The future for Chapel Hill High School Principal Sulura Jackson is unclear at the moment, following this week’s plagiarism allegations. The allegations, as well as the evidence, are covered in detail in this week’s Indy. Read it online here.
Members of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education were already scheduled to meet tonight at the Lincoln Center in Chapel Hill. The board’s agenda says members will discuss a personnel matter in closed session starting at 6 p.m. The public portion of the meeting begins at 7 p.m.
School administrators have defended Jackson, lauding her for attempts to increase communication at the school. However, many parents and teachers are angry.
For her part, Jackson has not denied using other materials to fill her writing, but she says it would not be considered plagiarism because she is not turning in her memos and letters for a grade or compensation.
Here is the Chapel Hill High student handbook. This is what it says on plagiarism: “Plagiarizing is copying the language, structure, idea and/or thought of another person and representing it as one’s own original work or using information obtained from printed or electronic media that is not appropriately referenced.”
Due to space limitations with this week’s story, not all of the corresponding documents could be shown. We will post some of these documents here, including memos that show the principal—before and after her arrival at Chapel Hill High—lifted quotes and ideas from books without providing citation.
This first memo on finishing strong, dated November 2012 when Jackson was principal at Skyline High in Ann Arbor, Mich., pulls directly from a book by motivational writer Dan Green. Jackson signs the memo as if they are her words and does not offer any citation.
In this August 2013 memo (PDF below) to Chapel Hill High staff, Jackson talks about something she calls the “100/0 principle,” a method of relationship building she explains as taking “full responsibility (the 100) for the relationship, expecting nothing (the 0) in return.”
The problem is that the idea belongs to workplace consultant Al Ritter. Watch a video explaining the idea here. The word choice will sound familiar.
More to come on this as it happens.
