When Dr. Amy Robertson was hired as the new principal of Pittsburg High School, the student newspaper decided to write an article about her. But the young journalists soon realized that something was off. In fact, the dark truth they uncovered led to the head’s resignation.
Pittsburg High is the biggest high school in the south-eastern area of Kansas. Founded in 1887, the public school has 65 faculty members and 860 pupils. Some of its notable alumni include former NFL stars Kerry and Shad Meier, as well as Los Angeles Dodgers manager Bill Russell.
Pittsburg High’s student newspaper is called the Booster Redux. Over the years, the publication has won various regional and state awards for its journalism. But it was the article they published about their new principal that really put the paper on the map.
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On March 6, 2017, the school board hired Dr. Amy Robertson as the school’s new principal on a $93,000 salary. She was selected following interviews with staff members, pupils and administrators. According to Superintendent Destry Brown, Robertson “emerged as the best fit” for the school during the hiring process.
Zach Fletcher, spokesman for the school district, said in a statement that “Robertson comes to Pittsburg with decades of experience in education.” A press release described her as the CEO of Atticus I.S. Consultants. It stated that the company is “an education consulting firm where she gained management experience at the equivalence of a building administrator and superintendent.”
Brown believed that Robertson had a lot to offer the school. “I felt like she is very knowledgeable about what is going on in education today. And she knows about how a building works and about maintaining a safe environment,” he told the Kansas City Star. She was due to begin working in her new posotion on July 1 of that year.
But within a month of Robertson’s hiring, everything had changed. And it was all because of the students working at the newspaper. Maddie Baden, who was 17 at the time, interviewed the incoming school head “to introduce the new principal to the community.”
Baden admitted that, at the time, “no one knew who Robertson was.” So the intrepid student started investigating the future principal’s background and credentials. And before long, the budding journalist smelt a rat.
The young journalist uncovered some articles from 2012 that declared Robertson’s involvement with the Dubai American Scientific School. They made the claim that she did not have the right to work as the institution’s principal. The school’s license had also been suspended.
“That raised a red flag,” Baden said. “If students could uncover all of this, I want to know why the adults couldn’t.” So the students working on the Booster Redux spent three weeks investigating their future principal. And they soon discovered that they had only just scratched the surface.
The newspaper team decided to look into Robertson’s education. She claimed to have received a master’s degree and a doctorate from Corllins University. However, when the visited the university’s website, they struggled to find any proof that the college even existed.
Robertson declared that she had taken online classes and also visited the campus in Stockton, California from time to time. But the Better Business Bureau states that Corllins is not an accredited business and has no known physical address. There have also been reports accusing the college of being a scam that allows people to simply buy a degree. In addition, the photo used on its website is actually from an entirely different school’s graduation ceremony.
However, Robertson brushed off the allegations and said that the “concerns” raised by the students were “not based on facts.” She claimed to the Kansas City Star, “The current status of Corllins University is not relevant. When I received my M.A. in 1994 and my Ph.D in 2010, there was no issue. All of my degrees have been authenticated by the U.S. Government.”
The Booster Redux published an article on the front page of its March 31, 2017, issue revealing its findings. And editor Trina Paul explained that they wanted to expose the truth after noticing inconsistencies in Robertson’s story. “She was going to be the head of our school, and we wanted be assured that she was qualified and had the proper credentials,” Paul said. “We stumbled on to some things that most might not consider [to be] legitimate credentials.”