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Wlaf1450Campbell County Schools continues its search for next Director of Schools
CAMPBELL COUNTY, TN (SPECIAL TO WLAF)- This is a letter to the Publisher from Dr. Robert Angel, Ph. D. Angel is a former Campbell County Schools Administrator and has been in education for more than 25 years.
In a previous letter to WLAF, I wrote about the importance of selecting the next Director of Schools in Campbell County. The most important factor in that decision is not personality, familiarity, or politics. It is outcomes. The academic performance of students, the district’s strategic direction, and the responsible management of public funds must guide the decision.
Simply put, the numbers matter.
Campbell County Schools face meaningful academic challenges and significant budget constraints that require consistent leadership and strategic focus. These realities reflect the broader pressures facing many rural districts, where limited resources and community economic conditions can create additional barriers to improvement.
State accountability reviews have also indicated that the district must continue to strengthen academic outcomes and long-term planning to move forward.
These are not small issues. They are structural challenges that affect all students across the county and require disciplined leadership and strategic decision-making.
For that reason, the process used to select the next director is just as important as the person selected.
When a process begins under conditions that appear inconsistent or improvised, it raises a reasonable question: Do those responsible for making the decision fully understand what voters have entrusted to them?
The Campbell County Board of Education previously voted to hire the Tennessee School Boards Association (TSBA) to assist with the director search. TSBA is commonly used across Tennessee to manage superintendent searches because it provides an independent review of applicants and helps boards establish objective criteria for evaluating candidates. The cost of that service to Campbell County taxpayers was approximately $3,000 to $15,000. Depending on what service the board selected.
Throughout the early stages of the search, public reporting and statements made during board discussions indicated that TSBA would review applicants and recommend three finalists for the board to interview. That expectation was repeated multiple times during the process.
However, when TSBA returned its recommendations, only two candidates were presented to the board rather than the three that had been widely discussed.
There may be reasonable explanations for that outcome. Search processes can sometimes yield a smaller pool of finalists depending on applicant qualifications or other factors. But when expectations communicated publicly do not match the final result, it naturally raises questions within the community.
The situation became more complicated during later board discussions regarding eligibility rules.
Earlier in the process, the board had adopted a guideline stating that the interim director would not apply for the permanent position during the search. Later, during a board meeting, that guideline was modified to allow the interim director to interview. I want to be very clear, the issue here is not about the qualifications of any candidate or the candidates themselves at any level.
Each individual selected is a veteran educator with years of service and leadership experience. By all accounts, the candidates involved have strong professional records and have dedicated their careers to education. I am confident all three are up to the challenge of the position.
The concern lies elsewhere.
It lies with governance.
When public funds are spent to hire an outside organization to manage a search process, the expectation is that the procedures established at the beginning of that process will remain consistent. Altering eligibility rules during the selection phase creates the appearance (fair or not) that the process itself may be shifting as events unfold at the time.
In public government and service perception matters.
This concern is especially important given the current environment surrounding public education. Across the country, and increasingly at the local level, school systems operate under constant scrutiny. Public education is frequently criticized from multiple directions. Some of those criticisms are legitimate and deserve serious discussion. Others are exaggerated or based on incomplete information.
Regardless of where one stands in those debates, school systems cannot afford to create additional questions for themselves by failing to follow clear and consistent procedures.
When a leadership search immediately raises questions about the process, before the first interview question is even asked of a candidate, it places the entire decision under a cloud of unnecessary doubt. Then that same doubt will naturally get transferred to the chosen candidate, no matter which candidate is chosen. That’s not the candidate’s fault; that’s just human nature. When the process looks tainted it causes natural human emotions of fairness and unfairness to come up. That’s not questioning someone’s integrity; that is the default response that gets created.
That is and should be avoidable.
Campbell County, like many rural districts across Tennessee, operates under tight financial constraints. School systems regularly face difficult decisions about staffing, programming, and resources. In that environment, spending taxpayer funds on a professional search process carries an expectation that the process will remain structured, transparent, and disciplined.
When those expectations appear unclear, public confidence becomes harder to maintain.
This discussion should not be viewed as criticism of any individual candidate or board member. Instead, it should serve as a reminder of the broader responsibility that accompanies public office.
School board members are elected to serve as stewards of the public’s education system. That responsibility includes not only selecting capable leaders but also ensuring that the procedures used to make those decisions reflect professionalism, fairness, and transparency.
Campbell County deserves a director who understands the academic and operational challenges facing rural school systems, as all three selected candidates, I am sure, understand. But the community also deserves confidence that the process used to select that leader reflects the highest standards of public governance and transparency.
Because leadership decisions do not begin with a title.
They begin with trust.
In smaller communities, this is especially important. Every governance decision carries long-term implications for public trust. When processes appear to shift during important decisions, it can deepen divisions, create unnecessary uncertainty, and doubt.
That outcome helps no one.
Because ultimately, the goal of any school district leadership search should be simple: to ensure that the focus remains where it belongs.
On the students.
Dr. Robert Angel
(WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-03/12/2026-6AM)
Transparency and integrity should matter when it comes to decisions about our schools.
Changing the rules in the middle of a search for a new Director of Schools doesn’t just look questionable — it makes the six school board members who supported it appear untrustworthy and lacking integrity. When rules are set at the beginning of a process, they should apply to everyone equally from start to finish.
The interim director knew from the start that the position was not open to her under the original terms. If she wanted to be considered for the job permanently, that should have been made clear from the very beginning so the process could have been handled honestly and transparently.
At this point, the right thing to do would be for Nancy Lay to step aside and respect the original rules that were put in place.
Otherwise, it leaves the public wondering if the outcome was already decided long before the search even began. If that’s the case, then why was $15,000 spent on a search process that ultimately recommended two candidates who were already local? It makes it feel like the “search” was just for show — and that any outside candidates never really stood a chance.
Our community deserves better than a process that looks predetermined. We deserve transparency, fairness, and leadership that values integrity over political maneuvering.