WALB.com, Albany News, Weather, SportsDigging Deeper: Murfree says school board needs more evidence

Digging Deeper: Murfree says school board needs more evidence

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ALBANY, GA -

A teacher who admitted cheating on the 2009's CRCT has retired as the Dougherty County School Board faces the reality that the CRCT investigation may cost the system state funds.

A meeting with state officials was canceled, but board members today admitted they're coming to Albany to talk about funds the system may owe the state as a result of the cheating investigation.

Today Dr. Murfree also talked about what a dozen educators have been doing with their time at the Isabella Complex as the system waits for state evidence to move their tribunals forward.

Dougherty County administrators hoped to have the state's evidence into cheating on the 2009 CRCT's this week, but found out today it will now be the end of February before state investigators expect to send it to the District Attorney.

"We can't move on anything until we have the necessary evidence.  We must have the evidence, the preponderance of evidence," said Dr. Joshua Murfree, DCSS Superintendent.

As many as a dozen teachers and principals remain in an administrative holding room at the Isabella Complex and Dr. Joshua Murfree said today's he's been putting them to work.

"I want the community to know they have participated well, those are my colleagues still I want them to know that we care about them, people can make mistakes in life or whatever the case is, but you don't just throw them away," said Murfree.

Wednesday he listed their duties.

"We have them doing things like bar coding, looking at inventories, and so forth and so on which we actually need," said Murfree.

Of the 49 named in the state's report many are anxious to learn how the school system plans to proceed.

"I'm getting a lot of letters from lawyers wanting information and that kind of thing," said Tommy Coleman, DCSS Attorney.

While they can't move forward without the state's evidence, digging deeper we learned plans are in the works for when they get it.

"We've had some firm meetings about how to handle this large volume of data that we ought to be getting and how we're going to evaluate it and determine which case to bring first and that kind of thing," said Coleman.

Retirements like Gloria Mosely's a fifth grade teacher at West Town Elementary who confessed cheating to state investigators, that the board approved today help the system handle the case load. 

They say after three other resignations and some who'd already left the system the case load is much more manageable and will cost taxpayer less. 

School Officials say they haven't got a clear picture from the state how much money the system may have to repay. 

They're looking to reschedule their meeting with state officials for a later date.  Atlanta was ordered to repay $363,000 dollars last week.

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