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the school's finances and took two steps: increasing tuition 12 percent and increasing bus fees to make transporation self-sufficient.
Again a board member used his or her (Mr. Hopewell would not say who it was) personal guarantee to purchase five new buses at a cost of $250,000. The actual new cost to the school was much less because maintenance on the aging fleet had been running. Teachers were given 5 percent raises both of the last two years, he added.
As a result of those and other actions, said Mr. Hopewell, the school was in position this year to have “a modest surplus” for the first time, at least the first time in the last few years — until legal fees began piling up in recent months. Wakefield may still break even this year, he said.
He said records were missing or jumbled so the current board doesn’t have a clear picture of the school’s financial history further back than five years or so.
Concerning Pamela Lynn’s oftrepeated charge that the board and headmaster Dr. Alan Saunders (who succeeded Pamela Lynn) are destroying the curriculum, Mr. Hopewell responded, “The academics of the school were our least concern, and still are. That part of the school, at least, is in strong condition.”
He said that Wakefield pays Clydetta Lynn about $10,000 a month in debt service and rent and has continued the payments during the legal battling.
Of that amount, said Mr. Hopewell, the board can’t figure out why it is making a $1,900 payment each month to Clydetta Lynn. He said repeated requests by the board to Clydetta Lynn for documentation supporting the payment have been ignored.
Meanwhile, he said, relations between Pamela Lynn and the board and between her and Dr. Saunders deteriorated, leading her to attack the school’s direction in a series of statements and letters. Finally she was stripped of her title of vice president for curriculum and reprimanded.
“I want [the public] to know that this board acted responsibly and prudently and with consideration when we reprimanded Mrs. [Pamela] Lynn,” said Mr. Hopewell.
He said she was disciplined in February for “insulting” Dr. Saunders, the board and the faculty; for “intemperate behavior" toward her students and was told not to “drag students into adminstrative matters," which Mr. Hopewell said she did when she read administrative material to her students during classtime.
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