WHAT’S NEXT?
There is no court on Friday. Testimony in the prosecution’s case about cheating at Dobbs Elementary School continues Monday.
Teachers at one Atlanta elementary school threatened students with dire consequences for snitching on cheating at the school, students testified Thursday in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial.
“If I lose my job, I’m ’a beat your ass,” former Dobbs Elementary School teacher Derrick Broadwater told one fifth-grader after the boy reported possible cheating to a school employee, according to the student’s account, which Broadwater disputes.
Then Broadwater came closer to the child and shared another message.
“He was going to kill me,” the student testified.
The boy, now a broad-shouldered 17-year-old in his Atlanta high school’s ROTC program, said he was too scared to report the threats until recently. He said he couldn’t remember the name of the person he told about the cheating, but testified that it was a woman.
A court order bars The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other media from reporting the names of students testifying in the cheating case.
Testimony from the boy and other current Atlanta students came on the 34th day of testimony in the cheating case. Twelve former Atlanta Public Schools employees are on trial in the case, which is expected to stretch well into next year.
Three former Dobbs staff members are among those on trial in the cheating scandal: principal Dana Evans, fourth-grade teacher Angela Williamson and special education teacher Dessa Curb.
A 2011 state report investigating cheating in the Atlanta schools cited high numbers of wrong-to-right erasures on state tests at Dobbs.
The report alleged that Williamson and Curb were among those who had cheated. Broadwater, who pleaded guilty to lesser charges earlier this year, was also among those accused. State investigators said Evans knew or should have known about the cheating. Evans told investigators that she did not participate in, allow or know of cheating.
Through his lawyer, Broadwater denied physically harming or threatening to harm “any child, at any school, for any reason.”
“Moreover, I am certain the state would have sought prosecution on any credible allegations of harm to any child,” the lawyer, Constancia Davis, wrote in an email.
Two other former Dobbs students testified that Williamson told them and other students the answers on fourth-grade state tests.
Williamson pointed out the right answers to the girls, both now high school sophomores, and to other students, the girls said. If several students were struggling with the same question, Williamson would announce the right answer to the entire class, one of the girls said.
But the girls didn’t tell anyone about the cheating at the time. Williamson told them not to, they said.
“If you tell anyone, it’ll be the last person you tell, I promise you that,” Williamson told the class, one of the girls testified.
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