It is interesting to go back and read all that went on around getting rid of McHenry The Online Petition:
“We the undersigned, demand that the Board of Trustees of the Mt. Diablo Unified School District remove Mr. Gary McHenry, the current District Superintendent, from his position. Under his management the District continues to be impacted by, among other things, errors in budgeting, inability to settle employee contracts, lack of long range strategic planning, historically low employee morale, poor communications, poor customer service, and lack of community trust. Superintendent Gary McHenry cannot correct the problems of the Mt. Diablo Unified School District and cannot win back the employee spirit and community trust. Superintendent Gary McHenry must be replaced immediately”.

Deja vu!

Or in the 2/4/08 Clayton Pioneer, Mayo staunchly defending McHenry and his successes while Eberhart/Strange are calling on the people to finish him off.

Read back on the Eberhart/Whitmarsh targets and campaign promises… and

When you stop laughing, take that Petition and change the name to Steven Lawrence. You will not have to delete a single one of the complaints, but you can add pages of new ones. Don’t forget to add the several million dollars of our various grant dollars, down the drain.

Once again, the students suffer under the same lack of Board oversight and due diligence that we had in 2008–but we can now add a gross lack of transparency and accountability.

He is scrambling to keep his bonds from becoming another “gate”. How many advanced refundings will it take to be able to sell the remaining bonds? How many times will they get away with selling small lots of bonds to close the gap up to $60? At some point they will just give up and REALLY break that political promise of not raising the voter’s tax rate (of course they have already broken that promise but not enough to enrage the community). Quite frankly the alternative is worse – they could continue to sell capital appreciation bonds and really sock it to the taxpayer. Before Gary Eberhart goes off in another school board meeting about how much money they are saving the taxpayers he may want to take a class (on his dime) on how bonds work, time value of money, net present value, how to hire a Superintendent.

WAM: Did you ever meet McHenry? He was not incompetent. He could not have lasted as long as he did if he were. Being superintendent of MDUSD is not an easy job. Unfortunately, neither McHenry nor Lawrence embraced open, transparent, responsive government. I recently met Terry Koehne, the PIO for the San Ramon Valley school district, and was struck by the difference in their approach to their community. They actually survey the community to find out what the public thinks they are doing right and where they could improve. MDUSD, on the other hand, doesn’t ask and isn’t very responsive when people give unsolicited opinions.

Anon: There are still people who staunchly support McHenry and feel he was treated unfairly. I hear both sides. I agree there was more to his departure than not seeing eye to eye with the board. He made mistakes and the IRS penalty is one of his legacies. I didn’t mean to minimize the problems that arose under his tenure and appreciate your perspective.

Lawrence is every bit as incompetent and is extremely manipulative, dishonest and narciccistic as well.

Nothing has changed. The school board made the mistake of hiring the wrong individual as Superintendent. It is 100% their fault and the BIGGEST mistake they have made to date. This mistake encompasses all. Lawrence possesses very few of the qualities that the School Board SAID they wanted in a Superintendent.

So while it is easy to point out McHenry’s flaws I suspect many of the problems, past and present, lay at the feet of the three remaining Board members.