…But questions still remain, as Guilford County Schools Superintendent Mo Green pretty much admitted:
Monday evening, Green said the end to the Northern Guilford scandal was much like the beginning: plenty of consensus about the challenges ahead, but painfully few concrete solutions.
“Unfortunately, you can put the check or double-checks in the system like we’re doing and educate parents on the severity of putting students eligibility at risk, but it’s still up to (parents and students) to make the right call,” he said.
A total of 12 Northern athletes in various sports found to be ineligible, with the investigation concluding that principal Joe Yeager, athletics director Derrell Force and baseball coach Johnny Smith should have known players were submitting false adresses. Force and Yeager resigned back in April, while Smith’s status is unclear.
Remember the initial allegation was that Northern Guilford was recruiting players. Yet the investigation seems to place the burden on parents who submitted false information. In fact, one mother was frankly unapologetic:
The mother of one of the latest students ruled ineligible acknowledged Monday night they submitted false documents showing the family lived within the Northern Guilford attendance zone, but she was unrepentant.
“I don’t apologize for doing what’s best for our son,” she said. “They say what we did was wrong. We didn’t do (anything) selfish or hurt anybody, so where’s the problem?”
And we still don’t know why school board fired Northern head custodian Louis Lawson back in April. Again, Lawson’s son Jacob was the focus of recruiting violations, considering the fact that Louis Lawson was allegedly offered the custodian’s job to make Jacob eligible to play basketball for Northern.
I’m not saying there wasn’t wrongdoing on the part of Northern officials, but it just seems to me like the investigation’s findings aren’t matching the allegations.
