OKLAHOMA CITY – More than 140 instructors and staff – many of them with decades of experience – have resigned or abruptly retired from one of the state’s largest Career Technology centers, saying the culture and workplace at the school have become toxic.
Records show that 44 employees left the Francis Tuttle CareerTech center in 2018 and 2019. Between 2019 and 2020, another 30 employees either resigned or retired. During the 2020-2021 school year 31 employees left the school, and 41 left between the 2021-2022 school year.
Named after the founder of Oklahoma’s CareerTech system, the Francis Tuttle CareerTech center was established in 1979. The school has branches in northwest Oklahoma City, Edmond, and on Reno Avenue and Northwest 150th Street. Francis Tuttle enrolls more than 3,000 high school and adult students.
Many pointed to Michelle Keylon, the school’s new superintendent, as the reason so many employees have left the school. They said Keylon has destroyed the school’s positive workplace environment and squandered millions of dollars on the development of a student enrollment software package.
Some staff members – so frightened they fear to speak out – said Keylon has switched policies back and forth and, in one instance, cancelled a diversity program, which caused several Black instructors to resign.
“Michelle has sorta’ staked her superintendency on a couple of things: one is tossing out the student accounting system and getting rid of anyone she doesn’t agree with,” said one source, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “She is pitting people against each other.”
Sean Brockwell, who worked at the school as a computer-aided drafting instructor, said employees were resigning rather that deal with the chaos and the fallout from policy changes and the Prodigy software project.
“I worked for 15 years straight just to get a job at Francis Tuttle,” Brockwell, an instructor in the schools’ Computer-Aided Drafting department, said. “At that time things were great.”
Brockwell, a native of Elgin, said he moved to Oklahoma City after high school to attend Francis Tuttle and “quickly fell in love with the place.”
“It was amazing. We had great instructors, and they had all the business and industry contacts,” he said. “All the things I learned at Francis Tuttle gave me the ability to be a leader.”
Several years later, Brockwell returned to the school as an instructor. He said Tom Friedman, the school’s superintendent at the time, encouraged his staff and worked with staff and instructors to “make the school one of the best in the country.”
However, after Friedman’s retirement and Keylon became the school’s new superintendent, Brockwell resigned.
“We used to be the top school in the state,” Brockman said. “Everything was professional, and the staff and the students were treated as adults. Today that’s not the case. We don’t have that professionalism anymore. I mean people are afraid to even talk to the superintendent. They are afraid to even ask questions. They are afraid they will get fired.”
The Prodigy Problem
For several years the staff at Francis Tuttle had issues with the school’s student accounting system, a software program called Colleague. That program, developed by the Ellucian Company, was used by the school for several years.
“Yes, there were some problems,” one source who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation said. “But a committee at the school spent more than a year benchmarking software, talking to other CareerTech centers and studying the issue. In the end, the committee recommended purchasing the upgrade to the new version of Colleague. Which probably would have fixed the problem.”
And although many staff members at Francis Tuttle will acknowledge there were problems with the existing software, most of the staff say those issues were easily addressed.
But that decision didn’t sit well with Keylon. “The committee didn’t come to the decision they were supposed to,” the source said. “And Michelle was outraged. She told other administrators that she was going to scrap Colleague and write a system from scratch.”
That effort, however, has been problematic.
Following Keylon’s decision, the school contracted with Asemio, a Tulsa-based software company to develop Prodigy. “We were told they were going to write the software and that it’s going to be on a new, modern platform,” the source said.
Yet despite thousands of man hours and millions of dollars spent, Prodigy – the school’s new student accounting software – has yet to be fully integrated and many former staff members said the software still doesn’t work properly.
“They never went through a bid process or issued an RFP,” the source said. “And so far, they’ve spent close to $5 million, and it (the software) doesn’t do anything.”
The process, the source said, was a preconceived conclusion and the vendor for the project, Asemio, was chosen because it had personal ties with Jaared Scott, Francis Tuttle’s deputy superintendent.
“Jaared worked at the State Department of CareerTech with one of Asemio’s people,” the source said. “That’s why it was a foregone conclusion that this was the only company that was going to write the software; their connection to Jaared Scott.”
The project, the source said, was supposed to take two years.
“It’s gone on for four years and all anyone can get out of Prodigy is an export of students enrolled in a certain class,” the source said.
Asemio’s contract for Prodigy was approved by the Francis Tuttle Board of Education in 2018. The contract was renewed by a unanimous vote on June 21, 2021, and again on June 27, 2022. Partial records show the school encumbered at least $900,000 for the contract in July 2020.
However, requests for copies of the contract between Francis Tuttle and Asemio have gone unfilled. On July 6, copies of the contract and emails about it were requested by Southwest Ledger under the state’s Open Records Act.
Sixteen days later, Jessica Bullock, Francis Tuttle’s marketing director, replied saying the Ledger’s request presented an “unforeseen burden on our employees performing their essential services for the district” and would require a substantial deposit before the records would be provided.
That burden, Bullock’s email said, would require employees 186 hours to retrieve the information and would include a fee of $3,125.
“Per our district policy, large record requests require a deposit fee to be paid before work begins,” Bullock wrote. “Attached is an invoice for the deposit. We will provide a final invoice once the request is complete.”
Open Records advocates countered that the requirement for funds in advance was “out of alignment” with the state’s Open Records Act.
“The fees requested for the production of records that belong to the people of Oklahoma are out of alignment with the intent of the state’s Open Records Act,” Freedom of Information Oklahoma Executive Director Kurt Gwartney said. “While I recognize there can be costs associated with some of the items in the request, the law’s intent is clear that charging high fees to members of the media is contrary to the law and opinions from the attorney general.”
Tuttle’s invoice for $3,125 for email searches and copies of contracts and proposals appears exorbitant on its face, Gwartney said. “My calculations show that the annual salary of the taxpayer-funded employees asked to provide these records would be more than $50,000 per year based on the invoice they sent.”
Gwartney said his fundamental concern was that a taxpayer-funded educational institution “may be using a section of the Open Records Act to hide information belonging to the public rather than working in a spirit of openness and transparency.”
A Toxic Workplace Culture
For years, the staff and management of Francis Tuttle used the Denison Cultural Survey to examine the school’s culture for strengths and weaknesses. Many experts say the survey is an honest reflection of an organization’s leadership.
And for years the school ranked at the highest level. “In previous surveys we had comments sections that were 25 to 27 pages long and every employee got the chance to see those comments,” a source said.
Until 2022.
The 2022 Denison Survey, which was completed earlier this year, showed the rankings for the school fell dramatically in every category compared to the survey from 2018. Brockwell, the former instructor, said the survey results were so bad school administrators refused to release the comments section.
“We’ve always seen the comments in previous surveys,” he said. “This year there were no comments. The superintendent said they never give out comments but that was a straight-up lie because I have copies of previous surveys with the comments.”
The school’s new leadership, he said, does not value employees or student concerns. “Instructors are met with negativity from support staff when they are trying to better the education of students,” Brockwell said.
He said questions about leadership policies were no longer allowed and culture of fear permeates the school.
Brockwell isn’t the only school official who is disheartened. Suzette Northcutt-Rhodes, one of the founding members of the Francis Tuttle Board of Education, said she feared the fallout from so many longtime employees leaving.
“It’s a huge problem,” Northcutt-Rhodes said. “They are losing people with decades worth of experience. People are afraid to talk and afraid to express their concerns. That’s not the way we do things at Francis Tuttle.”
Northcutt-Rhodes served on the board for more than 35 years. Like Brockwell, she said she too is concerned about how much money was being spent on the school’s Prodigy project, and about what she calls major changes in the school’s atmosphere.
“I’m worried by the direction our superintendent is taking the school,” she said. “An employee should never, ever be frightened to talk to their superintendent. There is no grievance policy in place so employees can’t file them. We’re losing people. We’re losing experts and we’re losing students.”
Keylon countered that school officials were proud of their culture and realize that employees are the school’s greatest asset. Keylon was asked by the Ledger to participate in an interview. Instead, she provided a five-paragraph response via email.
“Francis Tuttle is proud of our culture and realizes that our employees are our greatest asset. Like so many other organizations in the private and public sectors, we have not been immune to the pandemic’s impact on our employees and operations,” Keylon’s email said. “Francis Tuttle has also faced challenges brought on by the Great Resignation; however, our recent resignations and retirements are comparable with pre-pandemic employee departures. During the 2021-2022 school year, 40 employees ended their employment either through resignation or retirement, which aligns with the previous years’ resignations and retirements.”
Keylon said a majority of those departures can be attributed to employees reaching retirement age.
“We are looking forward to the start of the new school year and have placed an added focus on the foundation of our culture, which is Connection. During the pandemic, the way we were able to connect changed due to state and federal regulations and, unfortunately, impacted our culture in ways we did not anticipate,” Keylon’s email said. “However, we have been working hard to rebuild connections between colleagues, teams, and across the district. We are dedicating time and resources to mend and strengthen our culture. We have implemented input and feedback groups for district collaboration, we are working with our instructors to get their input on the best way to move forward educationally, and our departments are developing goals to assist with culture improvement.”
Problems with Policy and Changes
Software and a toxic workplace aren’t the only problems at Francis Tuttle, sources tell the Ledger. The school has also seen its enrollment drop and several instructors said Keylon came close to causing “a serious, almost fatal disruption for adult students” when she attempted to eliminate their federal financial aid.
Frank Turner, president of the Francis Tuttle Foundation, and Northcutt-Rhodes, the former board member, said Keylon’s effort to eliminate Pell Grants for most of the school’s adult students came close destroying the entire adult learning program.
“I had a huge concern last year around this time when the superintendent made the decision to do away with financial aid (for adult students),” Turner said. “I felt that it would impact the foundation negatively.”
Keylon, he said, didn’t have a real plan in place for those students who would have qualified for financial aid. “There was a total lack of communication. Not a real plan in place for those students who qualified for financial aid. There was just a lot of questions around all that.”
Northcutt-Rhodes said the plan to eliminate federal student aid caught many staff members off guard.
“Enrollment didn’t know what to do and she didn’t give them any details on what to do or what to tell the adults who were trying to enroll in those adult programs,” she said.
Keylon, Northcutt-Rhodes said, came to the foundation board and asked them to replace the funds that would be lost by her decision to eliminate federal financial aid. “She (Keylon) just expected us to the hand over the money and we said, ‘no,’” Northcutt-Rhodes said.
It was only after the foundation balked at providing extra money to cover the lost financial aid that Keylon backtracked, Northcutt-Rhodes said. “Later she announced she reversed her decision and said that after July 1, 2022, federal funds would be available to all students.”
Elimination of the financial aid wasn’t the only problem, some employees said.
Brockwell said the school never had a School Resource Officer at the Portland Campus and said that Francis Tuttle did not regularly report student attendance to its sending schools.
“Our new multimillion-dollar Prodigy software does not allow instructors to print attendance reports for our students but only, all students enrolled at FT,” Brockwell said. “This is not a good use of taxpayer funds and should be further investigated.”
He said school administrators also lied to employees, saying “they would give $1,300 stipends for instructors completing CBE (Competency-Based Education) training then refused to pay the stipend at the end of the year.”
Brockwell said administrators also told employees that those who received a COVID shot or who could not get one because of medical reasons would receive a $300 stipend, then backtracked. “They refused to pay,” he said.
Brockwell said he was also concerned about a school policy that set a 6-to-1 student-instructor ratio for out-of-state travel and by the school’s decision to push its marketing efforts to some social media sites such as Snapchat and TikTok.
“These sites are full of inappropriate materials that we should not be encouraging our underage students to view,” he said. “We received an email from our director the day before winter break, explaining that a new TikTok challenge was encouraging people to bring weapons to class for the last day of school and harm teachers. How can a school as prestigious as Francis Tuttle promote a website that would put teachers and students in harm’s way?”
For Turner, the head of the foundation, the biggest problem at Francis Tuttle is Keylon’s lack of leadership. “She is one of those people who wanted to be in charge and then she finally got the opportunity to be in charge,” he said. “But she’s not doing a good job.”
Turner, who has served as chairman of the Francis Tuttle Foundation for more than three years, said he has yet to have a sit-down, face-to-face meeting with Keylon.
“In the three years I’ve been president of the foundation, we haven’t had that conversation; she hasn’t reached out. Nothing,” he said.
Keylon’s email acknowledged the challenges of the past two years.
“We are optimistic about the future and look forward to strengthening our culture and providing the best educational experience for our students,” the email said. “The work our faculty and staff do at Francis Tuttle is important, and I’m incredibly grateful and proud of their commitment to our mission, preparing our customers for success in the workplace.”
For Northcutt-Rhodes and others, the leadership at the state’s premier CareerTech school has itself become one of those challenges.
“This is a terrific school,” Northcutt-Rhodes said. “And it needs someone at the helm who understand its value and its vision. The challenge is, right now, we don’t have that person in charge.”