Marlin: State education agency ends investigation of ex-superintendent

The Texas Education Agency confirmed Friday an investigation of former Marlin Independent School District Superintendent Michael Seabolt has ended and no further action will result.

“Good. That’s what needed to happen,” Marlin feed store owner Roger Nutt, a former school board member, said Friday.

Seabolt was under investigation for several months by several agencies, including the TEA and the Texas Rangers, after allegations of violations and misappropriating public funds surfaced while he served as district superintendent beginning in 2015.

“The circumstances surrounding the investigation were deemed not to warrant further action,” the TEA’s letter reads.

“This case is being administratively closed with no additional action required.”

The state agency also cleared Seabolt’s educator certificates posted on TEA’s website of any flags.

“There was no wrong-doing,” Nutt said.

“That was a political assassination from the very beginning.”

Nutt, in fact, was the Marlin ISD’s board president when Seabolt was hired.

“He did great things in 2015, but things began to fall apart in 2016,” he said.

Later that year Seabolt was removed, as was Nutt, who was displaced after an order by a district conservator, and the rest of the elected school board members, all replaced by appointments made by the conservator.

“I talked to the investigators from TEA last summer and I was interviewed by the Texas Rangers, too, and I told them both they were wasting their time and money.

“There was just nothing there,” Nutt said.

Jean Bahney was TEA’s state-appointed conservator at the time and now serves as the interim superintendent.

It was she who initiated the district-level investigation into Seabolt’s performance that TEA suspended Thursday.

Seabolt, through friends, said he is glad the investigation is done but wishes it could have gone a bit quicker.

He has held it was his threat to file a lawsuit against TEA that prompted the agency’s effort to discredit him.

“TEA orchestrated this action against me in order to remove me from Marlin ISD in order to stop a lawsuit which would have shown illegal actions committed by TEA,” he told the Waco Tribune-Herald Thursday.

“That’s exactly what it was about,” Nutt said.

He explained the lawsuit had to do with improper reporting of details about special education programs that resulted in TEA assigning Marlin ISD a failing grade for the 2018-19 school year.

In 2015 when Seabolt was hired, TEA announced it would close Marlin ISD in July 2016 if the administration did not show significant improvement in student academic performance after failing state standards for four years in a row.

MISD then failed state academic standards again in 2016, but the TEA agreed to allow Marlin ISD to continue operating under an abatement agreement.

But a year later state Education Commissioner Mike Morath appointed a board of managers to replace the elected board of trustees, but left Seabolt to continue serving as the superintendent.

Marlin ISD has failed state academic standards longer than any other school district in Texas, since 2011, but agreements with the TEA have allowed for continued operations.

Issues remain at Marlin ISD, Nutt said.

“It’s about the kids, and we’re not paying attention to that.

“The students are not happy. Teachers are leaving and that’s not good.

“I’ve had several friends who worked for the district leave the past few years because they say they’re just not happy working there anymore,” said one district employee of more than a dozen years who spoke on promise of anonymity.

“If I was younger and had another opportunity, I’d leave, myself,” the employee said.

“When Mike (Seabolt) was there we raised teacher pay to higher than any other district around, to $50,000-a-year for new teachers, and we were getting the cream of the crop,” Nutt said.

“They don’t do that anymore.”