Ken Burnley a piece of his mind during a joint meeting of the Assembly and School Board last week.

“This last week’s been very trying for me,” Ewing said regarding Burnley’s recent decision not to promote WHS Assistant Principal Mark Okeson when Principal Dwight Probasco retires at the end of this school year.

“I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls and I’m probably the only one sitting around this table who has one of these — a Wasilla High School diploma. Mr. Burnley, I can tell you I was very upset with the decision made by you and the school board,” Ewing said. “The community of Wasilla and Palmer are disgruntled right now because of what they thought was a gross oversight … in the hiring of the new principal at Wasilla High.”

Ewing, who was sitting next to Burnley during the meeting, looked him in the eye and told the superintendent that he would have had a lot more to say to him when he first heard Burnley transferred Wasilla Middle School Principal Amy Spargo to fill Probasco’s vacancy.

“That school is my alma mater and I know that person (Okeson) very well and I don’t think it’s acceptable when somebody is not awarded a position and you give him an answer of … this,” Ewing said to Burnley as he held up his thumb and forefinger and shrugged, mimicking Burnley’s reported response to Okeson when asked why he wasn’t chosen for the principal slot. “You and I know what I’m talking about.”

Ewing explained after the meeting that Burnley reportedly told Okeson to look in the mirror for an explanation of why he was passed up.

Okeson, who served as WHS assistant superintendent under Probasco for 10 years and was assistant principal at Colony High for five years, told the Frontiersman recently he was informed he wasn’t ready to be principal.

Okeson had been the top recommendation for the WHS administrative opening by a candidate selection committee comprised of MSBSD staff and community members. Spargo served on that committee and reportedly was as surprised as everyone else when Burnley announced he was transferring her from Wasilla Middle School.

The Mat-Su Education Association and Certified Employees Association cast a “no confidence” vote on the selection process when the decision was announced March 23 and MSEA President Jill Showman shared a variety of statements from angry staff with the school board that night.

Burnley told those at Tuesday’s meeting that his decision was not a political one, but an “instructional” one.

“I’d like to set the record straight,” he said. “We followed all the board’s policies and contractual language and I’ll leave it at that.”

Ewing, however, is not convinced Burnley’s decision was free of personal bias against Okeson. He had sent a lengthy email to the Frontiersman March 28 detailing what he believed to be Burnley’s actual reason for denying Okeson the job.

“I think Burnley has been poisoned by two ghosts of the past who were made to look bad when Okeson helped expose some official misconduct they engaged in when they were part of a plot to wrongfully terminate former Colony High principal Bill Harlow’s employment,” Ewing states in the email. “This resulted in a big investigation by an outside attorney, an attorney who is now an Anchorage Superior Court judge, Philip Volland.”

The email goes on to explain that Volland’s report confirmed that Harlow was treated unfairly and the administration was forced to offer Harlow his job back. He said the CHS administrators at the time included a woman who reportedly worked with Burnley in Fairbanks.

“(She) had an interest in seeing Mark Okeson discredited since his claims of Principal Harlow’s innocence were proven correct at (her) expense,” Ewing said. “When you look at his (Okeson’s) peers who hold similar positions, his credentials hold up very strongly. I just don’t see where the deficit is. Mark has always had good evaluations. … It’s as if these people have been accumulating bad information on him and then dropped it on him all at once in Pearl Harbor fashion while interviewing for a promotion. Burnley just told Mark to look in the mirror. And that’s why I think this is more about ghosts of the past who have poisoned Burnley’s well than it is about his objective merits.”

Showman thanked Ewing for his comments during Tuesday’s meeting. Asked whether she’d heard of any accusations of Burnley’s possible political motivations, she said she’d rather keep any opinions to that regard to herself and concentrate on helping the Wasilla High community heal.

“We just need to move on now,” Showman said.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.McKee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.