Dukes-Walton v. Atlanta Indep. Sch. Sys.

336 Ga.App. 175

784 S.E.2d 37

DUKES–WALTON

v.ATLANTA INDEPENDENT SCHOOL SYSTEM.

No. A15A2296.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

March 11, 2016.

Sherry Hall Culves, Atlanta, Canon Brown Hill, Sharon Hurt Reeves, Macon, for Appellee.

ELLINGTON, Presiding Judge.

Selena Dukes–Walton, following our grant of her application for discretionary review, appeals from the order of the Superior Court of Fulton County affirming the decision of the Georgia Board of Education upholding the termination of Dukes–Walton's employment contract by the Atlanta Board of Education ("Local Board"). Dukes–Walton contends that the superior court erred because the evidence was insufficient to support the charges against her. She also contends that the superior court erred because the decision of the Local Board was arbitrary and capricious, based on inadmissible evidence, and violated her right to due process. We affirm for the reasons set forth below.

The record shows that by letter dated March 29, 2012, the superintendent of the Atlanta Independent School System ("APS") notified Dukes–Walton under the Fair Dismissal Act of Georgia, OCGA § 20–2–940 et seq., that he was recommending that the Local Board terminate her employment contract on the statutory grounds of willful neglect of duties, immorality, and other good and sufficient cause, as well as other grounds.¹ APS charged that Dukes–Walton failed her duties as principal and knew or should have known about testing improprieties during the administration of the Spring 2009 Criterion Referenced Competency Test ("CRCT"), and that, among other things, her actions and inactions resulted in the misrepresentation of the evaluation of her students to the Georgia Department of Education as to the results of the 2009 CRCT. A hearing on the charges was held before a tribunal, which, by a preponderance of the evidence, found the charged violations of immorality and other good and sufficient cause. The tribunal did not find that Dukes–Walton committed the charged violation of willful neglect of duties. The tribunal affirmed the recommendation by the superintendent that Dukes–Walton's employment contract be terminated.

The Local Board adopted the tribunal's findings of fact and terminated Dukes–Walton's employment. The Georgia Board of Education ("State Board") affirmed that decision on appeal. Dukes–Walton appealed the decision of the State Board to the superior court, which affirmed.

The superior court and the State Board, in reviewing a decision of a local board, act as appellate bodies applying an "any evidence" rule to the facts of the case.

See Moulder v. Bartow County Bd. of Ed., 267 Ga.App. 339, 340, 599 S.E.2d 495 (2004). "[T]he superior court should not interfere with a local board's administration of its schools unless the board has grossly abused its discretion or acted arbitrarily or contrary to law." (Footnote omitted.) Clinch County Bd. of Ed. v. Hinson, 247 Ga.App. 33, 36(1), 543 S.E.2d 91 (2000). Like the State Board and the superior court, this Court "applies the ‘any evidence’ standard of review to the record supporting the initial decision of [a] Local Board." (Citations omitted.) Chattooga County Bd. of Ed. v. Searels, 302 Ga.App. 731, 732, 691 S.E.2d 629 (2010). We presume, absent clear evidence to the contrary, that the acts of a local board are not arbitrary and capricious. See King v. Worth County Bd. of Ed., 324 Ga.App. 208, 749 S.E.2d 791 (2013).

Viewed in the light most favorable to the Local Board's decision,² the evidence shows that Dukes–Walton was the principal of Slater Elementary School during the administration of the 2009 CRCT. The CRCT is a standardized test given to Georgia students in the first through the eighth grades. The test is designed to measure how well students at each grade level had acquired knowledge and skills within the state's curriculum. The Governor's Office of Student Achievement ("GOSA") conducted a state-wide analysis of erasures on the answer sheets used in the 2009 CRCT and "flagged" those classrooms in which the number of answers changed from wrong to right was unusually high. The GOSA report flagged 30.3 percent of the classes at Slater Elementary.

At the tribunal hearing, APS offered expert testimony from an applied statistician, Mary Beth Walker, who had reviewed the statistical techniques used in GOSA's erasure report. Walker testified that the GOSA report used a conservative measure that flagged only those classrooms in which the chance that the number of wrong-to-right erasures occurred without adult intervention was 1 in 1000. Walker opined that there was no credible explanation other than that cheating occurred at Slater Elementary.

APS also offered direct evidence of cheating. The parties stipulated that Ellen Grant, who taught at Slater Elementary during the 2008–2009 school year, cheated on 2009 CRCT by allowing students to correct their answers the following day and by changing student answers herself. Nettie Walker, also a teacher at Slater Elementary during the 2008–2009 school year, testified that she erased wrong answers and replaced them with correct answers. According to Walker, she cheated on the CRCT because she was under a lot of pressure.

A third teacher, Katrina Coleman, testified that, prior to the administration of the 2009 CRCT, she was given written targets as to how many students in her classroom had to pass the test. She was given these targets at the beginning of the semester, and later in an individual conference with Dukes–Walton. The same sheet of paper containing her classroom targets was also included with the CRCT test booklets, answer documents, and other testing materials. At that time, Coleman testified, there was nothing that she could legitimately do to ensure that her class met those goals. According to Coleman, Dukes–Walton acted "very like a dictator" and created a hostile work environment at Slater Elementary, and she did not feel that she could have approached Dukes–Walton with any concerns regarding the 2009 CRCT.

APS also presented the testimony of former Slater Elementary teacher Schajuan Jones. Jones testified that teachers were told at faculty meetings how many students in each grade level could fail the 2009 CRCT. Either the Friday before, or on the morning of, the exam, Dukes–Walton called the fifth-grade teachers into the hallway, and she said that Jones "had one person that could fail, [another fifth grade teacher] had one person to fail, [a third fifth grade teacher] had one person to fail and that [a fourth fifth grade teacher] couldn't have any to fail." Jones testified that, other than cheating, there was nothing she could have done the Friday before, or on the morning of, the CRCT to affect the outcome of the test. Jones also testified that, immediately after the administration of the CRCT in 2007, she saw Grant sitting at a table in the media center erasing whole sections of answer sheets and then "bubbling in" the answers. Jones immediately reported the incident to Vanessa Jackson, who was the testing coordinator at Slater Elementary and the person designated for receiving reports of irregularities.

Jackson apparently did not report the 2007 incident to Dukes–Walton, who testified that she was not aware of any irregularities or cheating on the CRCT before the 2008–2009 school year. The tribunal found Dukes–Walton's testimony to be credible insofar as it concluded that she did not have actual knowledge of cheating. As Dukes–Walton acknowledged, however, as the principal she had the ultimate responsibility for testing activities at her school and was responsible for ensuring the proper environment for administration of the CRCT, including an atmosphere where teachers knew that cheating would not be tolerated.

The tribunal found that, although Dukes–Walton did not have actual knowledge of cheating at Slater Elementary, she should have had such knowledge. Further, it found that she created an environment in which cheating could occur and in which teachers felt they could not approach her to report cheating violations. Dukes–Walton, the tribunal concluded, "create[d] an environment that allowed teachers to violate testing rules and procedures in order to increase student scores on the 2009 CRCT."

1. Dukes–Walton contends that the superior court erred in affirming the decision of the State Board because the State Board improperly found evidentiary and precedential support for the charge of "any other good and sufficient cause." Dukes–Walton argues that APS failed to show that she engaged in intentional misconduct which had an adverse impact on her ability to be effective. She contends that there was a lack of evidence that she knew about the cheating, a lack of evidence that the teachers' decisions to cheat were attributable to the pressure or climate Dukes–Walton created at the school, and, given that the number of wrong to right erasures on the CRCT dropped markedly in 2010, when she remained the principal at Slater Elementary, there was a lack of evidence that her effectiveness as an educator had been adversely impacted.

"Any other good and sufficient cause" is one of the grounds under the Fair Dismissal Act pursuant to which a teacher, administrator, or other employee having a contract for a definite term may be terminated. See OCGA § 20–2–940(8). The meaning of "any other good and sufficient cause," for purposes of the Fair Dismissal Act, has not been expressly defined in our appellate decisions, although we have nevertheless found evidence sufficient to support a local board's decision to terminate an educator's contract on this ground.³

Here, the State Board found that "good and sufficient cause" must be construed consistently with the other grounds for discipline set forth in the Fair Dismissal Act, and, accordingly, requires more than a showing of mere negligence. See Beal–Parker v. DeKalb County Bd. of Ed., Case No.2008–17 (Ga.SBE, Feb. 2008). Further, "any other good and sufficient...