The St. Joseph School District has severed ties with former HR Director Doug Flowers.

The Board of Education has agreed to pay Flowers a severance of $32,000 to decline his teaching contract for the 2015-2016 school year.

“Basically the district did this for several reasons,” said Dr. Robert Newhart, Interim Superintendent. “We have to move forward as a district and we thought it was in the best interest of the district and in all fairness to Mr. Flowers as well to severe ties.”

In February the school board voted to remove Flowers as the Director of Human Resources effective immediately and reassign him to other administrative duties ten days after State Audit findings of “poor” were released.

At that time the board also voted to non-renew Flower’s existing administrative contract.  However, pursuant to applicable Missouri statutes regarding teacher tenure the district would have been required to offer Flowers a teaching contract for the 2015-16 academic year.  Newhart said FLowers would have been assigned to a position with the Colgan Center if he had not accepted the severance deal

“We did not need to have that position.  We were going to pay a teacher as the document references with benefits, $77,885 when we could reach a severance agreement for $32,000 which is a $45,885 savings.  All while retaining as the documents references all rights associated with any investigation if charges and/or a conviction is made,” Newhart said.

Newhart is referring to ongoing FBI and U.S. Grant Jury investigations into the St. Joseph School District.  While he wouldn’t give an exact timeline he said he believes a conclusion to the FBI investigation could be within the next 30 to 60 days.

Click Here to see the settlement in full.