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Apalachee High School Principal David McGee has filed a sheriff’s report after receiving several threatening e-mail messages. The threats followed news of a lawsuit filed by former AHS teacher Ashley Payne, who alleges McGee forced her to resign her position when an anonymous message to the district complained about the content of Payne’s Facebook page.
Barrow County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Yoder, a School Resource Officer at AHS, was the officer who filed McGee’s report last Friday.
Yoder said he reviewed about four threatening e-mails, and included one as an example in his report. That message read, in part:
"What the f---? Firing a teacher because she had a beer in her hand OUT OF SCHOOL is f----d up dude. I mean, it wasn’t even during school hours. It was summer. You should think about killing the parent who complained for they are a raging [expletive]. Then kill yourself. Or should I?"
The report mentioned the messages started coming in the morning of Nov. 9, and "are ongoing and have increased in their volume and content."
Yoder, who has since turned the investigation over to Sheriff’s Investigator Lisa Carr, said these e-mails are considered Terrorist Threat via Computer, and once tracked down, the writer or writers will be arrested. Carr is working with the district to locate the source of the e-mails.
"You can’t take anything lightly," Yoder said. "There are people out there who are, for lack of a better word, crazy enough to act on these threats."
Yoder, who has worked with McGee for three years as a SRO, also expressed his disgust with the threats.
"He’s a good man; he doesn’t deserve this. He’s good for the school and good for the kids out there," Yoder said.
While these e-mails are being investigated, another anonymous e-mail -- the one sent in to the district and which set the stage for the lawsuit -- has been released to the media. The writer, who claims to be a parent of one of Payne’s former students, sent the original message to Superintendent Dr. Ron Saunders at 6:19 the morning of Aug. 27.
In the message, the writer claims her daughter was online "friends" with Payne, where the child was allegedly exposed to the teacher’s use of the word "bitch."
"Ms. Payne also has unacceptable pictures of herself smiling with alcohol for all her online friends to view," the writer continued, including an attached photo of Payne holding a wine glass. "I am repulsed by Ms. Payne’s profane use of language and how she conducts herself as an example to my teenage daughter. Her behavior is intolerable. I have a question to the Barrow County School System. Is it too hard for our educators to lack discipline online and offline?"Payne denied "friending" any of her students online, and said she has no idea how a student or parent could have viewed her site. There have been doubts about whether a parent actually wrote the e-mail; something Payne’s attorney Richard Storr mentioned he was suspicious about from the start.
"I’m very sure that [my Facebook page] was always set to private, and I wasn’t friends with any of my students. Keeping my personal life personal was very important to me," Payne said. She did admit to "friending" fellow teachers.
When the Barrow County News sent an e-mail to the address used in the anonymous message, an automatic reply stated the address does not exist.
According to the district’s Public Relations Coordinator Lisa Leighton, Saunders forwarded the message to McGee, asking the principal to look into the matter with Payne.
When asked if the district usually responds to anonymous e-mails, Leighton said the district has a duty to students to investigate possible misconduct, anonymous or not.
"We are required by law to investigate any complaint involving possible violations of the PSC (Professional Standards Council) conduct and/or safety of our schools or students," Leighton said. "We get ‘anonymous’ bomb threats and we have to investigate those, too!"
Leighton said the matter could have been cleared up if an investigation had taken place, but Payne asked to immediately resign.
Payne’s report, on the other hand, said that she was forced to resign in violation of the Georgia Fair Dismissal Act.
The case involving Payne has gotten state and national attention, with talk show hosts finding Winder and Barrow County to be providing considerable topics for discussion related to lawsuits filed by former employees and current employees.
