Economics professor: Huff Administration lacks ethical, moral leadership, is driving away teachers

A professor of business and economics minces no words when it comes to C. J. Huff's administrative decisions.

In a letter provided to media, the professor criticized Huff and the board of education:

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Our previous and current school board, and current administration, have made some serious blunders in fiscal and personnel management, thus creating our current situation. The School District is top-heavy in all levels of management, as well as being extremely over paid. Our schools are lacking responsible, ethical and moral leadership from some school board members and our school's present administration. We demand accountability! We are losing our good teachers because of their lack of staff management! We must hold our school board and administration accountable for their lack of supervision and inadequate attention.

The letter was written in 2007 by Gene Bauer, a professor of business and economics at State Fair Community College and came in opposition to a tax levy increase proposed by the baby-faced superintendent of the Eldon School District, C. J. Huff.

If the accusations in that paragraph sounded familiar to those who have watched the performance of the Joplin R-8 School District over the years that C. J. Huff has been superintendent, then some of the other charges leveled by Bauer should also ring a bell:

-Because of our administration's ineptness concerning state guidelines and rules regarding curriculum, we are being placed on probationary status by the state board of education. Our administrators (not our children) are responsible for scoring an unacceptable 75 on the states last district audit! (You may recall that the Joplin school district scored an equally unacceptable 78.)

-Our tax dollars are supposed to be spent for kindergarten through 12th grade. Why then is our administration taking $500,000 of our tax dollars and spending it on head start programs?  The $500,000 in Eldon has become $15 million in Joplin.

Reportedly, the financial situation in Eldon was dire when the Joplin R-8 Board of Education thought enough of C. J. Huff to bring him here and give him more money than the previous superintendent, Jim Simpson, who had led Joplin to give straight accredited with distinction ratings from DESE. The fifth one, it should be noted, was announced during the early months of C. J. Huff's first year in the district.

The financial problems appear to be a result of Huff conducting business here the same way he did in Eldon. He explained his business methods to the Lake of the Ozarks Business Journal in 2007:

"We are also applying for several grants – healthy schools, preschool, volunteer, but the problem with grants is that there is a stop date on them and then we have to figure out where to come up with the money to continue the programs they were funding.

At Joplin, Huff's team has applied for one grant after another, many times adding employees, then using other funds to pay for those positions when the grants run out. One such example is the creation of teaching and learning coaches for the school district. When the grant money was gone, not only did the jobs remain, but more were added.

Eldon was lucky. For that school district, bright futures began when the Joplin R-8 School District decided to bring C. J. Huff here to construct a new educational pyramid scheme