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A former principal tied to the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal a decade ago has been spared in court with a lighter sentence.
On June 28, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter agreed to Dana Evans’ request to have her prison time dropped from her sentence.
The judge also halved the amount of court-ordered hours of community service Evans should serve, leaving her with 500.
A former principal of Dobbs Elementary School, Evans was previously sentenced to one year in prison and four years of probation in 2015.
A jury found Evans and 10 other local educators guilty of racketeering, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I think she has taken responsibility as opposed to just a whole lot of people that have not,” said Judge Baxter of Evans on Tuesday.
Reportedly, the latter also knowledge her inactions in the cheating scandal as “naive negligence.”
“I take full responsibility for the events that bring us here today,” said Evans. “Although I didn’t cheat, I didn’t stop cheating from happening, which was my job as a principal, and for that I am sorry.”
As MADAMENOIRE previously reported, Evans has worked in the nonprofit sector and made efforts to support low-income families and refugees in Georgia since her conviction.
A 2011 investigation revealed widespread cheating across the Atlanta Public Schools system, wherein administrators, such as Evans, “knew or should have known” about answers on standardized tests being changed by the city’s educators. The scandal placed an asterisk on APS system.
After the hand-down of Evans’ lighter sentence, Fulton County DA’s office attorney Kevin Armstrong said, “Every scrap of objective evidence indicates that she [Evans] was aware of it.”
Moreover, the attorney claimed Evans robbed Atlanta students of an education they were owed.
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