WS Chronicle

By Miranda Jones 

As educators, we try to teach our students that accountability is not just about punishment; it’s about understanding, repairing harm, and learning how to move forward together. Think MTSS and the Behavior Matrix that many loathe and some love. We ask them to think critically about cause and effect, to weigh outcomes, and to consider what it truly means to make things right. 

Today, our entire community is invited to engage in that same critical thinking as we examine two profound failures of public trust in Winston-Salem. These are not just news stories; they are our community’s case studies, and they present a crucial, if uncomfortable, lesson in justice. 

Our first case study is the administrative failure within Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. Under the leadership of former superintendent Tricia McManus, our district has been driven into a projected budget deficit of over $42 million and counting. The consequences of this mismanagement are not abstract numbers; they are deeply human and close to home. The effect is the loss of over 200 of our colleagues – talented teachers, dedicated support staff, and essential personnel who play an important part in our student’s education. The harm is measured in cancelled programs, larger class sizes, and a diminished learning environment for thousands of children. For this institutional collapse, the consequence for the individual at the helm was a quiet departure to a new position in Florida. There has been no restitution for the educators and classified staff who lost their livelihoods or for the students who lost their resources. Accountability, it seems, falls only on them. 

Our second case study is the criminal conviction of former City Councilman Derwin Montgomery, who pleaded guilty to embezzling funds from a homeless shelter he directed. This was a personal betrayal of trust, a clear and tangible wrong. His consequence, following a probation violation for his inability to pay restitution, is a jail cell. 

In the classroom, we would ask our students to compare these two outcomes. Not to equate the actions – one is mismanagement, the other is theft – but to analyze the consequences of the response. The critical lesson here lies in the disparity of our accountability models. For a systemic failure that cost 200 people their jobs and compromised the education of a generation of students, we see a resignation. For an individual crime, we see incarceration – a response that perpetuates a devastating cycle, especially for Black men. 

This is not a theoretical problem. The data tells a clear story. According to The Sentencing Project, Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of white Americans. Mr. Montgomery’s situation is a textbook example of how this disparity is maintained. By jailing him for his inability to pay restitution, we strip him of any power to earn the funds to pay that debt. It’s a policy that criminalizes poverty and ensures failure. The NAACP has noted that a criminal record can reduce the likelihood of a job offer by nearly 50% – an effect that is twice as large for Black applicants. We are not just punishing an individual; we are feeding a system of mass incarceration that, if current trends continue, will imprison one in five Black men born today. 

The question we must ask ourselves, as a community, is: does this response repair the harm? Jailing Mr. Montgomery does not repay the refuge he wronged. In fact, a 2018 federal report confirmed that the vast majority of restitution is never collected precisely because offenders are stripped of any meaningful ability to pay it. His incarceration comes at the taxpayer’s expense while providing no restoration to the victims. Meanwhile, the immense educational harm caused by the school system’s financial collapse goes entirely unrepaired. 

This is not a call to absolve anyone of responsibility. It is a call to be better educators and learners in practicing justice. It is a demand that we rethink “accountability” not as a synonym for punishment, but as a commitment to restoration, a restoration back to community. 

Miranda Jones is a founding member of Hate Out of Winston.