A Coordinated Campaign: How the Montgomery Herald, the School Board, and the County Commission Have Worked Together to Undermine One Superintendent — And What They're Not Telling You

MoCo's Voice | Investigative Report | April 8, 2026

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Over the past three weeks, the people of Montgomery County have watched a sustained, multi-front campaign unfold against Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Dr. Karen Roseboro. It has played out in the pages of the Montgomery Herald, at the school board table, in the county commissioners' chamber, and on social media. To a casual observer, it may look like a community rising in frustration. To anyone who reads the record carefully, it looks like something else entirely.

MoCo's Voice has reviewed every relevant Montgomery Herald article and editorial published between March 18 and April 8, 2026, the minutes and public records from the school board and county commissioners' meetings during the same period, the public petition calling for the reinstatement of Montgomery Central High School Principal Rufus Samkin, and the public comments delivered at the March 30, 2026 board meeting. What we found is a documented pattern of coordinated pressure, and a local newspaper that has reported on every piece of it while concealing the most important fact of all.

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The Newspaper at the Center of It All

The Montgomery Herald describes itself as "The Voice of Montgomery County." Its mission statement, printed on every edition, reads: "To be the conscience of the community, a recorder of its history, a voice for all citizens, and an advocate of the good."

Between March 18 and April 8, 2026, the Herald published three front-page stories and three editorials that were directly critical of Dr. Roseboro's leadership. Every front-page story was written by the same reporter: Tammy Dunn.

Tammy Dunn is not simply a reporter at the Montgomery Herald. She is a senior figure at the paper, and her stepdaughter was the subject of a Domestic Criminal Trespass charge involving a Montgomery County Schools employee. Under North Carolina General Statute § 14-134.3, Domestic Criminal Trespass is a criminal offense. The charge is a matter of public record. That employee has since resigned from the school system.

Tammy Dunn has not reported on that incident. What she has done is write front-page story after front-page story about the superintendent of the school system in which that incident occurred, without ever disclosing to her readers that this connection exists. A reporter covering an institution has an obligation to disclose any personal relationship that could affect, or reasonably appear to affect, her coverage of that institution. The Herald has made no such disclosure. That is not an oversight. That is a choice.

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The Timeline: What Was Published, and What Was Left Out

March 18, 2026 — Front Page: "Superintendent Questioned."

The Herald's front page on March 18 carried the headline "Superintendent Questioned" above a story by Tammy Dunn describing Dr. Roseboro's appearance before the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners. The subheadline read: "Commissioners question superintendent's actions, requests."

The story reported that Commissioner John Shaw demanded answers about Needs-Based Grant spending and the delayed installation of security vestibules at county schools. Commissioner David "Chip" Hurley raised concerns about a classroom at a county school where, he said, his granddaughter had not had a certified teacher since October. Commissioner Pope asked about financing charges on equipment purchases.

What the Herald did not report: Commissioner Hurley was using a public budget meeting to raise a personal family grievance, his granddaughter's classroom situation, as a basis for questioning the superintendent's competence. That is not fiscal oversight. It is a personal complaint dressed in the language of governance. The Herald reported his words without noting that distinction.

What the Herald also did not report: buried deep in the continuation of this story on page A3 is the moment when Commissioner Chip Hurley asked Dr. Roseboro why Montgomery Central High School was not fielding a junior varsity baseball team. When she said she did not know, Hurley responded: "As superintendent, you should know about it."

A county commissioner used a public budget meeting, a meeting about Needs-Based Grants and security vestibules, to demand that the superintendent of schools answer for a junior varsity baseball team. The Herald reported this without comment.

March 18, 2026 — Editorial: "New Policy Is Absurd."

On the same day, the Herald's editorial board published a piece calling Dr. Roseboro's communications policy "absurd." The policy in question requires that staff route board member inquiries through the superintendent's office, a standard governance practice in school districts across North Carolina and the country. The policy exists to ensure that the superintendent, as the chief executive of the district, is informed of all communications between board members and staff. Without it, board members can go directly to employees, creating confusion, undermining administrative authority, and, as appears to be happening in Montgomery County, enabling coordinated pressure campaigns against the superintendent from within the institution she leads.

The Herald called this standard management tool "absurd." Its editorial board did not explain why. It did not cite any governance expert, any comparable district policy, or any legal authority. It simply declared the policy unreasonable and moved on.

Most revealing was this line from the editorial: "It is not like all staff, particularly teachers, loved the past superintendent, but he never caused this kind of an uproar in his many years here."

The "past superintendent" is Dr. Dale Ellis, who led Montgomery County Schools for approximately 16 years. Under Dr. Ellis's tenure, six Montgomery County schools were classified as low-performing by the state of North Carolina: Candor Elementary, Green Ridge Elementary, Mount Gilead Elementary, West Middle School, East Middle School, and Page Street Elementary. The Herald's editorial board is comparing Dr. Roseboro unfavorably to the superintendent under whose watch those outcomes were produced, and presenting the absence of "uproar" during that era as evidence of good leadership.

April 1, 2026 — Editorial: "We Risk Losing the Best."

The Herald's April 1 editorial amplified the public comments delivered at a recent school board meeting by seven speakers, six of whom were critical of Dr. Roseboro's leadership. The editorial quoted extensively from Dr. Amy Dahl, a science teacher at Montgomery Central High School, who described a hostile instructional environment and warned that the school was about to lose its best teachers.

What the Herald did not tell its readers: Dr. Dahl had already submitted her resignation before she delivered those remarks. She was a departing employee, not a current member of the staff speaking on behalf of her colleagues. The Herald quoted her as though she were still fully invested in the school's future without disclosing that she had already chosen to leave it.

What the Herald also did not tell its readers: Dr. Amy Dahl is a member of the Moore County Schools Board of Education. She is a political figure with a public platform and a declared interest in school governance in an adjacent county. Her public comment at a Montgomery County school board meeting was, at minimum, a politically significant act by a person with a political identity. The Herald presented her as a concerned teacher and nothing more.

The Herald also quoted board member Angela Smith, who spoke about the excitement she had witnessed during school visits and said: "The change, sometimes, is what makes us to be the greatest that we can be." Smith's comments were positive about the direction of the district. The Herald included them in a list of speakers without noting that her assessment directly contradicted the editorial's central argument.

April 8, 2026 — Front Page: "Questions About New Attorney Linger."

The Herald's most recent front page, published today, carries a story by Tammy Dunn about the board's search for new legal counsel. The article frames the situation as Dr. Roseboro acting unilaterally by bringing in the firm Tharrington Smith without the board's knowledge.

Board member Isai Robledo is quoted in the story asking: "Will you please share how our expenses for Tharrington Smith this year compare to the three previous years? I'm hearing that one of their attorneys has been working in and with our district and has been introduced as 'the district's new attorney' since last summer." The article notes that no answer has been given.

The same-day editorial, "Don't Know? Ask!", references board member Bryan Dozier by name in a pointed aside: the editorial quotes Dr. Roseboro's own written closing statement, in which she cites her employment contract as the basis for her authority and her commitment to transparency, and then dismisses it with the line: "no matter what a contract might say, which by the way one board member, Bryan Dozier, never signed anyway."

What the Herald did not report: The reason a superintendent and a board may retain separate legal counsel is precisely because they are in an adversarial relationship. When a board majority is actively working to undermine a superintendent, it is standard and appropriate for the superintendent to have independent legal representation. The Herald is treating a symptom of board dysfunction as evidence of superintendent misconduct.

What the Herald also did not report: the editorial board's own "Don't Know? Ask!" editorial, published the same day, includes a passage that directly contradicts the front-page framing. In that editorial, the board acknowledges that Roseboro has stated she "remains fully committed to transparency and would request an opportunity to discuss any concerns with the full board in closed session." The Herald published her stated commitment to transparency on the editorial page while simultaneously running a front-page story implying she is stonewalling, in the same edition.

April 8, 2026 — Editorial: "Don't Know? Ask!"

Today's editorial defends board members who have been asking questions about the superintendent's decisions and criticizes Roseboro for what it characterizes as a failure to respond. It closes with a warning that teachers are about to leave Montgomery County for better pay in neighboring districts.

Teacher pay in North Carolina is set by the state legislature. It is not determined by the superintendent of Montgomery County Schools. The Herald's editorial board knows this. Presenting teacher compensation as a superintendent accountability issue is not journalism. It is misdirection.

The editorial also includes this line, dismissing Dr. Roseboro's citation of her own employment contract: "no matter what a contract might say, which by the way, one board member, Bryan Dozier, never signed anyway." Dozier's refusal to sign the superintendent's employment contract is presented here as a reason to discount her authority. The Herald does not note that a board member refusing to ratify the superintendent's contract is itself a significant governance act, one that raises serious questions about whether Dozier's opposition to Dr. Roseboro predates the current controversy.

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The Full Picture: What the Record Actually Shows

While the Montgomery Herald has been publishing this campaign, the following facts have been established and are a matter of public record:

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction sent representatives to a Montgomery County Schools board meeting and delivered a formal assessment of the district's progress. Their message was unambiguous: the district is moving in the right direction, the partnership between the state and the district is strong, and Dr. Roseboro's leadership has been collaborative and effective. Sustainable school improvement takes three to five years. That is not MoCo's Voice's opinion, that is what the state's own oversight body said, on the record, in front of the board.

Montgomery Central High School, the school at the center of much of this controversy, saw its academic proficiency score rise from 27.4 in 2021–2022 to 54.0 in 2023–2024, nearly doubling in two years, and its letter grade improved from a D to a C. These figures come from the district's own November 2024 testing data presentation.

Principal Rufus Samkin, whose resignation has generated a petition of more than 428 signatures, wrote publicly on his personal Facebook page that his departure was "one of the biggest disappointments and heartbreaks of my career" and that "under different circumstances I would welcome nothing more than the opportunity to continue to do this work alongside you." He directed the community to the board of education. He did not name Dr. Roseboro.

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The Documented Pattern

The table below summarizes every public action in this campaign between March 18 and April 8, 2026:

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The Question the Herald Will Not Ask

Every piece of journalism has a question at its center. The question the Montgomery Herald has been asking, week after week, is: What is wrong with Dr. Roseboro?

The question the Herald has not asked, the question that MoCo's Voice is asking, is this: Who benefits if Dr. Roseboro is removed?

The answer to that question is not complicated. The people who benefit are the same people who ran this district for 16 years while six schools became low-performing. The same people whose network controls who gets hired, who gets promoted, and who gets pushed out. The same people who, for the first time in a long time, are being held to a standard they did not set and cannot control.

Dr. Roseboro did not create failing schools in Montgomery County. She was hired to fix them. The state of North Carolina confirmed that she is doing exactly that. The community deserves to know that the campaign to remove her is being run by the people who built the problem she was hired to solve, and that the newspaper covering it has a conflict of interest it has never disclosed.

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What MoCo's Voice Is Asking

MoCo's Voice is formally requesting the following on behalf of the Montgomery County community:

To the Montgomery Herald: Disclose the relationship between reporter Tammy Dunn and the Montgomery County Schools system, including the Domestic Criminal Trespass charge involving Beth Dunn. The community deserves to know who is writing the stories they are reading.

To the Montgomery County Schools Board of Education: Explain, on the record, why board members Robledo and Dozier have been speaking to the press about the superintendent's decisions rather than raising those concerns through the board's own governance process. Explain, on the record, why Bryan Dozier refused to sign Dr. Roseboro's employment contract, and when that refusal occurred. Explain what accountability looks like when it is applied to board members as well as the superintendent.

To Commissioners Shaw, Chip Hurley, and Pope: Explain, on the record, the governance basis for using a county budget meeting to question the superintendent about a junior varsity baseball team. Explain what interest the county commission has in the internal personnel decisions of the school district.

To the community: Read the record. Ask the questions the Herald is not asking. Attend the board meetings. File public records requests. Speak during public comment. The people of Montgomery County, and most importantly, the children of Montgomery County, deserve better than what is being done in their name.

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MoCo's Voice is a community accountability platform for Montgomery County, NC. We report what the local paper won't. If you have information relevant to this story, submit a tip at mocovoice.com.

MoCo's Voice does not provide legal advice. All factual claims in this article are drawn from public records, published newspaper articles, official board minutes, and on-the-record public statements.