The high-level Atlanta Public Schools official accused of telling principals to send “go to hell” memos to state investigators thinks she has become a scapegoat in a systemwide cheating scandal.
“Absolutely, I really do,” Tamara Cotman, who was reassigned last week from a job supervising about two dozen schools, told Channel 2 Action News in an interview aired Friday. “And the sad thing is, there are a lot of people who were in that room who can corroborate what did and didn’t happen. What’s in that anonymous letter is not accurate.”
Cotman was referring to an anonymous letter, sent to the school district in December, that alleged she discouraged a group of principals from cooperating with a criminal investigation of cheating on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. The letter also said Cotman distributed papers with the heading “Go to hell” in a meeting of principals and told them to write why they thought the state investigators should be condemned.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on the episode Feb. 13. Cotman declined several requests for interviews from the AJC and had made no statements on the matter until she spoke with the television station, nearly two weeks after the allegation became public knowledge.
In the television interview, Cotman, 40, said she was “heartbroken” at being removed from a job she has held since 2004.
“I think the school system has been totally disingenuous with Ms. Cotman,” her lawyer, George Lawson, told the television station. “I think that they have run for the woods.”
A school district spokesman did not respond to the AJC’s request for comment Friday.
Cotman said she met with state investigators for eight hours Thursday. In the interview, she sought to put a fine point on her actions in the Nov. 17 meeting with principals.
She said she did pass out blank “go to hell” sheets — but did not speak disparagingly of state investigators.
She said she was right to encourage principals to vent their frustrations — but did not single out the investigators for condemnation.
“I would still recommend the strategy to principals,” Cotman said in the interview. “I’d had conversations with principals and teachers where they were beginning to harbor a lot of resentment about the way that they were being treated, allegedly.”
The Feb. 13 AJC article reported that the district was looking into Cotman’s actions, but had not notified state investigators. The state investigators said they consider such internal inquiries to be tantamount to obstruction and witness intimidation. District officials halted their inquiry after a judge ordered them to do so.
Cotman was reassigned Feb. 14 after she demoted a principal whom the district had questioned about the episode. Other school officials reinstated the principal, Jimmye Hawkins of Scott Elementary School.
In an interview with the AJC, Hawkins confirmed the account in the anonymous letter about Cotman’s actions with the “go to hell” memos. She said she did not write the letter.
Lawson, Cotman’s lawyer, said Friday in an e-mail to the AJC that his client “did nothing wrong at the meeting, made no attempt to obstruct the state investigation and certainly did not retaliate against Ms. Hawkins.”
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