OXFORD – Many of those who attended Oxford’s last board of education meeting were under the impression they’d tabled two hot button topics: The matter of the high school principal’s tenure and the superintendent’s contract extension. According to draft minutes of the June 8 meeting, that was not the case.

Some community members were stunned to learn nearly a week after the June 8 meeting that, while Christine Pierce’s position in the high school was tabled, the extension of Superintendent Randall Squier’s contract through Sept. 1, 2011 had in fact been approved.

“Secretive” and “deceptive” were the words district resident Fred Bateman used to describe the board’s actions. Bateman had sent a letter to the board asking them to table the renewal of Squier’s contract until a petition he and other concerned members of the community were circulating could be presented to the board.

The letter was signed by not only Bateman, but six others, “on behalf of the hundreds of Oxford School District taxpayers who had already signed a petition” asking that the board reconsider before extending Squier’s contract.