School board member’s texts, mailers were mistake, board chair says in public rebuke.

School board member Will Nash made a series of mistakes in sending campaign texts to parents and a survey mailer, Fayette County school board chairwoman Stephanie Spires said in a public rebuke at Monday night’s board meeting.

“To say that I am disappointed is an understatement,” Spires said during the board meeting as she addressed Nash’s recent actions and the controversy they created. Spires said school board members are held to a higher standard.

“The actions of Mr. Nash and the subsequent investigation and the media inquiries are a distraction and have taken valuable resources such as staff time and dollars away from our children,” Spires said.

“My hope is that by being transparent this evening we can move forward as a community,” she said.

Nash, running in the first school board district to keep his appointed seat, said that he thought he was following appropriate policies in both instances and on the mailer, following the counsel of a board attorney and an expert.

However, Nash said in hindsight, he would “do things dramatically different or not all” in some instances.

Nash is opposed in the first district by Christy Morris, who last week called for an investigation into Nash’s actions.

The controversy began last week, when Nash sent out a survey mailer using the district’s preferred mailing rate.

Spires said in sending what Nash has described as a non-campaign mailer, Nash did not contact a postmaster to see if he could use the district’s mailing rate as the board counsel recommended and instead used the advice of someone from the direct mailing service he had hired. Nash did use the district’s preferred mailing rate on the survey, which he said was not a campaign survey.

In the second incident, Nash sent out individual, campaign-related text messages using parent contact information he received from an Open Records request to the district. Spires reiterated that district officials should not have given that information to him, echoing a statement from the district last week.

However she said the information he received from the district was public.

As a board member, Nash was required to ask the superintendent for the information, Spires said. Nash had said he was asking for the information as a citizen.

“As school board members, we must recognize that we are never seen as typical citizens in this community,” Spires said.

Nash said it was only after many conversations at the district level that he realized he should have made a request to the superintendent for the information and took responsibility for “that discrepancy.”

As for the mailer, he still contends that he sought and followed the advice of counsel and additionally consulted with an expert in the field.

He said he thought the entire board could use the results of the survey. He said he was up front about no public tax dollars being used for the mailer, which district officials confirmed.

But he said he apologized for the distraction that his actions have caused.

He said he disappointed board members, the public, constituents, himself and his family for the “embarrassing incident” or series of events.

Nash, who apologized to Spires, said he had learned a lot from the experience.

“I can only strive to continue to do better either in my official capacity as a board member or simply as an individual,” he said.

This story was originally published October 14, 2019 at 9:25 PM.