Where is Chresal Threadgill?

On Friday, Oct. 15, at a football game between Williamson and Vigor high schools, shots were fired into the crowd. Five people sustained injuries, including three minors. Two of those injured are still in the hospital, and one is listed as being in guarded condition.

 A 19-year-old man, Jai Montrell Scott, turned himself in on Monday in connection to the shooting, and a 17-year-old juvenile was arrested on Monday as well. Police are still looking for the man they believe to be the shooter, 19-year-old Hezekiah Kaniel Belfon. He is considered to be armed and dangerous.

According to Mobile Police Chief Paul Prine, who was just confirmed as the city’s top cop last week, no clear motive has been established, but there was an altercation just before the shooting began.

Chief Prine was on the scene Friday night, answering questions from the media, and then held a press conference Monday.

Mayor Sandy Stimpson released a statement Saturday evening saying they would be “utilizing the resources of the Gulf Coast Technology Center, which is composed of 42 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, to ensure the security at future high school football games at Ladd-Peebles.” He said he has “charged the Mobile Police Department and the officers of the GCTC with assessing current security protocols at Ladd and where they failed.”

Ladd-Peebles Board Chair Ann Davis made comments to the media Monday, saying the last time this happened in 2019 it involved one of the same high schools (Williamson), and she questioned whether this was a “school system issue.”

The answer to that question is yes. Not that they are to blame for this, of course, but it is their issue to deal with. This was a high school football game between two of their schools. Their kids and their families were the ones who were injured or were at risk. Their kids are the ones who had to walk back into those very schools on Monday morning.

But where is Superintendent Chresal Threadgill, the man charged with overseeing both the education and safety of the kids in this entire system, in all of this?

Other than releasing a brief statement through a spokesperson Monday evening, nearly 72 hours after the incident, he has been nowhere to be found.

Reporters who were covering the game Friday night began texting members of the MCPSS communications team immediately following the incident for comment. With this being the second shooting at a football game at Ladd-Peebles in just two years involving two MCPSS schools, one would think the system would want to be out in front of this. One reporter was told he would have to contact another member of the communications team. A reporter who did, in fact, contact that member did not get a response for 48 hours.

It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, and we don’t know what was going on behind the scenes at the school system. But how could they not address this before kids at both Williamson and Vigor had to go back to school on Monday morning?

 As Chief Prine said, the shooter is still at large and no motive has been established yet. How could parents be sure this shooter wasn’t going to go back and finish what he started at one of these campuses on Monday? Why wasn’t Superintendent Threadgill out there with his own press conference addressing concerns or at the very least standing alongside Chief Prine at his?

Threadgill, though lauded as a great superintendent, as he was named Alabama’s Superintendent of the Year in 2020, has been the most invisible man to lead Alabama’s largest public school system in recent history.

It is no secret he does not like to do media. Any reporter in town can confirm this, and his staff will flat out tell you he doesn’t. And I am sure if he fell on the opposite end of the spectrum and was out in front of the cameras every opportunity he got, we would all call him a media-hungry “showboat.”

But there has to be some balance.

Especially in situations like this one, he needs to be out there and be AVAILABLE. He needs to be a calming and reassuring presence for his students, faculty and parents, while also providing vital information to our citizenry at large. This is a public school system funded by taxpayers, and there is an obligation to be open and accountable to the public. This may not be his favorite part of the job, but it is, in fact, part of the job.

The statement he put out via a spokesperson at 5:21 p.m. on Monday was only after being prodded by the media for days. And the bulk of the statement was spent pointing the finger back at Ladd for the security lapses. That is an issue that certainly needs to be sorted out, but does that give parents, coaches, faculty and students any comfort in the immediate aftermath of this? I don’t think so.

Perhaps if the communications staff was more accommodating and transparent, in general, his conspicuous absence would not be as noticeable. But leadership starts at the top and flows down, and it certainly has in this case. If it is not a story MCPSS is pushing, it is often almost impossible to get information that is not carefully curated from them. And they sometimes try to shut down stories on even the most innocuous topics.

The remaining minutes of the Vigor-Williamson game had to be played on Monday because it had not concluded before the shooting, and play was suspended. They relocated it to Theodore High School. Two veteran sports reporters who have covered high school football for decades went to cover it and were turned away. Obviously, it was very newsworthy because of what had transpired. But also because no spectators were allowed (which is understandable), it was especially important to have media there to cover the game itself. But they were denied entry and told it was because of “safety concerns.”

Give me a break!

As all reporters have to do when shut down by MCPSS for any story, they found a way around them to cover the conclusion of the game. But it’s just ridiculous, and sadly, has become very typical.

Earlier this year, sports reporters and broadcasters alike were told they would need to go through the communications department just to interview coaches. Because you know all of that “coach speak” about giving our best effort and playing for all four quarters can get quite controversial.

But it’s not just limited to sports coverage.

In October 2020, we did a big series on the 50th anniversary of the Birdie Mae Davis desegregation case, which was litigated for 34 years, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and is essentially what created the magnet school program here.

Obviously, that case is a huge part of not only the school system’s history but Mobile’s. In our reporting, we had a principal of a neighborhood school with a storied history excited to talk with us about this issue and her school, but then suddenly she said she couldn’t because MCPSS would not allow it.

And, of course, we wanted to sit down with Superintendent Threadgill and have an in-depth interview about what progress had been made and what work was still left to be done five decades after the case was resolved.

Seems like a pretty straightforward request and a topic you would think the superintendent would be happy to discuss with the local newspaper. It was a story recognizing a historic milestone but it was treated by MCPSS as some sort of hit piece. We were directed to email questions, and we would get written responses. Which we did, but obviously, you can’t really conduct a very good interview in this manner. And this has become the standard operating procedure with MCPSS.

And after the Ladd incident, as we tried to get comments from the school system and our superintendent on a story that grabbed headlines worldwide, we were once again told to email questions and answers would be provided. Our specific questions were never answered and all that was provided was a 246-word statement.

That’s just not good enough.

By all accounts, Superintendent Threadgill is doing a good job in many areas. But his invisibility and inaccessibility are starting to become a bigger story than any successes he may be enjoying. 

That’s really unfortunate but also very easy to change.