Investigation will test DeKalb schools chief

Crawford Lewis started as an elementary school P.E. teacher and climbed steadily to the pinnacle of the DeKalb County school system.

He got there in 2004 amid the considerable wreckage left behind by deposed Superintendent Johnny Brown. Brown was brash, flashy and often came across as arrogant. Lewis was quieter, considerate, conciliatory.

"Humbled," Lewis said of himself when he took the job.

More than five years later, he may be humbled again.

Lewis abruptly took a leave of absence Thursday after investigators with the DeKalb district attorney's office served a search warrant at his home and at school system offices. The search was part of an investigation into possible wrongdoing involving multimillion-dollar school construction projects. Board members appointed Ramona Tyson, one of Lewis' cabinet members, as interim superintendent the same day.

Now a system facing an economic crisis also has a legal crisis on its hands. Parents are concerned: Where a steady hand is needed, there is suddenly doubt.

"My fear is that any decision now will be met with skepticism, even if it's the right thing for the students and the district," said DeKalb parent Ernest Brown, who supports Lewis. "We cannot let that happen."

The timing could not have been worse.

A new county report anticipates more than twice the expected drop in DeKalb property values, leaving a gaping $88 million hole in the system's budget for next school year.

With budget talks already under way, Lewis was scheduled Friday to talk about how to make the deepest cuts of his 33-year DeKalb career, including nearly 150 layoffs and the closing of four schools. By Friday, however, Lewis was on leave.

Officials canceled the meeting, and Tyson took over as interim superintendent. She and the district face extraordinary challenges — most of them fiscal — in the months ahead.

Lewis has not been charged with any crime, and he has said he did nothing wrong. Lewis himself prompted the DA's investigation after raising concerns about a high-ranking system official. Only on Thursday did it develop that Lewis may also be a target of the inquiry.

He has had missteps over his tenure but also big successes. That started five years ago, when the system turned to him for help — just as it always had when it faced a sticky issue or complicated policy.

Lewis joined DeKalb schools in 1977 and never left, working up the ranks. In his job application, he answered a question about how long he planned to stay by saying, "As long as possible [and] I can perform my duties with top-notch efficiency."

He spent his early days as a physical education teacher at Montgomery Elementary School. Known for his enthusiasm as well as for a self-deprecating sense of humor, he eventually took the principal's job at another school, Snapfinger Elementary.

Among other career honors, the system named him Principal of the Year in 1993. In 1994, he won a coveted $25,000 Milken Award, a national honor considered to be the Oscar of teaching.

Ten years later, he was the system's senior executive director for professional learning and student assignment. In that job, he coordinated DeKalb's complex school transfer programs, including transfers mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind law. He oversaw the lotteries for the system's magnet schools, those where parents often decried the selection process as unfair.

Still, Lewis' lifelong goal was to lead a school system. He thought he would leave DeKalb to do it. Then came the implosion.

It was October 2004. Board members, who two years earlier had hired Brown from Birmingham, paid the superintendent more than $400,000 to leave the job before his contract expired.

The board never considered any other candidates. Lewis had the credentials. More important, he had the respect of his peers.

With his contract signed. Lewis held public meetings around the county. He said he had landed a dream job and would work hard to live up to it. In less than a year, the school board voted to extend his contract and give him a raise to $215,000, up from $190,000. Brown had made $225,000. Lewis made progress cautiously, and was seen by some as a status quo hire, a caretaker.

But he wasn't. By the end of 2007, Lewis had emerged as a bold leader and risk taker.

DeKalb voters agreed to continue a 1 cent-on-the-dollar sales tax for school construction, despite an audit that found problems in the system's school construction program, including delays and probable overpayments for work. Some parents criticized what they said was a slow response to those delays and overpayments.

Lewis booted the system's construction management firm and hired industry veteran Patricia "Pat" Pope to oversee construction projects. The delays and overpayments subsided. "Pat Pope has really brought focus to this program," Lewis said at the time.

The school board approved a systemwide redistricting plan that included closing five small elementary schools, redrawing attendance lines for 18 other schools and moving several popular schools. Nothing like it had been done in DeKalb for decades. Lewis also won board approval to increase the system's school choice programs over the next four years, a move that for the first time involved boosting academics, not desegregation efforts.

His efforts were not perfect. He hired a human resources director who had a criminal past. Thirty-one DeKalb schools did not meet federal testing goals, the worst record in metro Atlanta.

Then came 2008. Board members directed Lewis early in the year to reduce staff — a goal that coincided with a sagging economy. By year's end, the board approved more than $20 million in reductions, representing some of the biggest cuts by a metro Atlanta system to that point.

The measures included eliminating 217 jobs, including 127 through layoffs. Pay raises already approved for that school year were erased. Central office administrators got hit with a 2 percent pay cut.

Lewis, by then making $240,000, turned down a 4.2 percent raise that he was contractually entitled to. The system also cut back busing for students who attended schools outside their neighborhood — about 5,600 of the school district's 99,600 students, including those in magnet schools, charter schools and academic theme schools or who transferred from lower-performing campuses.

By the beginning of 2009, Lewis sought an additional $16 million in cuts for this school year. Within two months, he proposed an $851.1 million general operations budget, a reduction of almost 5 percent. It included no raises.

Lewis had already talked with an investigator from the DA's office by then to answer questions about possible misconduct.

His purchase in 2007 of a school district car at a cut-rate price had come to light. He blamed Pat Pope for the deal. His school district credit card records showed multiple gas purchases on the same days. Lewis offered several explanations, including driving his wife, a cancer survivor, to her medical appointments. He then changed subjects, rattling off a list of allegations about Pope, who was now his chief operating officer.

Since then, the criminal investigation has appeared to focus on Pope and those close to her, including her husband, Tony Pope.

Authorities have been investigating whether Pope broke the law by steering contracts to her husband's architecture firm and two other construction companies where she has connections, documents show.

Early in the probe, Lewis continued to publicly support Pope even after he had privately told investigators that he had lost faith in her. "I just feel like Ms. Pope gives you half-truths," Lewis said during a taped interview with investigators. Still, he renewed her contract in February 2009, months after telling authorities that Pope had betrayed him and that he had enough negative information on Pope to let her go.

After investigators searched Pope's home and office in October, Lewis refused to speak publicly but removed Pope from her position and relegated her to special projects.

Meanwhile, amid the recession, stagnant wages and increased workloads for teachers and staff, board members approved a raise in January that increased Lewis' pay to $255,000. The move prompted protests at school board meetings. Faculty and staff came to work dressed in black.

Then came the shocking news that the investigation Lewis himself had sparked had turned on him, leading investigators literally to his front door.

They hauled computer hard drives and six boxes of items from the superintendent's home. They also searched the school district's headquarters and, for a second time, the building where Pat Pope once worked.

As it did the first time around, the district attorney's office got a judge to seal the court documents, which explain how it believes Lewis fits into the criminal case.

But the search warrant reveals basic details of what they were seeking, including Lewis' personal financial records and any records about gifts Lewis received from contractors or others who have gotten work from the school district.

Thursday evening, after an emergency executive session, the board announced the leader of the state's third-largest district had temporarily stepped aside.