A version of this story first appeared in WFAE Education Reporter James Farrell's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get newsletters from WFAE straight to your inbox.
It seemed like an innocuous moment, the kind of bureaucratic wrangling that happens all the time in the Government Center.
At a March 2025 school board meeting, then-board member Melissa Easley questioned a proposed contract expansion that would give more money to an educational consulting firm called “SYDKIMYL.” She said she’d never heard of the firm, and argued there was a better way to spend the money.
Documents show she had submitted another question in writing prior to the meeting: The company appeared to be connected to the district’s then-Chief Executive in Residence — Raki McGregor. He’s now the consultantat the center of the current board leadership dispute.
At the time, Easley asked: Was this relationship ever disclosed? The district acknowledged SYDKIMYL was owned by McGregor’s wife, Kimberly McGregor, but noted that the company had been a vendor partner since 2019 — before McGregor started serving as a consultant in the superintendent’s cabinet.
At the dais, Vice Chair Dee Rankin said he understood Easley’s concerns, but it wasn’t the board’s job to “dig into operations.” The board governs, then holds the superintendent accountable to the results, he said.
“We still have to be fiscally responsible, but sometimes we say we’re trying to be efficient, but then what we’re doing is we’re digging into operations,” Rankin said. “And hopefully, that’s a culture we can kind of start holding ourselves accountable to, so we can be a more effective board and govern accordingly.”
The board approved the contract. Three members voted against it. All three were off the board after the next election.
No one expected the earthquakes that would follow over the next 18 months.
The CMS board enters the fall having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars apparently digging into district operations over the summer. We’re on the cusp of a board leadership ouster. CMS faces a criminal investigation into “financial irregularities,” and the state auditor is looking at CMS, too. It looks like the CMS soap opera has been renewed for another season — and contracts with McGregor will play a starring role.
Investigations and audits multiplying like rabbits
In June, the CMS board initiated a two-month, $380,000 outside investigation into Superintendent Crystal Hill’s leadership. That’s after it signed a $220,000 contract with law firm Poyner Spruill in the spring to conduct a wide-ranging compliance assessment, aimed at looking at district policy, procedures and practices to ensure compliance with federal and state law. The RFP specifically called out the district’s finance and human resources departments.
Hill was reinstated in August. We still don’t know the specific allegations that prompted the investigation — just that they dealt with a misuse of federal funds, a hostile work environment and a conflict of interest over contracts with past colleagues.
Hill said the investigation found nothing. The board said the investigation found “issues” it would discuss with Hill directly, but they have so far refused to describe those issues. And while the board has promised a report on the investigation before the end of the month, no such report was on the agenda for tomorrow’s board meeting as of Monday afternoon — the last regular scheduled meeting in September.
And last week, in a scathing memo to the school board that was leaked to local media, Hill alleged that the compliance assessment had ties to that SYDKIMYL controversy more than a year ago. She cut ties with McGregor, she claims, after he publicly supported school board candidates who challenged the three who voted against his wife’s contract. She grew concerned he was trying to use his position for political influence.
Those three school board members — Easley, Summer Nunn and Lisa Cline — went on to lose their seats (Nunn declined to run). It turns out McGregor was still making money from the district as a subcontractor and consultant to Poyner Spruill, both on an affordable housing project and through a $132,000 services agreement on the compliance assessment. Hill claims she was unaware of the arrangements and believes most of the board — at least besides board chair Stephanie Sneed, who is reportedly close with McGregor — was unaware as well.
“Mr. McGregor does not have public school administration experience in the areas of HR or finance and is not qualified to conduct this review,” Hill wrote. “Mr. McGregor is motivated to identify problems with my leadership because I ended his relationship with CMS.”
The compliance assessment has since been paused as the board looks at a “potential conflict of interest.”
Among the many questions that Hill’s memo raises: What truly prompted this deep dive into district operations?
“The board is in a precarious position,” Hill wrote. “I believe you have an obligation to the public to discuss all that has happened and to own any mistakes that may have been made so that trust can be rebuilt. I believe the board owes employees and taxpayers an explanation for why it employs more than a dozen attorneys, but has retained two different law firms to conduct compliance reviews of finance and HR Systems over the last six months.”
Where we stand
For those who haven’t been following CMS closely, this latest controversy might be confusing. (Heck, it’s confusing to me, and I follow this stuff for a living.)
The simplest explanation: Hill, after her reinstatement, accuses Sneed of secretly routing public funds to a friend, McGregor, through a contracting arrangement that some staff membersreportedly believed was illegal. The board is divided over Sneed’s leadership. Tomorrow, the board will have its most public discussion on this yet as it debates Sneed’s future as chair — and we’ll get a better sense of what board members know about these allegations. And maybe we’ll see how Sneed responds.
I reached out to Sneed and McGregor for comment last week about the contracts but didn’t hear back.
For some teachers I’ve heard from, however, it’s far more simple than that. One veteran teacher of almost 20 years described the churn of superintendents and controversies in recent years as “rinse-and-repeat” and “exhausting.”
The teacher, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, told me the latest drama is distracting from real issues, like a lack of air conditioning in some schools at the start of this school year, a lack of soap and classroom supplies and low teacher pay — particularly for veterans.
“We outlast them,” the veteran teacher said. “We outlast curriculum and consultant changes. We are still in the front lines working for students, yet we still are not given a place at the table.”
