Ten senior Atlanta educators convicted in one of the country’s worst known school cheating scandals begged for mercy on Monday as the judge prepared to sentence them.
Character witnesses ranging from family members to retired military officers pleaded with Judge Jerry Baxter to be lenient, and described their loved ones as good people obsessed with helping deprived schoolchildren do better.
The teachers and administrators, convicted earlier this month of charges ranging from racketeering to lying to investigators, have reportedly been offered a sentencing deal.
On Monday, Baxter urged the defendants to accept sentencing deals with prosecutors before he gathered them in court again on Tuesday.
“I’ve got a fair sentence in my mind and it involves going to jail for everybody,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter warned, according to the Associated Press. He also said, “I don’t think you want to go my way. Either it’s my way or a negotiated plea.”
Although racketeering carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in Georgia state prison, the defendants have reportedly been offered punishments ranging from short stints behind bars to incarceration on weekends only, and fines.
The educators stood trial for their part in a widespread and complex labyrinth of tampering with national test scores, in which 44 of Atlanta’s 100 public schools were accused by state investigators of some level of cheating.
During their trial, the jury heard how teachers told pupils the answers to test questions and ignored pupils when they queried this practice, in a pattern of misconduct going back 10 years.
Education chiefs wanted to secure extra federal money for their deprived schools by hitting improvement targets, the court heard. High achievement also brought cash bonuses for senior staff – but failing to make continual progress could lead to being fired in the highly pressured system.
In court on Monday, Dana Evans, 48, a former elementary school principal convicted of racketeering, asked the judge to grant her probation and said she had already been punished by being fired.
“I am broke now. I have no retirement, all of it is gone,” she said.
Baxter told Evans that he had “considered her a wonderful educator” and her case was “the biggest tragedy”.
Family members said Evans refused to move to an easier school and her dedication to her pupils, who were largely from poverty-stricken African American neighbourhoods, was “so intense” that her marriage almost failed.
And Kenneth Dollar, a retired US air force colonel, told Baxter that he had “never questioned the professionalism or integrity” of another defendant, Sharon Davis-Williams.
The youngest of the 11 defendants convicted on 1 April, former teacher Shani Robinson, 31, was pregnant at the time of the verdict and was allowed to remain free on bond. Robinson gave birth to a son on Saturday, but her sentencing remains postponed until August, on a date to be set.
The former superintendent of public schools for Atlanta, Beverly Hall, died of cancer in March and avoided trial because she was terminally ill, despite being indicted by a grand jury.
Twenty other teachers and administrators earlier pleaded guilty to lesser charges and were given probation.
