MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - There was a “scheme to malign” a leading candidate for state superintendent last year and prevent him from winning the post, according to an internal report given to the state Board of Education on Wednesday.
Board members voted 6-1 to accept the report in a contentious meeting that put departmental divisions and frictions on public display. A board member named in the report called it a “hack job.”
The report written by department attorney Michael Meyer concluded that three other staff attorneys and an interim superintendent let plagiarism and ethics accusations linger against superintendent candidate Craig Pouncey instead of conducting a “proper investigation” that would have cleared him. The report also said board member Mary Scott Hunter publicly furthered the theme that Pouncey had ethical problems.
Pouncey, a former deputy state superintendent and current superintendent of Jefferson County schools, was a finalist for the state superintendent job, but lost to current Superintendent Michael Sentance. Before the 2016 vote, someone anonymously gave board members a packet of information, including internal department emails, accusing Pouncey of getting state staff to write his 2009 dissertation when he was with the department. That information was later sent to the state ethics commission.
The report states that evidence sent to the staff members in late July and August, including statements from employees that Pouncey did his own work, should have cleared Pouncey.
“Rather than informing a variety of interested parties that Dr. Pouncey was innocent of all ethical allegations, they simply let the charges and unsubstantiated assertions hang in the air with no interest or desire to make a public declaration of Dr. Pouncey’s vindication,” the report stated.
Hunter disputed the findings, saying there “was never ill will toward” Pouncey.
“The conclusions of this report are bizarre,” Hunter said. Juliana Dean, the department’s general counsel and one of the five people named in the report, said the report was a “self-serving” exercise by the attorney who wrote it.
Sentance said he did not have confidence in the report and asked a former judge to go over the staff attorney’s work. Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Bernard Harwood told the board he questioned some of the findings.
Hunter was the only board member to vote against accepting the report in a meeting full of awkward exchanges.
“All these people who were just trying to do their jobs are going to be hurt,” she said.
“Craig Pouncey was hurt,” board member Ella Bell replied.
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