Tonya Gordon Smith

On September 10, 2025, five members of BREC’s executive team — Superintendent Janet Simmons, Chief Legal Officer Aneatra Boykin, Chief Human Resources Officer Johanna Landreneau, HR Director Corey Luttrell, and HR Assistant Director Shanda Crosby — met privately to decide on my termination. My immediate supervisor, Raharold Lawson, who would normally have direct input into such a decision, was not present at that meeting. Despite this, he was later directed to execute and sign off on my termination without ever personally discussing the matter with HR or myself.

 

Following this, I exercised my right to appeal under the only policy outlined in the BREC employee handbook. However, my appeal process was deliberately undermined. I submitted multiple public records requests beginning on September 11, seeking documents necessary for my defense. BREC failed to provide those records within the legal timeframe. The documents were not made available until October 3, after my hearing deadline had already passed — effectively preventing me from preparing an adequate defense for my first appeal.

 

In addition to this, I later discovered that the confidential evidence and documents I submitted for my defense were shared by BREC staff with their legal counsel, who then included my materials in their own evidence binder and presented them to the HR Complaint Resolution Committee against me — without my authorization. This misuse of my private submissions violated both ethical standards and the integrity of the appeal process.

 

The cumulative effect of these actions has been devastating — not only to my career and reputation but also to my faith in the fairness of the system. The deliberate withholding of records, the exclusion of my supervisor from the termination decision, and the unauthorized use of my defense documents all point to a systematic attempt to deny me due process and to silence my efforts to defend myself.