MAYFLOWER — The Mayflower School District’s insurance company has settled with fired high school principal Jeff Cagle for an amount of $35,000, Superintendent John Gray said.
Cagle, formerly of Conway, sued the district in Faulkner County Circuit Court after he was fired in 2013 for allegedly making inappropriate comments about female students and staff, making racist comments about African-American students and for exhibiting a lack of leadership, Gray said in previous interviews with the River Valley & Ozark Edition.
Cagle has since been hired as a math teacher at Hazen High School for the 2014-15 school year. Cagle said Thursday that he accepted the settlement instead of going to court only because of the emotional pain the publicity is causing his three children.
The Mayflower School District is represented by attorney Bill
Brazil of Conway. Gray said the board voted months ago for Brazil to negotiate a settlement.
“I am pleased that the issue’s over with and we can move on,” Gray said. “We felt he wasn’t a good match for our high school.”
Cagle was employed in Mayflower for the 2012-2013 school year, and his contract had been renewed for another year. His annual salary was $77,576. Gray gave Cagle a good evaluation in February 2013, marking almost every category with “meets expectations.”
However, Gray said concerns came to light that caused him to suspend Cagle when a counselor at the high school reported to Gray that Cagle had made inappropriate comments about female students.
At an open hearing in September 2013, in which the Mayflower School Board upheld Cagle’s firing, Gray reported on a survey he created for high school employees on the “competence of the effectiveness of your high school principal, Mr. Jeff Cagle.”
Gray said although the surveys were anonymous, staff members were asked to sign a sheet if they responded. Gray said at the hearing that of 31 responses, 26 portrayed Cagle as having a lack of ability to lead staff and students” and 10 mentioned that Cagle made inappropriate comments regarding females.
Cagle said when contacted Thursday at Hazen High School that none of the allegations was true.
“The counselor who had made these allegations, I had written up for insubordination,” Cagle said. As far as the surveys, “anybody could have written stuff down,” he said.
An allegation mentioned during the hearing that Cagle looked over the restroom stalls in the boys bathroom was unfair, as well, Cagle said.
“That alone would make people think, ‘Gosh, what kind of principal did they have?’ We had kids that were playing video games in the stalls in the bathrooms, and I reached my hand over and said, ‘Give me the video game,’ and from there, it was that I was looking over bathroom stalls,” he said.
Cagle, who was represented by attorney Randy Coleman of Little Rock, said he was unhappy that Coleman didn’t offer a rebuttal on that point during the hearing. Cagle said Coleman advised him not to speak during the hearing.
“The type of person I am, I chose not to go after defamation of character,” Cagle said. “It’s not the way I was raised; it’s not my character. I’ve tried to live a Christian life — everything I do, the way I treat people,” he said. “Anybody who sees me day by day, they know it’s not my character. I’m totally opposite of that. I live consciously as far as making sure the appearance of evil — the Bible tells us to stay away from the appearance of evil. I strive for that.”
Cagle said the school district’s settlement was confirmation that the allegations weren’t true.
“They’ve known all along it wasn’t true,” Cagle said. “Even at the hearing, not one piece of factual material was presented — it was all hearsay. That’s why I stuck to my guns, ‘We’re going to court.’ I started not even to accept that [settlement], because I wanted it to go to court, but I’m sick of it being in the paper, sick of it being run through the mud,” he said. “I can handle it, but what it does to my kids — it is so damaging.”
A native of Palestine in eastern Arkansas, Cagle was fired in 2002 by the Palestine-Wheatley School District after allegedly conducting a strip search on six students to find missing money, according to an Associated Press story. He was principal of the district’s high school but was filling in for the middle-school principal in Wheatley, according to the article. Cagle filed a lawsuit in St. Francis County Circuit Court against the school district for breach of contract. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2005.
Cagle said Thursday that people “don’t know all the story” and that Palestine-Wheatley School Board members apologized to him after the incident.
Cagle’s last administrative position before being hired in Mayflower was as Carlisle High School principal.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.