Accusations of retaliation surface as GRPS communications director placed on leave

A Grand Rapids Public Schools (GRPS) communications director was placed on paid administrative leave in March and is now seeking reinstatement, alleging retaliation for voicing concerns about his superiors’ leadership.

According to a public records request shared with The Rapidian, Leon Hendrix, the GRPS executive director of communications and external affairs, was sent a letter on March 27 informing him of his termination, which was set to go into effect April 10.

In the termination letter, GRPS Superintendent Dr. Leadriane Roby accused Hendrix of “rousing discord” among the district’s Board of Education and speaking poorly of colleagues in a conversation with a community member. 

Hendrix disputed those claims in a complaint to Board of Education Vice President Kymberlie Davis sent on April 10. Hendrix alleged Roby sought to punish him for “raising difficult concerns about the deputy superintendent and the potentially discriminatory plans made to realign leadership.”

“I’ve dedicated so much to a career that has held the powerful accountable and illuminated wrongdoing in service to bettering our community,” Hendrix, who was formerly an anchor for WOOD TV 8, wrote to Davis. “What is happening here is wrong and if allowed to continue cannot be kept in the dark. It is a quintessential example of the culture of retaliation that we’ve heard about ad nauseam from our staff.”

He asked school officials to investigate Roby for retaliation. 

“GRPS does not comment on ongoing personnel matters,” the district said in a statement Wednesday.  “GRPS can share that the complaint against [Roby] was investigated by an outside law firm and determined to be unsubstantiated.”

According to correspondence obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Hendrix told Davis that GRPS “offered me tens of thousands of dollars to resign and leave my role—in exchange for my agreeing never to speak of this matter. I can’t.”

Hendrix declined to comment. 

Parents and community members have rallied around Hendrix in recent days, with some calling for Roby’s removal. According to social media posts, residents are organizing to attend the July 22 GRPS Board of Education meeting to speak against the district’s decision to place Hendrix on leave. 

Hendrix will make his case for reinstatement before the board at a hearing earlier that same day, though GRPS officials have not said whether the hearing will be open to the public.

Roby’s reasons for termination

In a March 27 correspondence, entitled “termination letter,” Roby told Hendrix he “engaged in communications with the community and Board of Education members in a manner that has eroded my trust in you.”

Roby went on to provide two examples: One, Roby alleges Hendrix spoke with a parent in a way that undermined her authority and suggested actions without her approval. Two, Roby said Hendrix encouraged Board of Education members to “be ‘bolder’” in ways that were perceived as undermining the district’s leadership, and he violated a direct order by discussing internal concerns with Board President Kimberley Williams after being instructed not to.

Roby did not return requests for comment. 

According to the termination letter, Hendrix’s employment contract allows him to request a due process hearing before the board, and Roby said that he could voluntarily resign in lieu of termination.

"He was doing his job as an advocate of a school system..." said Lucas Leverett, a GRPS parent.

Part of Roby’s reasoning for terminating Hendrix’s employment was a conversation between a parent and Hendrix, in which Roby claimed Hendrix spoke poorly about her leadership and suggested her chief of staff should resign. 

But the parent, Lucas Leverett, told The Rapidian his words were twisted.

Hendrix spoke with Leverett after a fiery GRPS community meeting in May 2023. At that meeting, several teachers and parents called on school officials to address safety issues and leadership problems. 

Leverett said Hendrix was the only school official who offered to speak with attendees after the meeting, noting that Hendrix patiently listened to his concerns and pushed back on parts of his argument.

In an email sent to Hendrix, Roby and board members the next day, Leverett summarized his conversation with Hendrix and reiterated his concerns about GRPS leadership. However, according to the termination letter, Roby interpreted Leverett’s email to mean that Hendrix shared Leverett’s views. 

“Mr. Leverett shared, among other things, that you had: (1) informed him that I believed his actions were motivated by race; (2) questioned whether he believed I should be terminated; and (3) suggested permitting Larry Johnson, Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Public Safety & School Security to resign from his position would be an appropriate course of action,” she wrote.

Leverett told The Rapidian that Roby grossly misinterpreted his email. 

“The retirement subject was not brought up by Leon,” Leverett told The Rapidian. “The firing of Roby was not brought up by Leon. The race thing was not brought up by Leon. They were part of a dynamic conversation … and that's what makes all of this so insane.”

Leverett also took offense to Roby’s reference to him in the termination letter as a “community activist.”

“This topic … has to do with my child's safety,” Leverett told The Rapidian. “You will not belittle me as simply a community member; that makes me out to be a random activist who's just a busybody.”

At Hendrix’s request, Leverett wrote a statement refuting Roby’s accusations and clarifying his email. Hendrix included the statement in his complaint against Roby.

In his statement, Leverett wrote that Hendrix never said GRPS officials thought Leverett’s activism was fueled by race. “I brought up race,” he wrote. “You did not. You never implied Dr. Roby having any belief whatsoever.” 

Though Hendrix did question whether Leverett thought Roby should be fired, as Roby claimed he did, it was “an entirely legitimate question,” Leverett wrote. In their conversation, Leverett told Hendrix he thought Roby should be fired if she didn’t address Johnson’s alleged mishandling of safety concerns, he wrote.

Hendrix, “rather incredulously, asked if I really felt she should be fired,” Leverett wrote.

“He was doing his job as an advocate of a school system interfacing with a parent and asking them to qualify their argument,” Leverett told The Rapidian.

‘I’m not sure who else I could have contacted’

In the termination letter, Roby also claimed Hendrix spoke poorly about her in a private conversation with GRPS’s Board of Education. He then encouraged board members to make bolder decisions and reminded trustees of “their collective power” — advice several board members interpreted as “undermining the direction of the District,” Roby wrote in her termination letter.

Roby said trustees Jordoun Eatman, Sara Melton, José Rodriguez, Aarie Wade and Williams had raised the concerns. None returned requests for comment except for Rodriguez, who declined to comment.

After hearing from trustees, Roby wrote that she had a meeting with Hendrix, where she told him not to discuss his concerns about GRPS leadership without first talking to her. But despite her directive, Hendrix “telephoned Board President Kimberley Williams that very evening to discuss our meeting,” she wrote. 

Hendrix recalled the situation differently. 

In his complaint, he wrote that Roby made vastly different claims during their meeting than the ones she recalled in her termination letter, including several untrue allegations.

Hendrix brought his concerns about the meeting to human resources and GRPS general counsel that same day, and they encouraged him to call the board president to discuss the matter further, he wrote.

Only afterward did Roby send him an email telling him he needed to contact her before reaching out to the board, Hendrix wrote in his complaint.

“I’m not sure who else I could have contacted,” he wrote. “All of our protocols indicate the Board as the point of contact after raising concerns with the superintendent.”

The situation sends a dangerous message about who GRPS staff can talk to about their concerns, he wrote.

“As much as I should never tell my team that they can’t share concerns of any kind with the superintendent, no one should indicate to staff that they cannot contact the board about a matter of concern,” he wrote.

After raising red flags about leadership, Hendrix is fired within a month 

Hendrix believes the true reason for his termination was that he questioned the leadership of his superiors.

Hendrix says Roby’s animosity was spurred, in part, by a complaint he filed against GRPS Deputy Superintendent Brandy Lovelady Mitchell, who he said was Roby’s sorority sister.

Mitchell was “disrespectful, demeaning, and in some cases intimidating to members of our team,” Hendrix wrote in an email to human resources on March 1, less than a month before Hendrix was sent his termination letter.

In one exchange from late February, Hendrix asked Mitchell to talk to him directly about concerns she had with his work, reiterating a phone call they had earlier that day. He said that hearing Mitchell’s concerns relayed to him through someone else was “confusing, frustrating, and damaging.”

Mitchell responded, saying she engages with Hendrix indirectly to avoid his “hostility.” She claimed Hendrix was “sabotaging” her work by not following directives, lying and being verbally aggressive.

“The level of direct hostility and passive aggressiveness shown by you in general, and when collegial feedback is given to you, detours me from engaging with you until there has been some clarity around roles, protocols for engagement with explicit decision making matrices,” Mitchell wrote in an email sent to Hendrix and Roby.

Hendrix responded hours later, suggesting Mitchell bring her accusations to human resources given their “operose and indeterminate nature.”

“Another option is for you to stop the negative behavior and produce in a way that supports my work, which is district work and not unreasonable,” Mitchell replied.

In his complaint to human resources, Hendrix said the exchange “contained allegations that were untrue and shared in a way that I find inappropriate.” 

In another exchange from October 2023, Mitchell responded to a question from a GRPS official with what Hendrix interpreted as a passive-aggressive quip.

In the group email, Karl Nelson, executive director of PK-12 instructional leadership for the district’s northwest quadrant, requested clarification on the role of a prospective employee, asking, “What is interim and what does this mean for (the employee) at the end of the interim placement?” 

“It really is the standard definition - it is temporary,” Mitchell wrote back to Hendrix, attaching a screenshot of an online dictionary definition of the word “interim.”

A GRPS spokesperson declined to answer whether the HR complaint prompted an investigation into Mitchell.

Around the same time Hendrix filed his complaint against Mitchell, Roby began an effort to restructure GRPS’s leadership team, he wrote.

Hendrix had concerns with the plan, which involved removing high-level members from Roby’s executive team. He brought it up with multiple GRPS officials, including Roby.

“Her plan called for the removal of both Latino cabinet members, which I thought was concerning — especially in our district where Latinos make up such a large portion of our scholars but such a small portion of our staff and leadership,” Hendrix wrote in his complaint against Roby.

Days after raising concerns, Hendrix said he received his termination letter.

Hendrix wrote in his complaint against Roby that his termination was a “hastily made, arbitrary and capricious decision that is not consistent with the district’s practices.”

“In January of this year, Dr. Roby told me that I was ‘one of the best hires’ she’d ever made,” he wrote. “I am shocked and heartbroken that something changed so abruptly in March of this year that has led us to this moment.”

Hendrix also said he should have been given due process before receiving his termination letter.

“Our General Counsel and Assistant Superintendent has indicated that she always brings in outside counsel to investigate serious concerns involving the executive cabinet — which makes sense as we are colleagues who work very closely together,” he wrote. “For some reason, that didn’t happen in the case that resulted in this abrupt and unusual termination action.”

Some GRPS parents ‘have no faith in [Roby’s] ability to lead this district’ 

Kara Shour, who has two children enrolled in GRPS, said that she thinks Roby should resign.

Roby, Mitchell and Johnson “shut people down when they try to hold people accountable,” she said.

Parent Seth Moore said other GRPS officials have seen little consequences for doing far worse than Hendrix.

In 2023, Moore had a phone call with Johnson, the GRPS chief of staff, where he threatened to “come after him” when Moore expressed concerns about the lack of supervision of a bus stop. After an outside investigation of the phone call, Johnson was put on paid administrative leave for three weeks. 

“Why was my being threatened not good enough for (Johnson) to be fired?” Moore said. “My personal belief is that (Roby) follows her party line and that she's getting rid of anybody who isn't under herself.”

Moore said that the board should take a vote of no confidence in Roby.

“I have no faith in her ability to lead this district,” he said.