A “Tyrant” at Haas Hall Academy: Why lawyers shouldn’t run schools.

UPDATE 2, 10/22/20: David Conaway, a teacher described briefly (but positively!) in this anonymous letter, has sent a response that I have published at the bottom of this post.

UPDATE 1, 10/22/20: Mark Henry asserts that Judge Brad Karren recuses himself from cases involving clients of Mark Henry’s. Scroll to the bottom to read Mark Henry’s statement in its entirety.

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This is an anonymous letter I received yesterday. I’ve confirmed the factual allegations through multiple, independent sources. Where individuals are students or parents of students enrolled at the school, I have changed their names to protect their identity. The graphics are my own additions, but the text belongs to the author, who prefers to remain unnamed.

Also, full disclosure, I’m currently suing both Mark Henry and Haas Hall Academy for violations of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. Multiple judges recused themselves from the lawsuit before the Arkansas Supreme Court (on which Mark Henry’s ex-wife, Courtney Goodson, serves as an elected justice) pulled a judge out of retirement so that he could hear the case without a conflict of interest.

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Unethical/Illegal Activity at Arkansas’s #1 High School

While Haas Hall Academy touts itself as the #1 public high school in Arkansas, there is an extraordinary amount of unethical, abusive, and illegal activity going on at this school district.

The main problem is that Mark Henry, the school’s unethical lawyer who has no background in education, has been unofficially running the school and firing talented people (mostly women). There’s a hidden, nefarious reason for this. In addition to being a “lawyer,” Mark Henry is a political consultant. As a political consultant he runs campaigns for judicial candidates. This is a blatant conflict of interest. Why? Because the judges he gets elected will owe him favors, which helps Mark Henry when his legal clients appear before these judges.

One of these judges in Benton County is Brad Karren, whose own conduct on the bench has landed him in hot water ethically. Last year, Mark Henry orchestrated the hiring at Haas Hall of Judge Karren’s daughter, Amelia Dunavan, meaning the judge owes Mark Henry yet another favor. Amelia Dunavan is the special education coordinator for Haas Hall Academy. She is not respected by faculty, students, and parents. To hire her, Mark Henry fired an elderly woman who had been in that role for years and was respected.

Mark Henry now is trying to get Amelia Dunavan promoted to a headmaster spot.

In pushing to get the judge’s daughter, Amelia Dunavan, promoted into a headmaster position, Mark Henry has fired the best employees at the Rogers and Springdale campuses (during a pandemic, no less), thus getting rid of excellent employees who otherwise would have been more qualified than Amelia Dunavan for a higher-ranking, higher-paid position. These firings of the most popular, hardest-working faculty members, including Carly Andersen and David Conaway in Rogers and Sharon Busteed in Springdale, led to enormous parent/student outrage, a huge loss of student enrollment across the entire district, and low morale among other faculty members who feel their jobs are not secure if the best teachers on campus can be fired without justification — except promoting Mark Henry’s judge-client’s daughter. Mark Henry also fired a Spanish teacher at the Bentonville campus who was forced to return to Spain during a pandemic, and Mark Henry fired longtime Fayetteville faculty member Francine Fisher, who challenged Amelia Dunavan’s inappropriate handling of special education matters. Carly Andersen, David Conaway and Sharon Busteed were fired also after challenging Amelia Dunavan for being incompetent. 

There is more. For one, the head of the math department for the school district, Danalee Wise, has extreme psychological issues. She cries, screams, and berates math faculty at all the schools. In fact, she so aggressively yelled at the Rogers math faculty — David Conaway, Tamara Lunsford, and Jeff English, that my math colleagues and I who were the brunt of this abuse are going to file a formal grievance and/or lawsuit. These math teachers are responsible for the Rogers campus leading the state two years in a row in ACT Aspire math growth, a sore spot with Danalee Wise in that it takes away from her. It has come to the attention of faculty on the Rogers campus, where I work as a faculty member, that at the Fayetteville campus Danalee Wise even physically assaulted a teacher, Francine Fisher. Danalee Wise is abusive, racist, and homophobic. How do I know these things? Because I am in math department meetings when she expresses them.

We heard at Rogers that she also lost the NHS charter because of her incompetence and then viciously blamed a student and the student’s mother for it. Danalee Wise consistently trashed the student, Jane Doe, and her mother, Janet Doe, to students, faculty, and administration at the school, calling the mother “crazy” and the daughter “a liar.” Danalee Wise’s constant bad-mouthing of Jane and her mother to students across the campus angrily turned the students against Jane Doe. This illegal slandering caused Jane Doe to be ostracized by her classmates. We even heard about this continual slandering of the mother and student at our campus in Rogers, causing us to think negatively of the “crazy” Does, who we don’t even know.

The lawyer/political consultant who unofficially and abusively is running the school district, Mark Henry, named Danalee Wise’s husband, Bob Wise, headmaster of the Rogers campus [Ed. Note: Bob Wise is also the 504 Coordinator for the Rogers campus] until he, Mark Henry, can elevate the judge’s daughter, Amelia Dunavan, into that spot after Bob Wise’s ineptitude and racism become his final undoing. Bob Wise taught at the Rogers campus for less than a year before being named to that highly sought-after position. In that year, Bob Wise only “taught” P.E. and a non-core junior high course. He was only hired at Haas Hall the previous year and given the teaching position at the last minute after being passed over for a job at a school in West Fork — after he and his wife literally begged Haas Hall to hire him. Bob Wise yells and screams at students. There is a video circulating of him screaming at students. He is lazy and refused to coach any athletic teams or serve as advisor for any school club, which is expected of all faculty members (without stipend or pay). He disappeared from school for two weeks last year when his wife’s mother died. He is the least respected person on the faculty. He was the only faculty member who had a block off last year, while the most respected person on campus, Carly Andersen, was denied a block off despite handling numerous other duties, including academic advising and scheduling. Yet, the lawyer/political consultant, Mark Henry, chose Bob Wise over much more experience and qualified teachers, and the job was never advertised. If the Fayetteville administration had bothered to ask any parents, teachers, or students before they let Mark Henry promote Bob Wise, they would have immediately known it was a big mistake. Mark Henry and Amelia Dunavan wanted a weak person in that position who would not question their decisions (decisions such as firing great faculty who were in their way), and that is why he picked Bob Wise. The parent outrage over this decision is documented in numerous emails to David Conaway and Carly Andersen. 

Amelia Dunavan is in charge of the 504s for the district. She is the person Mark Henry pushed to get hired and pushed to get promoted because of his unethical relationship with her father, the judge — and with her. Amelia Dunavan is rude in her response to the parents who want 504s, and as a result they leave the school district. She will not listen to parents in meetings and says the school is not required by law to help them with certain problems. How do I know this? I’ve been in on many of these meetings with Rogers scholars of mine. 

Mark Henry will say he told these faculty members their contracts weren’t being renewed, not that they were fired. However, we don’t have contracts.

Mark Henry will say he told these faculty members their contracts weren’t being renewed, not that they were fired. However, we don’t have contracts. These were the highest-achieving faculty members on the campuses. They clearly understood from Mark Henry they were being fired and knew it was because they were a threat to Amelia Dunavan, the unqualified daughter of Mark Henry’s judge-friend. There is also an illegal issue of sexism and ageism involved. Of the six people Mark Henry fired (during a pandemic), five are women and all except one are well over 40 years old. The only male who was fired is a military veteran. This anti-women, anti-military bias is painful to witness and frightening to other women and the very few military veterans employed at Haas Hall. Another veteran, our headmaster Larry Henry, retired during all this, but parents, students, and faculty, all of whom admire and respect this highly regarded administrator, are suspicious about the circumstances regarding his “retirement,” which opened up the spot for Bob Wise — and undoubtedly for Amelia Dunavan once Mark Henry decides to elevate her. It is well known that Larry Henry highly valued Carly Andersen and David Conaway and would not fire them. With Larry Henry out of the way, Mark Henry (no relation by blood or ethically) could fire Andersen and Conaway and elevate incompetent people who will do what he says and not question his unethical decisions. 

The best people at Haas Hall have been fired during a pandemic because Mark Henry, Amelia Dunavan, Danalee Wise, and Bob Wise saw them as threats to their own unqualified advancement. This vindictive cabal had these excellent educators (David Conaway, Carly Andersen, Sharon Busteed, Francine Fisher) on a “hit list” and got rid of them. Because of this small, unqualified group (Mark Henry, Amelia Dunavan, Danalee Wise, Bob Wise), the school district is weakened, and morale is at an all-time low.

My faculty colleagues at the Rogers campus and I demand a state investigation into how Mark Henry can illegally fire women and a military veteran, whose performances were superb, without cause or justification.

Please protect us. We are whistleblowers who believe the horrible things happening at this public institution need to be known. While we are protected by whistleblower laws and the 1st Amendment, as soon as Mark Henry knows about this letter, he will maliciously fire anyone he thinks might have been responsible for the letter. My colleagues at the Rogers campus and I worked with and loved the ones he fired — as did the parents and students. Mark Henry is a deeply insecure, malicious, vindictive tyrant. If you don’t protect us from Mark Henry, no one will.

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I’ve written about Haas Hall Academy — an open-enrollment, public charter school — several times previously. Here are links to my other posts:

• “So You Want to Start a Successful School?” 11/6/18
• “War Games, Wealth, and What I’ve Learned So Far” 1/2/19
• “How They Are Getting Away with It” 1/12/19
• “Arkansas’ Own ‘Empire’ Should Have Paid Finn Better.” 1/12/19
• “The Cost of Cutting Corners and Dismantling Diversity” 1/28/19
• “Winning at All Costs” 2/19/19
• “Haas Hall Academy: Sit on the floor and share your textbook. The grown-ups deserve luxury.” 9/12/19
• “Haas Hall: Trying again on diversity.” 10/9/19

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UPDATE 2: I received this email from David Conaway a few hours after I published this post. Mr. Conaway’s email asserts that he was not fired, that he did not disagree with Amelia Dunaway’s management of SPED services at Haas Hall, and that he left Haas Hall on good terms. In other circumstances, this denial would make me suspect that the assertions of the original letter were possibly false. However, multiple students and parents have informed me that Mr. Conaway told his students — in a live Zoom class last spring — that Haas Hall was forcing him out, and that he was not leaving willingly. To believe Mr. Conaway’s email today would mean to deem all my other sources liars.

Additionally, I note that Mr. Conaway contacted me at an email address that he had never used prior to today, and included Mark Henry on the recipient list. How did he get my email address? Did Mark Henry ask Mr. Conaway to write this email? By his own admission, Mr. Conaway depended on a “positive letter of reference” from Haas Hall to obtain his new job with Rogers Public Schools. Perhaps David Conaway feels pressure to protect his new job by aligning himself with Mark Henry in this conflict.

Anyway, here is what David Conaway wrote to me:

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UPDATE 1: Early this evening, Mark Henry emailed, “All of my judicial candidates with the exception of one has me on their permanent recusal list.” Although I have asked Mark Henry to provide a complete list of all judges who recuse themselves from his cases, he has declined to do so.

Instead, Mark Henry asserts that I have not “undertaken a single fact check,” and that I have neither contacted nor attempted to contact any of the people mentioned in this letter. He is wrong on both those counts. I maintain written records of my communication with people mentioned in this letter (although their identities are protected) and I did confirm the factual allegations prior to publishing this letter. (Not the opinions, though. That would be impossible.)

Additionally, I note that Judge Karren’s past disciplinary actions for unethical behavior do not involve “clients” of lawyers who are the judge’s friends and associates. Still, he has been disciplined for “permit[ting] family, social, political, financial, or other interests or relationships to influence [his] judicial conduct or judgment.” I don’t think recusing himself from cases where Mark Henry is an attorney of record means it’s impossible for a judge to repay a favor to an attorney.

Also: Mark Henry mentions his “billing records.” He’s talking about the itemized statements that the Rose Law Firm used to send Haas Hall for Mark Henry’s work. Mark Henry has billed for “employment matters”, “resignation letter[s]”, “complaints regarding NHS”, “address[ing] problem to avoid state reporting”, an “email to Larry Henry outlining issues regarding money and bylaws and parental groups and fundraising”, and “review[ing] response by Danalee Wise” on an “NHS issue”. I believe these billing records show more support for the assertion that Mark Henry involves himself in hiring, firing, and managing the staff at Haas Hall than they do for Mark Henry’s assertion that Superintendent Martin Schoppmeyer makes all these decisions himself. Therefore, I do not believe I have a responsibility to edit these assertions out of this letter I’ve published.

Anyway, here is Mark Henry’s statement regarding judicial recusals and his role at Haas Hall: