Atlanta Public Schools laid out its case Friday for firing former F.L. Stanton Elementary School teacher Teresa Bell, who the district accused of participating in test cheating.
During a sometimes tense seven-hour hearing, APS attorneys said Bell changed student answers on Georgia's 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.
A state report released last year that unearthed evidence of widespread cheating in APS schools concluded 83 percent of F.L. Stanton's classes had so many wrong-to-right exam erasures that school officials must have been cheating. Bell, APS said Friday, was at the heart of it.
"Bell stayed late after school hours even though there was no reason to stay late," said APS attorney Glenn Darien. "Once the halls were absent of students, she and [Prinicpal Marlo Barber] sat in Barber's office, erasing answers..."
Bell has denied the charges.
The district's case so far relied largely on the testimony of Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents Janet Rhodes and Kristine Smalley. The agents, who interviewed Bell during the state's cheating investigation, testified that the teacher denied wrongdoing, but exhibited guilty behavior.
"She talked to us very calmly throughout the interview, but she became visibly shaken when she was confronted with questions about changed answers," Rhodes said.
Smalley testified that a defensive Bell evaded direct questions, shook uncontrollably and cried.
"She displayed characterstics that, for me, are indicative of lying."
The district's case hinges on what Bell refused to tell investigators.
Rhodes testified that she asked Bell to identify the person who told her to "erase answers." In response, Bell allegedly said that she was worried about losing her teaching certificate and, otherwise, "getting in trouble." But by not rejecting the premise of the question, the district said, Bell admitted wrongdoing.
Bell's attorney, B.A. Thomas, tore into both agents on cross-examination, questioning their memories, their conclusions, and confronting them with contrary evidence.
Such questioning brought the tribunal to a screeching halt, particularly when Thomas handed Rhodes a documentand asked a pointed question about it. Rhodes pushed the document away, and refused to answer, saying she would not testify to the contents of a document she had never seen. Thomas, Rhodes, and the hearing officer were soon talking over each other.
Similar disputes arose throughout the tribunal. By the afternoon, all parties agreed it would be impossible to finish the case in one day.
Bell is now scheduled to present her defense on July 13th.
The governor's special investigators, in an 800-plus page report, implicated about 180 Atlanta Public School System educators in the test-cheating scandal. Here is where those cases stand:
1 Number of educators whose recommended firing was not upheld by a tribunal.
10 Number of educators whose recommended firing has been upheld by a tribunal.
12 Number of educators recently notified they will be reinstated back to classrooms.
30 Number of educators named in the investigation who are still on the APS payroll, awaiting resolution.
127 Approximate number of educators named in the investigation who resigned or retired.
Source: Atlanta Public Schools
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