State may be asked to help in Macy dispute

Published Saturday May 17, 2008
State may be asked to help in Macy dispute
BY PAUL HAMMEL
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN — The attorney for the Macy, Neb., school district said Friday that the Attorney General's Office may be asked to intervene in a dispute between the school district and the Omaha Tribal Council over the status of school Superintendent Morris Bates.

Bates on Wednesday was escorted off the Omaha Indian Reservation by members of the Tribal Council and tribal police and told to never return.

That action followed a meeting of the Omaha Nation School Board in which a motion to fire Bates was made but never seconded.

The school board member who made the unsuccessful motion, Barry Webster, also is a member of the Tribal Council. He and the tribal chairman, Ansley Griffing, led the contingent that expelled Bates, according to minutes of the school board meeting.

Attempts to reach Bates at his home in Homer, Neb., were unsuccessful.

Webster said the Tribal Council was exerting its sovereignty rights, expelling the superintendent due to poor test scores of Omaha Nation students.

"It should have been done a long time ago," he said.

John Recknor, the school district's attorney, said the Tribal Council has no jurisdiction over employment of staff of the school, which is a state entity.

Bates, he said, just received a two-year contract extension from the six-member school board, a majority of whom believes the superintendent is doing a good job.

Recknor said he was instructed by the school board, during an emergency meeting Thursday, to send a letter to the Tribal Council informing them of the "real mess" they have created.

He said summer school would be canceled because of the removal of Bates, who must be paid because of the new contract. State funding and the status of federal grants administered by Bates also are imperiled, Recknor said.

Recknor said he hoped the Tribal Council would reverse its action against Bates and back off a threat to expel two other school administrators. If not, he said he might ask the attorney general to step in.