Kathy Augustine, a former Atlanta school official who was going to start Monday as superintendent of a district in suburban Dallas, has been placed on paid leave one day into her tenure, according to the Dallas Morning News. The board is looking to find out more about Augustine’s role in the Atlanta cheating scandal; she was deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction there before leaving for DeSoto ISD in Texas.
Erroll Davis, the interim superintendent in Atlanta, has replaced four central office executives who were implicated in the cheating investigation report. Two principals also named in the report have been replaced. There is no news yet about whether those educators will remain with the district.
Khaatim Sherrer El, an Atlanta school board member, resigned Monday. Maureen Downey, whose excellent Get Schooled blog on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website has provided running coverage of the cheating investigation, has a link to El’s resignation letter. In it, El asks, “How did we—the elected officials, business leaders, and the system itself—become complicit in, through our actions and in our silence, a deal with the Devil that sold out a generation of children for the sake of the city’s image and the district’s “perception of success?”
UPDATE (7/15): A few more events prompted by the investigation: some Atlanta schools may be forced to return close to $1 million in federal awards that they received for having high test scores. Plus, a district school board member is calling for former Superintendent Beverly Hall to return the bonuses that she personally received based on the district’s supposed academic gains. Both stories come from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.