“This inquiry, in essence, boiled down to my word against that of district administrators, who apparently have axes to grind because of my unpopular support of a former district employee,” Dixon wrote in an e-mail.
That employee, former Assistant Superintendent Rose Sampson, was fired by the school board at the administration’s request. Sampson later sued the district, alleging racial discrimination and defamation of character in her dismissal. The case is pending.
In a sharply worded report, Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner’s Office of Special Investigations said Dixon repeatedly broke the state’s ethics laws by voting multiple times for payments to the Community Action Program, an agency where she works as a program director.
In a response to the auditor general, Dixon’s attorney, Lenora Smith, said the district solicitor should have been responsible for informing her of which votes constituted a conflict of interest.
An even more serious transgression occurred, the investigators said, when Dixon attempted — unsuccessfully — to pressure Superintendent Rita Bishop and other administrators into paying CAP hundreds of thousands of dollars for questionable expenses.
According to the report, Dixon told Bishop in March 2005: “You go fetch (business manager Curt Baker). ... I want these CAP bills paid. What’s the holdup? This new administration thinks everyone is a crook. CAP is not a crook. I want this paid.”
Dixon’s attorney rebutted that claim by writing to the auditor general’s office, “At no time did Ms. Dixon ever tell someone to ‘fetch’ anyone or anything. That is not her terminology, and in fact is considered a denigrating word in the African-American community.”
Results of the auditor general’s special investigation, first reported by the New Era nearly two weeks ago, were formally released on Monday.
The report says the auditor general plans to forward his findings to the State Ethics Commission for consideration.
The report supports the district’s decision to withhold payment to CAP, which provided after-school programs, because of inadequate bookkeeping and billing practices.
“Because of the absence of adequate proof of what portion of the contracted-for services were actually rendered during the time period investigated and for prior years, the district appears fully justified in withholding payment, pending a judicial resolution of the dispute,” the report says.
Meanwhile, CAP’s executive director, Derrick Span, was expected to meet this afternoon with Bishop to try to put the invoice dispute — now in the midst of a legal battle — behind them.
“The intent here is to finally resolve all of this and put all of this behind us and move all of our entities forward,” Span said. “That’s the bigger story at this hour: The school district and CAP have decided to sit down and move forward on this issue.”
Span, who was hired in February, was not involved in the invoice discussions in the early stages. Nonetheless, he stands by his organization.
“We still are convinced that we have done no wrong, and the only wrong being done now is that two important entities in this community are at odds, and we need to resolve that,” Span said.
In a separate finding, the report says administrator Peg Schooling’s former position on the CAP board of directors was a conflict of interest because she oversaw some CAP-related contracts.
Schooling resigned from the district, effective Sept. 8. She has another job in York and would not comment on any other reasons why she left.
She said former SDL Superintendent Vicki Philips knew she had taken the seat, and for as long as Schooling could remember, a district official had served on the CAP board.
“I believe individuals in the district were aware of my participation on CAP’s board,” she said Monday.
Schooling said some of the statements in the report are inaccurate, including reference to her working for CAP’s Head Start program.
The report says an unnamed individual said he thought Schooling “was being very vocal and resistant because she was passionate about her work until he discovered that she served on CAP’s board of directors.”
“If I was vocal, it was me being a vocal advocate for our youngest children,” Schooling said. “I hope CAP and the school district can resolve these issues so that we can continue to serve the children in the community. There is nothing more urgent than that.”
The report also said Dixon’s claim that five other school officials, including Bishop, had conflicts of interest with organizations tied to SDL was unfounded.
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