LITTLE ROCK — An independent investigator has cleared Pulaski County Special School District acting Superintendent Rob McGill of an allegation that he made a racially charged comment to another district employee, officials said Monday.
The investigation, which came at McGill’s request, was completed by Little Rock lawyer Jack Lassiter. District officials would not release the document Monday, but officials said it exonerated McGill.
McGill said Monday that he would release the report once a district lawyer redacted names of some employees mentioned in it. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette filed a Freedom of Information Act request Monday for access to the document.
The report is a personnel document exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, said Keith Billingsley, the district’s attorney. Arkansas Code Annotated 29-19-105(c)(1) says personnel records are exempt unless they involve an employee termination or suspension, he said, which this does not.
While McGill has given permission to release the file, that permission does not allow the district to release portions of the document that identify other employees, Billingsley said.
To release the report in its entirety, Billingsley said, the district would need the permission of every employee who is mentioned in the report. He did not cite a specific statute to support his point.
“Our position, and I think it’s substantiated by a number of cases, is that the other personnel information has to be redacted,” Billingsley said. “We’ll do that in short order, but it will be [today].”
School Board Vice President Charlie Wood, who has read the report, said Monday that Lassiter interviewed multiple witnesses who said Mc-Gill never made the statement in question.
The evidence exonerating McGill is “beyond refute,” Wood said.
The allegation first surfaced at a Feb. 3 community forum where the audience was allowed to ask McGill questions. That same day, the School Board interviewed McGill for the permanent superintendent’s job.
At the February community meeting, Rizelle Aaron, chairman of the Jacksonville National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s legal redress committee, said the chapter had received a complaint that McGill made an offensive racial comment during an informal conversation at the Jan. 19 meeting of the state Board of Education.
At that meeting, the state board denied the district’s request to open two charter schools but approved a charter school in the Forrest City School District.
The complainant reported that McGill, who is white, said, “They gave the blacks something and didn’t give the whites nothing,” according to an e-mail Aaron later sent to the media.
McGill said at the community meeting that another district employee made the statement to him and he immediately corrected the employee.
“I said, ‘No, I don’t think that’s right.’ And [the employee] said, ‘Are you sure?’ They were brainstorming why we didn’t get the [charter]. And I said, ‘That couldn’t have happened because if you look at who presented for Little Rock [School District], they didn’t get theirs, either,” Mc-Gill said.
“I made that statement exactly. So it’s not because we had white representatives and they were black. That is not true. And I told that person that. And I don’t know where the other part came from.”
He “may” have repeated the comment during the conversation with the employee, but not in the context Aaron described, McGill said.
The person who lodged the complaint with the NAACP may have overheard him repeating the comment while correcting the employee, Mc-Gill said.
“I promise you, I had no thought that that was the reason,” McGill said at the community forum. “We were searching for why it happened. That person said it. I actually corrected them for saying it.”
Aaron has seen the report, he said Monday, and it is “inconclusive.” Lassiter only writes that he cannot prove McGill made the comment, he said. Aaron would not say how he received the report.
Whoever gave Aaron the report gave it to him illegally, McGill said.
The district’s lawyer, Jay Bequette, said it could not be released without McGill’s permission.
Wood, who sent out an email over the weekend saying that the investigation exonerated McGill, said Monday that he thought another board member gave it to Aaron. The board should determine who that person is, he said.
Board Secretary Gwen Williams said the document became public the minute Wood sent the weekend e-mail.
Aaron raised this issue in an attempt to derail McGill’s candidacy, Wood said, and the statement the employee made wasn’t even as offensive as Aaron reported.
“I doubt if 2 percent of the people would even find it that objectionable,” he said. “I think it got blown out of proportion because certain people didn’t want Mr. McGill to get the job.”
Front Section, Pages 2 on 03/02/2010