A Fulton County judge has ordered Atlanta Public Schools to halt an inquiry involving a high-ranking school official after state investigators accused the district of misleading them, hiding evidence and retaliating against a witness, according to documents filed Monday.
The temporary restraining order — signed by Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall just before 10 p.m. Sunday — provided a sharp answer to the district’s defiant pledge Friday to continue its investigation of Tamara Cotman, a regional superintendent who is accused of commanding principals to tell GBI agents to “go to hell.”
The state investigators, appointed in August to examine evidence of widespread tampering with state tests in Atlanta schools, asked the district last week to stop internal investigations related to cheating. The district refused and the investigators took the matter to court over the weekend.
School board members on Monday night instructed their lawyers to seek to settle the dispute by entering into legal “consent decree” agreements with state investigators. They proposed that the school system would agree to stop its Cotman investigation and cooperate fully with investigators, who would in turn to drop their request for a restraining order.
“We stand by our commitment to comply with the governor’s special investigators,” board Chairman Khaatim Sherrer El said after the board took two separate, unanimous votes that included little discussion. The votes came after members met behind closed doors for nearly three hours.
In the court documents filed Monday, state investigators detailed what they perceived as multiple attempts to obstruct their inquiry and frighten educators into silence.
The explosive allegations reached all the way up the district chain of command: The investigators said Cotman told a principal, who she thought had complained about the “go to hell” meeting, that Superintendent Beverly Hall and Deputy Superintendent Kathy Augustine had approved of a demotion.
The district’s insistence on interviewing the principal and other witnesses to the episode, which occurred Nov. 17, has had a chilling effect, the state investigators said. The school district has been “withholding evidence and intimidating witnesses whose unvarnished testimony could lead to the discovery of how much upper-level APS administrators know about the widespread cheating,” the investigators said in court documents.
Midday Monday, the district issued a confusing response.
A spokesman told Channel 2 Action News that Hall released a statement saying, “the investigations into both claims against Ms. Cotman were temporarily suspended on Wednesday Feb. 16, 2011 pending resolution of who should investigate with the special investigators, and have not been resumed to date.” Hall also said the district would honor the order and continue to cooperate with state investigators.
But the statement appeared to directly contradict school officials’ actions last week, according to the investigators, as well as the defiant stance they took Friday.
School-district attorney Veleter Mazyck had e-mailed a state investigator Wednesday saying, “Investigation suspended per request. Will respond further later today.”
Just under four hours later, however, an attorney the district hired to investigate Cotman walked into a school to interview another witness to the episode, legal documents said. The witness, who the investigators called “stressed and fearful,” told the attorney she did not want to participate because she feared retaliation.
Two days later, lawyers for the district sent the investigators a letter refusing to halt the Cotman inquiry because the district had a right to scrutinize and discipline its employees.
Asked about the district’s mixed messages, Geremy Gregory, an attorney working with the investigators, said “our application and the attorneys’ letters speak for themselves. Everything will be settled Friday with Judge Schwall.”
The judge scheduled a hearing for Friday to consider further evidence.
Cotman said in an e-mail Monday that she was consulting her lawyer. The lawyer did not respond to requests for an interview.
Hall attended the school board meeting but left without comment.
Tension between district officials and the three state investigators that had simmered for months erupted in public last week after news reports that Cotman and Augustine, the deputy superintendent, had separately disparaged the investigation.
In legal filings, the state investigators — Mike Bowers, Bob Wilson and Richard Hyde — also alleged that the district suppressed internal documents they had requested. Officials provided “multiple and changing” explanations for doing so, records said.
On Feb. 10, for instance, Mazyck, the district’s general counsel, said she had “double-checked” and found no additional complaints to give investigators. Then on Feb. 16, she notified them that the district had 34 more relevant files to share. The district never turned over the Cotman complaint and never notified investigators of its existence, they said.
Mazyck told the Atlanta school board that the district left out the Cotman complaint because it was not related to the 2009 cheating investigation. But the investigators said in their legal documents that former Gov. Sonny Perdue’s executive order did not limit their investigation to cheating-related events that year.
For months the investigators have warned Hall that any efforts to investigate cheating-related matters would interfere with their work and potentially intimidate witnesses. “APS has shown its willingness to ‘investigate’ and then discipline witnesses who report crimes by APS personnel to law enforcement and the special investigators,” the investigators wrote to the judge.
In an interview Friday with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the principal demoted after the Cotman meeting described what she called “a pretty toxic environment.”
Jimmye Hawkins of Scott Elementary was one of the dozen school leaders whom Cotman summoned to the Nov. 17 meeting. Hawkins became the interim principal at Scott last August after the district reassigned her predecessor, Roxianne Smith, and 11 others for the duration of the cheating investigation.
Hawkins said Cotman opened the meeting by berating state investigators and telling the principals to write the “go to hell” memos, which Cotman later ripped up. Hawkins said Cotman referred to the investigation as “foolishness” and described GBI agents’ conducting interviews at schools as “lawlessness.” The principals, Hawkins said, were told to not offer any information to the agents unless they specifically asked for it.
“It was open contempt against the GBI,” Hawkins said.
She said she did not write the anonymous letter reporting the episode that arrived in the superintendent’s office on Dec. 9.
On Jan. 21, Hawkins received an e-mail — marked “privileged and confidential” — from Mazyck, notifying her and another principal that an attorney would interview them about an anonymous complaint. The second principal, Hawkins said, is a friend of Cotman’s, so she assumed Cotman also knew about the interview.
After her interview with the attorney, Hawkins e-mailed Mazyck saying she feared retaliation. The following day, Cotman came to Hawkins’ school, unannounced, to conduct an inspection. Cotman criticized displays of students’ work and said Hawkins needed to hold teachers accountable.
Just before noon on Feb. 11, Hawkins said, Cotman summoned her to a meeting. Cotman told her she was being relieved of duty at Scott and would be transferred to her former job as instructional specialist at W.T. Jackson Elementary. Hawkins said Cotman told her to clear out her office and relinquish keys to the school by 5 p.m. — and to leave without telling her staff.
Hawkins’ departure during school hours, however, elicited tears from her and her colleagues, leaving her feeling “publicly humiliated,” the investigators related.
Later that day, Channel 2 Action News reported on an AJC investigation of Cotman’s instructions to the principals. By the next morning, Mazyck had notified Hawkins that she would remain Scott’s interim principal.
On Feb. 14, a day after the AJC’s article appeared, the district reassigned Cotman. Hawkins went to work as usual.
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