CASSOPOLIS — At 6:30 p.m on Tuesday, Cassopolis Public Schools hosted a Board of Education special meeting, where members voted on the non-renewal of contracts for principals David VanLue and DeeAnn Melville-Voss due to restructuring.

During the meeting, the board room at Squires Education Center was warm enough to make residents and administrators sweat, exaggerating the tension in the room.

At this meeting, public comments came prior to the vote, and several concerned residents again voiced their support for the two administrators. This included 12-year-old Elizabeth Merckx, who turned around and looked at VanLue and Voss, who were present at the meeting, and spoke to them while she also addressed the board.

“First of all, I’m going to talk about how Mr. VanLue and Ms. Voss have comforted me and helped me get through my school career,” Merckx said, an eighth grader at Ross Beatty Jr.-Sr. High. “Ms. Voss in elementary school, she has always helped me get through school. She smiles and waves and says hello to me in the morning. Mr. VanLue, during the transition from elementary school to high school, he’s been amazing. I mean, in the first week he already knew all of our names. He says hi to us. He greets us. He’s comforted all of us.”

After nearly 40 minutes of public comments, it was time for the board to vote on the contract non-renewals. There was a significant amount of debate amongst the board members on the merits of the administrators and whether or not the correct decision was to remove the two administrators from their current positions.

After listening to the back and forth for several minutes, Angela Piazza, the superintendent, responded.

“I could have went a whole different way with it, absolutely,” Piazza said. “I did this so that I didn’t destroy their professional careers. So we restructured and we created positions in which they were strong. That is why I did that — to avoid this. It should have been smooth. it was mishandled on many levels. So now here we are.”

“But absolutely we could have went with a whole lot of other ways that are not arbitrary and capricious. I have the data. But I choose to keep them and work with them and restructure to put them in areas where they are passionate and where their strengths are and where they are more than qualified. I don’t disagree on anything I’ve heard about Mr. VanLue and how he builds relationships with students. That’s absolutely correct, which is why we had this discussion from the very beginning. Restructuring should have been the easiest way.”

Ross Beatty Senior High School’s proficiency score, which aggregates student proficiency based on the M-STEP, SAT and MI-Access assessments, is 51.04. Comparatively, Buchanan High School’s proficiency score is 78.71, Brandywine Senior High’s is 75.62, Dowagiac Union High School’s is 61.18, Edwardsburg High School’s is 90.45 and Niles High School’s is 81.73.

Sam Adams Elementary has an average proficiency of 37.84, while Brandywine’s is 56.01, Moccasin’s is 78.48, Justus Gage’s is 54.04, Sister Lakes’ is 52.06, Patrick Hamilton’s is 55.79, Edwardsburg Intermediate’s is 77.3, Eastside Connections’ is 99.43, Ballard’s is 62.87 and Howard Ellis’ is 83.72.

“We’re a small community,” said Jesse Binns, board trustee and a Michigan State Trooper. “I’ve said this before and people might not like it. I don’t care about test scores. Yeah, they’re important, but I care about good human beings coming out of that high school. I care about my next partner, who doesn’t need to have a college degree as a state trooper. I care about a good human being. That’s what we have coming out of the high school now.”

First, the board voted on the non-renewal of Melville-Voss’ contract. The board members were split three to three, with Lisa Cutting, Sue Horstmann and Deb Deubner voting in favor of the non-renewal and Binns, Amanda Smego and George Calvert voting against it.

The deciding vote came down to Scott Ward, the board president, who approved the non-renewal.

Before the next vote began, Melville-Voss stood up with tears in her eyes, kissed VanLue on the cheek and walked out of the meeting.

The next vote was on the contract non-renewal of VanLue contract, which yielded the exact same results.

“Whenever I make a vote at the board table, I cannot as an elected official of the people make a decision based off of emotion,” Ward said after the meeting. “When I take my oath, according to the bylaws that are set up by the district, we’re required to do our research. Any board member that comes to the table and places a vote without researching whatever it is they’re voting on, they are doing their district a disservice.”

The next votes were on the awarding of new positions to VanLue and Melville-Voss. Both were approved unanimously, awarding VanLue the position of coordinator of special programs and Melville-Voss K-12 literacy coordinator. It is unclear at this time how these new positions will compare when it comes to salary.

“They have both agreed to move on, and I think the one thing that has not been spoken that I would really like you to know and that definitely needs to be put out there is that the positions that these two administrators are being put into are promotions,” Ward said. “The school principal is the school administrator, yes, but they are not truly part of the administration building. These are not lateral moves by any measure of the account. An school principal in any district that was given the opportunity to move into a job of this stature  — this is a huge stepping stone for both of them.”

Ward then reiterated that the administration and the board were diligent in making this decision.

“The hours of research that’s gone into them,” he said. “We believe they’re a vital part of moving this district in the direction that we want to go, and if we didn’t feel that way we wouldn’t have voted the way that we did. You saw it was a 7-0 vote. The board knows that we need to keep these people intact. We know that giving them a promotion and putting them in a position where they can use their field of expertise is going to  benefit the school district above and beyond than what’s what’s happened [previously].”

Even though both principals were awarded new positions, many of the residents in attendance were not satisfied.

“I’m definitely mad about Mr. VanLue,” Merckx said.

“I feel like they listened, but they didn’t hear us,” said Anna Leach, Merckx’s classmate who also spoke during the meeting.

According to Ward, there will likely be a community meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday, June 4, at the Ross Beatty Jr.-Sr. High School auditorium, where residents can speak with members of the school board and administrators regarding changes to the district, new tech and other topics pertaining to Cassopolis Public Schools.

“I’m am very appreciative of the three school board members who voted to help us keep our jobs as principals,” Melville-Voss said after the meeting. “And I very much am appreciative of my 29 years in the community working for Cassopolis Public Schools.”