Threatening careers. Refusing to cooperate in an investigation. Attempting to destroy evidence.
These are all things that the outside legal report released Tuesday by Columbus City Schools says Board Member Brandon Simmons did as he authored a controversial leaked document and managed the fallout after the document was published.
After hours of executive session, the board voted in favor of a motion Tuesday to waive attorney-client privilege and make public the 12-page report from Scott Scriven LLP, a Columbus law firm specializing in labor and employment law. Board President Christina Vera said that the board was taking the unusual step to help rebuild trust in the district following the publication of the document late last month by the district's teachers union.
Vera said the report "concludes that board member Simmons was the sole author of the document," which was a draft of a proposed strategy for handling opposition to the district's plan to close some of its more than 110 school buildings. Simmons has previously said that other board members and stakeholders collaborated on the document, and in a statement Tuesday said that the legal report was "based upon false information." However, he has not provided evidence to support his claims.
Here's what to know about the investigation report:
Read the investigation report
Simmons 'on his own authored' controversial document
The report concludes that "Simmons on his own authored all versions" of the document, and that the ideas included in the document "were those expressed by Board Member Simmons."
The document in questionis a draft of a proposed strategy for handling opposition to the district's plan to close school buildings and was first published May 21 by the Columbus Education Association, the union representing the district's more than 4,500 teachers and other educational professionals, after aschool board member shared it. It calls for driving a wedge between the district's two unions, bringing in loud machines if unions hold a news conference on school property, not ignore "racial dynamics" in the effort to divide the unions, and even to make last-minute changes on the location of public input meetings on the closures to keep opponents confused.
"Simmons’ comments to the media about collaborating to create the Simmons Document are unsupported by the evidence and testimony, at least as it relates to any board members or district employees," the report read.
Simmons accused of destroying evidence or attempting to do so
The law firm's report also concludes that after it was clear that others were not in favor of his plan, Simmons attempted to destroy evidence, including the Google Drive that the original copy of the document was stored on.
According to the report, Simmons saved the document on his personal Google Drive and no other board members or district administrators accessed it except one staff member who did so one time on May 10 to make copies of it at Simmons' request.
More:Who is Brandon Simmons? What to know about CCS board member at center of leak scandal
"It appears that Board Member Simmons has destroyed (or attempted to destroy) relevant evidence and possibly given other evidence to another individual or individuals to maintain," according to the report.
The report claims he also appears to have withheld public records.
Document was widely rejected when shared with board members, district employees
The report states that in the days leading up to the May 10 meeting where the document was distributed, Simmons texted board members, including Vera and Vice President Tina Pierce with language that mirrored that included in the document.
Simmons organized an impromptu meeting on May 9 where he presented a handwritten and typed draft of the document to Vera and Superintendent Angela Chapman for the first time. Simmons admitted to investigators that neither were interested in fighting the unions during the meeting.
When a new version of the document was presented on May 10 to other board members and district administration, Board Member Jennifer Adair pushed back when Simmons mentioned exploiting racial divisions between the district's two unions.
"'Whoa, we can’t do that, that’s not gonna happen,'” the document recounts Adair telling Simmons during the meeting.
Jacqueline Bryant, interim director of communications for CCS, is also reported to have spoke up against the document during the meeting, saying, "we’re not going to do any of these things, we are never going to target the media that way” in reference to a punitive strategy toward the media put forward in Simmons' document.
Also during the meeting, Simmons allegedly threatened that Chapman and Vera would become "the next" Talisa Dixon and Carol Beckerle, referring respectively to the former superintendent and board member who did not receive the union or Franklin County Democratic Party endorsem*nt last year.
Simmons was uncooperative in investigation, report says
According to the report, Simmons refused to meaningfully participate in the external investigation, with the report saying he was not cooperative.
"He refused to provide a complete interview and answered almost no substantive questions," according to the report.
When the investigators asked him to identify collaborators or other participants in the document, his answer repeatedly was 'I don’t want to answer this question,' the report stated.
'We need to destroy (the CEA union president) politically"
In the days leading up to and following the presentation of the strategy document, Simmons repeatedly emphasized to board members and district employees that he felt the district needed to aggressively attack the CEA.
In one apparently brazen statement during a May 11 CEA Teacher Retirement Recognition Dinner, the report states that Simmons — who was five feet from CEA President John Coneglio — pulled a district employee aside and told him that, "We need to destroy John Coneglio politically."
'I always have something in my back pocket'
By May 17, most board members were not speaking to Simmons. When Pierce spoke with Simmons on May 22, she asked him who the "many" people were that he said had helped collaborate on the document.
"'Simmons said, 'That question goes away when we move forward. We could have moved beyond that if we had just moved forward,'” according to the investigation report.
Pierce then asked him if there even was a "many."
"I always have something in my back pocket,” Simmons said, according to the report.
Cbehrens@dispatch.com
@Colebehr_report
