Former APS board member: Beverly Hall bossed board

The chair of the Atlanta Public Schools search committee that identified Beverly Hall as a potential new Atlanta superintendent was in favor of hiring her.

“Of course, hindsight influences one’s view of the situation,” former board member Anne Harper said Tuesday in court.

Hall was indicted in connection with the Atlanta test-cheating scandal but is not standing trial with the other 12 defendants in court now. She is currently being treated for Stage IV breast cancer.

Harper, who was elected to the board in 1993, said the board struggled to find a candidate to replace interim superintendent Betty Strickland.

“There was a paucity of talent out there,” she said.

Hall was initially hired at a $165,000 base salary in 1999 and had the potential to earn bonuses based on state test scores and other criteria. (Current Superintendent Meria Carstarphen earns a $375,000 base salary.)

Harper described a quickly deteriorating relationship between Hall and the school board. Harper said Hall said negative things about the board “from the day she got there,” told board members not to visit schools, and didn’t want them talking to parents or principals.

“Who was Hall’s boss?” prosecutor Clint Rucker asked her.

“Ostensibly the board was,” Harper said.

“But she was telling you what you could and could not do?”

“That was the problem,” Harper said.

Test answers given - 11:40 a.m.

A former Atlanta Public Schools student testified Tuesday that her third grade teacher gave her answers to questions on state tests.

“I would raise my hand if I don’t get a question and I would get one answer told to me but that would be it,” the girl, now 17, said. The girl is the daughter of Justina Collins, who testified earlier Tuesday about questioning district officials regarding her daughter’s performance. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not naming her due to a court order.

Taking the stand in a black dress and pearls, the girl smiled at lawyers and the jury. But she said she didn’t want to name the teacher who gave her the answers because she didn’t want to get anyone “in trouble.”

The girl, who struggled in school and had the lowest reading scores in her third grade class, excelled on state tests that year. Even now, she remembers getting her test results, she said.

“I always barely meet all my tests still until this day,” she said. “I was happy, I was like, I guess I finally put my mind into it and did a great job”

The next year, when she took state tests, she felt differently.

“It seemed harder,” she said.

Some kids “just do well” - 10 a.m.

Justina Collins was puzzled when her daughter passed state tests in third grade after struggling the entire school year at Cascade Elementary School. She met with the school’s principal and her daughter’s teacher to get to the bottom of it.

“Some kids just do well on tests when they don’t do well throughout the course of the school year,” Principal Alfonso Jessie told her, Collins said Tuesday morning in the first day of testimony in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial.

Twelve former Atlanta schools employees are on trial accused of participating in a conspiracy to cheat on state standardized tests.

Collins has become a reluctant spokeswoman for APS parents over the past year. She didn’t want to get involved, but prosecutors issued a subpoena compelling her to testify to the grand jury, and then District Attorney Paul Howard asked her to appear at a press conference announcing the indictment.

Collins wasn’t satisfied with the Cascade principal’s answer. Collins, then a housecleaner who was homeless and struggling financially, took MARTA to the district’s central office and asked to meet with “someone in charge.” After a long wait, she met with four women and described her concerns. On the way out, former APS superintendent Beverly Hall met her in the hallway.

When asked what Hall said, Collins testified, “She basically said nothing could be done at this time,” but to contact the district if she had further questions.

Collins’ daughter continued to struggle in school through the years. Collins has since moved her daughter and a son to the Marietta City Schools, where her daughter is progressing, she said. Her daughter, now 17, is in the 11th grade but reads at an eighth grade level, she said.