News & Analysis

Every year, Montgomery County Schools graduates students who cannot read at grade level. Every year, the test scores come back, the county ranks near the bottom of the state, and the people in charge shrug, shuffle administrators, and move on. The community is told the problem is poverty. The community is told the problem is parents. The community is told the problem is anything except the people making decisions. But here is the question nobody in power wants you to ask: **Who benefits when the children of Montgomery County stay uneducated?** The answer is hiding in plain sight.

The Montgomery Herald published an editorial today calling me a liar by name. Here are the facts they chose not to print — including who was passed over, who voted no, what happened after the meeting, and what Bryan Dozier has done.

Today, the Montgomery County Board of Education formally accepted the resignation of Dr. Karen Roseboro, the superintendent who was hired just less than a year ago on a four-year contract with a mandate to raise standards, demand accountability, and move this district forward. In the same meeting, the board voted to install Wade Auman, the district's Deputy Superintendent for Learning and CTE, as interim superintendent, and passed a formal resolution requesting the State Board of Education confer licensure on him. Mr. Auman does not hold a superintendent's license and required that resolution just to be legally eligible for the role.

Racism is real. It is documented, measurable, and present in institutions across this country, including small towns in North Carolina. That is not an opinion. That is history. Also true: not everything is about race. People can disagree. Leaders can make mistakes. Standards can be applied and challenged in good faith. Accountability is a legitimate value. Both of those things can be true at the same time. And the moment we treat them as opposites, the moment we say "you're playing the race card" every time race is named, we stop having an honest conversation and start having a defensive one. Montgomery County is having a defensive conversation right now. This article is an attempt to make it an honest one.

Not every Facebook post is a cry for help. Some of them are strategy. In Montgomery County, a pattern has emerged on social media that deserves to be named clearly and examined honestly. School employees, people employed by and paid through the Montgomery County Schools system, have been posting publicly online in what amounts to a coordinated campaign to undermine and ultimately remove the current superintendent. The posts carry the hallmarks of organized effort: consistent messaging, shared narratives, amplification across networks, and a timeline that tracks closely with the broader pressure campaign being waged against her leadership.

The national research is clear: communities without independent local journalism pay a price. They pay it in corruption they never find out about. They pay it in government decisions made without scrutiny. They pay it in public officials who know no one is watching. The question for Montgomery County is not whether the Herald is a bad newspaper. The question is whether a newspaper operating under these financial conditions can cover county government with the independence that accountability journalism requires. Based on the public record, those conditions do not exist. MoCo's Voice is publishing this information because the people of Montgomery County deserve to know who is watching their government, and who is not.

There is a body of research on school improvement that is as consistent as any finding in education policy. It does not come from advocates or activists. It comes from universities, federal agencies, and independent research organizations that have studied hundreds of school districts over decades. And what that research says is this: sustainable school improvement takes three to five years of stable leadership to take hold, and superintendent turnover is one of the most reliable predictors of academic decline. That is not MoCo's Voice's opinion. That is what the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction told the Montgomery County Schools Board of Education directly, in a board meeting, on the record.

There is a pattern. It is documented. It has played out in school districts from California to North Carolina, from Utah to Massachusetts. And it is playing out right now in Montgomery County, NC. A school district struggles for years. Test scores stagnate. Teachers leave. Low-performing schools accumulate. The community demands change. The board hires a new superintendent, often someone from outside, often someone with a different background from the previous leadership, often someone hired precisely because they are not part of the system that failed. And then, almost immediately, the resistance begins.

There is a conversation happening in Montgomery County right now about teachers leaving. It is loud, it is emotional, and it is being aimed squarely at Dr. Karen Roseboro, who has been superintendent for less than a year. We have a question. Where was this conversation for the past 14 years? Because the data, documented in the district's own federal grant application submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, tells a story that no one in this community was shouting about when Dr. Dale Ellis was in charge.

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.

At a recent Montgomery County Schools Board of Education meeting, Dr. Amy Dahl, a science teacher at Montgomery Central High School, addressed the board during public comment. Her statement has been widely shared and is generating significant conversation in the community. MoCo's Voice presents both what she argued and the questions her statement raises, so the public can evaluate it fully.

The state of North Carolina sent representatives from the Department of Public Instruction directly to a Montgomery County Schools board meeting to report on the district's progress. Their message was clear: the work is real, the partnership is strong, and the results will take time, but the district is moving in the right direction under Dr. Roseboro's leadership. Here is what the public needs to know.

It doesn't happen overnight. And it rarely looks like what it is, at least not at first. Over the past several decades, a recognizable pattern has emerged in small towns and rural counties across the American South. When a leader rises to power who does not fit the mold that certain factions of the community have always preferred, whether because of their race, their reform agenda, or simply their refusal to be controlled, a quiet machinery begins to move. Researchers who study local governance call it "coordinated displacement." Community members who have lived through it call it something simpler: a setup.

The Montgomery County Board of Education Made a Promise to Dr. Karen Roseboro — and the Contract Proves It. There is a document that changes everything. It is not a rumor. It is not a social media post. It is not hearsay passed down through the halls of Montgomery County Schools. It is a **legally binding contract** — seven pages, notarized, signed by every single member of the Montgomery County Board of Education — that spells out exactly what Dr. Karen Roseboro was promised, exactly what authority she was given, and exactly what rights she holds. As the community watches the Board's next moves, this contract deserves to be public knowledge. Because if the Board ever attempts to undermine, remove, or force out Dr. Roseboro, the evidence will show whether they honored the agreement they made, or broke it.

Dr. Karen Roseboro is being subjected to a relentless, coordinated campaign designed to undermine her authority. This isn't about policy — it's about power. And it's a playbook I know all too well, because I lived it.