Published: August 21, 2026
MONROVIA — Teachers at the Monrovia Consolidated School System demanded the removal of Superintendent Augurie E. Stevens on Thursday, protesting at the system’s central office over payroll and salary commitments that a signed agreement required the government to meet by May 2025 and that the teachers say remain unmet 15 months later.
“We are telling you to step down,” MCSS Teachers Association President Augustine N. Nyormui said, directing the demand at Stevens. “The madam got to go.”
The commitments stem from a resolution signed on March 27, 2025, titled “Resolving Educational Issues through Consultation, Collaboration and Dialogue,” which ended a teachers’ go-slow and the student protests that followed. It gave the government until the end of April 2025 to adjust the salaries of employees who had upgraded their academic credentials, and until the end of May 2025 to place qualified volunteer workers on the government payroll.
Nyormui said Thursday that some people who have worked for MCSS for four or five years are still off the payroll and questioned what he described as preferential treatment for some newly recruited employees. The association also alleged that MCSS has overlapping administrative positions, including two people serving as directors of administration.
MCSS Public Relations Officer Samuel Nyenuh disputed most of that in a telephone interview with The Liberian Investigator. On the volunteers, he said figures from Civil Service Agency Director-General Josiah F. Joekai show 217 processed for June and July, with another 80 in process.
“There is no way that MCSS will have single-handedly undermined the process by putting extra people on the payroll,” Nyenuh said.
The volunteer count has been contested since 2025, when MCSS submitted a list of 614 volunteers to the CSA and the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning. The system had previously recorded 104, and the gap triggered a verification exercise that the March agreement required MCSS to cooperate with, on the understanding that workers found legitimate and qualified would be regularized.
On the administrative posts, Nyenuh said Peter Marshall is the system’s only director of administration and that Miatta Sheriff, whom the protesters also named, is an administrative secretary in the superintendent’s office. He said Marshall has reached retirement age and Sheriff is being considered to succeed him but does not hold the position now.
“MCSS ain’t got two directors for administration,” Nyenuh said.
Nyenuh conceded the salary point.
“They want to be paid in accordance with their qualification. Granted. That’s a genuine count,” he said.
Nyormui said teachers’ pay and welfare, including that of security personnel, has to move alongside spending on buildings.
“When you’re not building the human resource capacity, when you’re not building the human resource, you want to build a school? The building will just be empty,” Nyormui said.
He said the association will put its concerns to Joekai in writing and press for government intervention, and that teachers would continue pursuing the demands peacefully.
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