Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis replaced four area superintendents with principals Monday and former school board chairman Khaatim Sherrer El announced his resignation in the continuing fallout from a cheating scandal that has overwhelmed Atlanta Public Schools.
"I just concluded in the end it just shouldn't be this hard to do the right things for kids," El said, his voice wavering with emotion as he fought back tears. "I failed to protect thousands of children who come from homes like mine. It remains to be seen, no matter how deep this thing goes, whether the soul of Atlanta has been stirred."
El had been removed last month as school board chairman but able to retain his seat on the board. El has accepted a new job as chief of staff for the Foundation for Newark's Future in Newark, N.J. He was one of the first on the board last year to question APS whether was doing enough to respond to cheating concerns.
The four removed from area superintendent jobs -- Sharon Davis-Williams, Michael Pitts, Robin Hall and Tamara Cotman -- were implicated in the scandal. Davis did not say whether they will remain with the district.
Davis also said that two year-round elementary schools named in a state investigative report made public last week will receive new principals before classes start Wednesday. Keisha Gibbons, former assistant principal at Centennial Place Elementary School, was named principal of Boyd Elementary; she replaces Emalyn Foreman. The new principal for Hutchinson Elementary will be named Tuesday, Davis said.
The staff moves were the first by Davis in response to a test-cheating scandal that has implicated 178 employees in 44 schools and could result in criminal charges. And there may be more people involved, according to the two men who led the state investigation.
Davis did not offer further changes, though more certainly will come. Given employees' contractual and legal rights to due process, it will take at least four months if not longer to address all employees involved.
Elevated to area superintendent positions were Donell Underdue Jr., principal of Brown Middle School; Danielle Battle, principal of King Middle School; Elizabeth Bockman, principal of Inman Middle School, and David White, principal of E. Rivers Elementary School.
Monday night's meeting was the first in which staff and parents had a chance to address board members publicly. For an hour, the standing-room-only crowd berated and pleaded for district officials to regain control even as they defended some of the schools that investigators said cheated the most.
Chandra Gallashaw, whose daughters attend Parks Middle and Gideons Elementary schools, challenged the board for not acting sooner.
"My daughters are ready to go to work with these teachers," Gallashaw said. "I'm tired of this mess."
Former APS teacher Graham Balch said his first job at Coan Middle School lasted only a few weeks before a run-in with the principal got him transferred to a different campus. Investigators said that Principal Andre Williams knew of cheating, though he denied it.Balch taught for four years at Grady High School until he left the district in May. He is now an assistant principal at a DeKalb charter school.
"I called a teacher who I think is the best teacher I ever met, and what we realized is that high performers in APS try to keep a low profile," Balch said. "They keep saying they never heard teachers voice concerns. Well, the reason they didn't hear teachers voice concerns was because they were silenced."
The 800-page report released Tuesday by Gov. Nathan Deal castigated the district and former Superintendent Beverly Hall for a deeply embedded culture of cheating, cover-ups and obstruction. Hall stressed annual academic targets by whatever means necessary, investigators said, ignoring mounting evidence of misconduct over the past decade and willfully hindering the investigation by destroying or altering complaints.
Former Attorney General Mike Bowers, appearing earlier Monday with former DeKalb County District Attorney Bob Wilson before the Atlanta Rotary Club, said in their first public remarks since their report was released last week that there are other educators the investigation didn’t catch.
"I will guarantee you there are more of them than that [178]," Bowers said. Not all alleged wrong-doers could be identified, he added, "because we ran into … a wall of silence that was created by an atmosphere of secrecy and intimidation."
Staff writer David Ibata contributed to this article.
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