APS meets with parents over North Atlanta High firings - New York News | NYC Breaking News

Hundreds of angry parents and students packed the gym at North Atlanta High School on Tuesday evening to meet with Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Erroll Davis.  They wanted answers about the abrupt dismissal of interim principal Mark Mygrant, who showed up unexpectedly during the tense meeting.  

Last Friday, Mygrant and four of his administrators were removed from the school.  Those four administrators were reassigned in the wake of Mygrant's termination.

Davis told the crowd inside the gym that those changes were made because of poor performance.  In fact, he said that in recent years, North Atlanta High School has graduated just six of every 10 students who have entered the 9th grade.  For that reason, he said, changes had to start at the top.

"I'm not here to bash this school," Davis told the crowd.  "This school has great potential."

The meeting was briefly interrupted by Mygrant, who appeared as Davis was explaining the personnel changes.  When Mygrant came in, the crowd went wild in support.

Outside the building, Mygrant said if he and his team were holding the school back, he thinks he should have been evaluated on that in the last four years, but he wasn't.  

Bubbling just beneath the surface is another issue: racism—specifically talk that someone at North Atlanta High School took complaints about racism to the county, and that topic came up at the meeting.

"No allegations of racism have been made by this administration towards anyone," said Davis.  I made a decision on a great new principal.  He happens to be Caucasian, and I think he happens to be great."

That new principal, Gene Taylor, starts his new job on October 29.

Mygrant says he believe politics played a role in his ousting. The district had asked Mygrant to come out of retirement to run the school until a permanent principal could be hired. Instead, Mygrant and his administrative team were abruptly asked to leave the school on Friday.

"I came back after they asked me three times to return and had just a few weeks left, and I would have gladly put the keys under the mat and rode off in the sunset," Mygrant said before Tuesday's meeting. "And I was prepared to do that until I heard that other administrators were taken down by this. I truly believe that it stems from the very highest up. There might be even board involvement in this and it's just political greed that's gone wild."

On Tuesday, Mygrant hand-delivered 25 pages of documents obtained through an open records request to that Atlanta school board. He said the documents may shed some light to the events behind last Friday's events. He did not give any indication of what the documents may contain.