The embattled superintendent of Richardson Independent School District resigned last week. Dr. Jeannie Stone was among the public school superintendents who required masks in school despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on the COVID-19 mandates.
As a result, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Richardson ISD, along with Round Rock, Galveston, Elgin, Spring, and Sherman Independent School Districts.
“We finally got rid of her,” said Lynn Davenport, a parent advocate whose child attends a Richardson ISD high school. “It was just all of this divisive stuff going on with the student and the parents and they were segregating mask versus unmasked in the school board meetings. They gave a separate podium for unmasked parents and put us in the back corner of the room.”
Dr. Stone was named Superintendent of the Year by the Texas Educational Support Staff Association in 2017, the 2018 Outstanding Woman of Today by Altrusa International, and Texas Superintendent of the Year by Texas PTA in 2019.
“Jeannie Stone is a media darling because of Todd Williams who funds the Education Lab of the Dallas Morning News,” Davenport told The Dallas Express. “They write whatever they want about her and Todd Williams pays the journalists. The news there is not written from the perspective of the community. It’s written from the perspective of Todd Williams and whoever is funding the Dallas Morning News Education Lab. It’s not real news.”
The Education Lab is a community journalism partnership that invests $210,000 annually over 24 months to train journalists covering the education beat, according to media reports.
The Dallas Morning News reported last year that their Education Lab will be funded by different universities, foundations, and families, including the Meadows Foundation, SMU, the Dallas Foundation, the Todd A. Williams Family Foundation, the Beck Group, and Communities Foundation of Texas, which the Bill Gates Foundation allegedly funds through Educate Texas, an initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas.
“Right now, we’re being called racist bigots and we’re accused of getting rid of Stone because we hate diversity,” Davenport said in an interview. “That’s the narrative but that’s actually not true. We couldn’t ignore the poor academic performance. At some point, you have to be accountable and can’t blame learning loss on the pandemic when it was already there years before. The academic decline was already there. The pandemic just made it worse.”
Dr. Stone had been Richardson ISD Superintendent for five years.
“They have an interim superintendent who is the deputy and she’s just as bad if not worse,” Davenport said. “Tabitha came from Coppell because they chased her off. She loves all the experimental learning theories and all the fads in education. She says yes to all of that.”
The Richardson ISD deputy superintendent is Tabitha Branum, who has worked for twenty years in education and served as executive director of leading and learning in Coppell ISD.
“We’re going to try and get rid of her, too,” Davenport said.
Dr. Stone received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Arlington, a master’s degree from Texas A&M-Commerce, and a doctorate of education leadership from Nova Southeastern University. She earned her superintendent certification from the University of Texas-Tyler.
“I’m sure Jeannie Stone will go work for a consulting company or something in the swamp,” Davenport added.