A former Atlanta schools administrator who pleaded guilty in the districtwide test-cheating case will receive a two-month severance payment from College Park, where she worked for less than four months as the city’s human resources director.
Millicent Few started her College Park job Jan. 22. She left the position earlier this month, about two weeks after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution began asking questions about her hiring.
VIDEO: Previous coverage of the APS cheating case
City officials have not said why Few left the post, only that it was by "mutual agreement." They said it was not related to the newspaper's inquiries.
Few resigned in a two-paragraph letter to the city manager.
“I find it necessary [to] tender my resignation from the position of director of human resources and risk management, effective close of business today,” she wrote in a May 11 letter, which the AJC obtained Wednesday through a public records request.
She will be paid a severance payment of 60 days of salary and benefits, according to city documents. Her starting annual salary was $87,000.
Mayor Jack Longino said last week that providing a payment to a departing employee is not unusual.
“The last few years we have always given a pretty good severance to those who we mutually agreed to disagree,” he said.
Four years ago, Few pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of malfeasance in office in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating case after making a deal with prosecutors instead of being tried on two felony charges. Prosecutors said that Few, as the former head of human resources for APS, participated in a cheating cover-up at the direction of then-Superintendent Beverly Hall.
As part of Few’s plea deal, she agreed to serve as a key witness in the case against other educators who went to trial.
Prosecutors went on to win racketeering convictions against 11 educators, who conspired to change students' answers on standardized tests and then received bonuses and raises based on the falsely inflated test scores.
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