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A Further Examination of Mike Miles’ Relationship With Jennifer Sprague

By Tim Rogers |

Update (6/14/12): After speaking with the public information officer at Harrison County’s District 2, it makes sense to me why I only got two email exchanges in response to my open-records request. The school district is small and doesn’t have the money or server space to automatically back up more than two weeks of emails. Also, Jennifer Sprague’s last day with the district was on or about May 24 (because she used up vacation time to end her tenure there). Before she left, she cleaned out all her email.

Original item: I don’t understand any of this. DISD’s new superintendent, Mike Miles, hires his old communications chief from Colorado Springs, Jennifer Sprague, to work in Dallas. He gives her a $100,000 raise. Everyone goes, “Wha?” Miles defends the decision by saying that no one would complain if Sprague were older and more experienced and a dude. Plus, he says, he’s never even had coffee with Sprague. That’s insane. You’re the boss and you’ve never had coffee with your top communications person? NBC 5 got copies of Miles’ expense reports and found that Miles and Sprague — have had lunch. Of course they have! And there’s nothing wrong with that. Or with having coffee together. Why would Miles say stuff like this? Watch the NBC report, and then jump for something else interesting I found through an open-records request.


Probably about the same time NBC was asking for Miles’ expense reports, I was asking Miles’ old school district in Colorado Springs for every email sent directly between Miles and Sprague from February 1, 2012, to current day (excepting those emails where other recipients were included). I figured when I got all the emails, I’d need to put an army of interns on the project, ask them to comb through thousands of records to see if they contained anything interesting.

You know how many emails I got? Two. Exactly two email exchanges. One was initiated Saturday, June 9; the other was initiated Monday, June 11. Neither was of any interest.

I am astounded that over the course of four and a half months, a superintendent would have no direct email contact with his chief communications person. So astounded, in fact, that I find it hard to believe.

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