MIDDLEBURG – Officials with the Clay County Education Association confirmed Tuesday that Clay County School Superintendent Charlie Van Zant Jr. is under investigation by the director of investigations with the Inspector General of the Florida Department of Education.

The investigation surrounds allegations of plagiarism made public Aug. 4 by former Florida Teacher of the Year and former Keystone Heights High School principal, Susan Sailor of Keystone Heights, who holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction. An official from the department of education met with Sailor at the teacher’s union’s Middleburg office on Aug. 15 after learning of the allegations.

“As Dr. Sailor’s representative we wish to set the record straight. Dr. Sailor has made two allegations in her open letter to the school board. Her first allegation is that Mr. Van Zant asked her to write a scholarly research paper that she believed he submitted as his work for his master’s degree from Regent University,” states a CCEA press release. “She further alleged that Mr. Van Zant told her that he had Dr. [Emily] Weiskopf write a paper for him.”

The press release further states that Sailor also alleged that she had “firsthand knowledge” that high school administrators were manipulating student data, placing students in Exceptional Student Education to falsely improve their school grade and allow them to graduate, thus inappropriately boosting the district’s graduation rate.

“After realizing Van Zant was not going to investigate her allegations, she, again followed protocol and, sent her concerns to the school board. After learning last week that Chairwoman [Johnna] McKinnon was not going to initiate an outside investigation, Dr. Sailor and her union representative, Tracy Butler, met to discuss initiating a complaint with the Florida Ethics Commission,” states the press release.

However, before the ethics complaint could be filed, the director of investigations from the Florida Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General “reached out to Sailor,” who currently teaches English for Clay Virtual Academy, a position she said she willfully applied for in December seeking to remove herself from the district office. Prior to working in the district office for a year-and-a-half, Sailor was principal of Keystone Heights High School for about 15 years.

“He requested a meeting to question her on allegations that a paper she wrote was submitted by Mr. Van Zant as his own work for his master’s thesis,” states the press release. “The inspector presented the book that Mr. Van Zant submitted to Regent University and questioned Dr. Sailor. The Inspector took Dr. Sailor’s statements regarding the allegation of plagiarism and failure to investigate the ESE allegations.”

The union announcement comes four working days since McKinnon and school board attorney Charles “Dan” Sikes held a press conference in which McKinnon cancelled a called Aug. 10 school board meeting on grounds the issue should be handled internally. That day, McKinnon – without the authority to do so – said she was ordering district staff to investigate the allegations because the reputations of district staff have been injured by Sailor’s claims.

However, on Aug. 15, Van Zant posted online a videotaped interview in which he discussed having filed an Ethics Commission complaint against School Board members Janice Kerekes and Carol Studdard. In the video, he repeatedly blasted the teacher’s union and the two board members as either liars or stated they were lying or telling lies 36 times. To his left was Jim Horne, a Van Zant campaign donor and chief lobbyist for Charter Schools USA.

“This is gutter politics at its worst,” Van Zant said in the video.

He accused Studdard and Kerekes of violating the due process rights of school district employees who were implicated in Sailor’s allegations. He also said the news media had been manipulated and questioned the timing of the allegations.

However, in an Aug. 4 interview with Clay Today, Sailor said she could no longer remain quiet about what she saw firsthand while working in the Green Cove Springs school district headquarters offices. She said the final point came when she learned the district had again fallen to a “B” and No. 20 in the state.

“It is a heavy burden to carry and when this year’s school grades were issued and our school district dropped to 20th in the state, I felt like I could no longer be quiet. That’s really what brought it up for me,” Sailor said Aug. 4 in a phone interview.

In her Aug. 4 email to the school board, Sailor admitted she had been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after two of her students committed suicide.

“I endured seven months of unrelenting emotional trauma – 24 hours a day. Parents brought their child to my front door at 9:30 at night, parents called at midnight because they found a note or saw their child's Facebook posts, parents and students called over spring break because they knew of a child who was a suicide risk. They knew I would help, no matter the time. To degrade that experience is obscene,” Sailor wrote to the board in her Aug. 4 email.

In his video on Aug. 15, Van Zant tried to discredit Sailor’s allegations by pointing out that she was diagnosed with PTSD. He called her a disgruntled employee who has been played by the political process.

“At this time, I have to protect my people,” Van Zant stated. “My people have been maliciously maligned with baseless allegations.”

CCEA President Renna Lee Paiva said she hopes the county will “now hire an outside organization to investigate. Regardless, all teacher members of the CCEA will be represented and their rights will be protected,” she stated in the press release.