Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education member, Sabrina Coone, revealed that two sitting Board members pressured her to stop asking questions of then-CFO Thomas Kranz over his handling of the district’s budget.

“I was kind of grilling Tommy in a committee meeting, and I said to him, ‘how much is our fund balance?’ and he could not give me an answer,” Coone said. “I was told I needed to stop grilling the CFO and stay in my lane because that was his job and my job was to trust him.”

The moderator of the event, Karen Cuthrell of The Feeling Friends Company and the Superintendent’s Council, pressed Coone for details. 

“I’m gonna keep probing …I’m asking what the people want to know,” Cuthrell said.

“It was Leah and Dianna,” Coone said. 

Deanna Kaplan and Leah Crowley are still sitting board members. Kranz resigned in April as the extent of the financial mismanagement began to come into view. The district is now grappling with a multi-million dollar budget deficit. 

The admission came as part of a moderated discussion at the “Demand Answers” town hall, which was hosted by local community activist group, Hate Out of Winston, and the Wake Forest Department of Communication’s Wake Speaks program. 

Organizers said they wanted to provide a space for discourse outside highly-regulated school board meetings.

“The real intention of the town halls has been to make sure that the public has as much genuine information as possible,” said Olivia Doyle, one of the event’s organizers. “What that looks like in practice is making sure that people who don’t have the time to come to a board meeting on a Tuesday night…have that access.” 

In August, the Board of Education authorized a sweeping reduction in force (RIF) across the district to patch the then $46 million budget hole. The deficit now sits at $13 million, but that’s largely in part to a series of private and public donations to the county. 

The organizers of the event, Hate Out of Winston, placed signs on the wall of the room, listing every WS/FCS employee who had been “riffed.” 

Richard Watts, another board member, joined Coone for the town hall. 

Watts concluded that the one lesson he’s learned from the last year was, “do not trust everybody.” 

“We’ve had closed sessions where tempers have really flared in closed sessions on many occasions, and even one occasion where they flared so much, I walked out,” Watts said. “What was said to me, I said, ‘I can’t take it anymore, and I walked out.’”

A member of the public later asked Watts if the “bullying” Coone described was affecting board operations.  

“The work is being done. Does that mean that during our closed sessions that sometimes voices are raised, or we get a little…yes. But at the end of the day, all 8 board members, I respect,” Watts said. “This board is not dysfunctional.”

“I might feel very different,” Coone said. “We had work that could have been done better if all members had been informed and engaged.” 

The board members were asked about their vote for August’s RIF. Coone voted against the measure while Watts supported it. Over 200 WS/FCS staff members have been laid off in the months since. 

“It has kept me up at night because I think about that. I do think about our staff, and it was probably one of the top reasons I could not raise my hand to vote for the RIF,” Coone said. 

“I felt that at that time, and still do, that we had to cut the bleeding,” Watts said.