Blackboard Bungle

Again, questions to Carroll Williams about the yearbook's problems were referred to Deborah Williams and Henry Fraind. Fraind provided considerable documentation, including the memorandum from Tarpley's conference for the record. "Miss Tarpley was not doing her job," Deborah Williams says. "She was playing around. Students she had on yearbook committee, instead of preparing, they were up there eating pizza, running their mouths." She adds that Tarpley's students have complained about the teacher.

Deborah Williams faxed New Times a letter dated March 9, 1999, and signed, "Very Concerned Students, English III Honors/Regular Class, Period 1." It complains of Tarpley being "late to class every day," giving D's and F's to just about everyone in the class, and being "rude, sarcastic, and just downright nasty."

Tarpley notes that Deborah Williams's daughter was in that first-period class, and was failing. Yet despite its harsh criticism of Tarpley, the letter does note that the yearbook emergency disrupted the rest of her classes.

Through the entire experience, Tarpley says, one personality trait of Carroll Williams stood out: inflexibility. "He just doesn't listen to anybody," she sighs. Ofcr. Lionell Con-yers, now assigned to Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School, agrees. "The changes he made at Norland, some were good, some were bad," Conyers reflects. "It was just that he never took the time out to see how the school operated. He just came in and did a complete overhaul, no matter what.