ATLANTA — Former Atlanta Public School superintendent Erroll Davis took the stand on in the APS cheating scandal trial to testify about the days following the resignation of his predecessor.
Davis told the court former Atlanta Public Schools superintendent Dr. Beverly Hall resigned amid allegations of widespread cheating and within days of taking office, the governor's special investigators handed him their massive report.
"I was handed my own personal three volume copy of 800-pages of investigative report," Davis said.
The report detailed what those investigators and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation uncovered after interviewing teachers and administrators.
Davis admitted the report was so big, he wanted his staff to go through it but was advised by the investigators that he couldn't do that, for very good reasons.
"That that would not be allowed because people on my direct staff, my direct reports at the time were, in fact, or at least allegedly involved," Davis said.
So he says he read the whole report himself.
Twelve former APS educators are on trial for their alleged roles in the cheating scandal.
Davis told jurors after reading the report, he restructured the central office and made sure future superintendents could not be involved with ongoing investigations.
"Again, given what I had seen in the report, I wanted to make sure any investigation that took place going forward, took place without any hint of impropriety and that the superintendent would not be involved," Davis said.
Former APS Office of Internal Review Director Colinda Howard took the stand Tuesday talking about how she was ordered to destroy certain documents related to the cheating investigation at Deerwood Academy. She said she thought the destruction was legal and was done only because there were other copies and she didn't need any.
Watch Channel 2 Action News for updates on this developing story.
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