A teacher who was removed as coach of the Boyle County Middle School softball team is not happy with how the results of a recent investigation from the Office of Educational Accountability were released. She wants to make it clear she did not push for the OEA to investigate Boyle County Superintendent Mike LaFavers.

Last week, the OEA released its report concerning allegations stemming the May 2017 incident when coach Shanda Machia Everage wound up resigning as softball coach.

The OEA cleared LaFavers and Board of Education Chair Jennifer Newby of wrongdoing in the matter. But the OEA report named Everage in its explanation of the findings.

Everage said Wednesday that an article published in The Advocate-Messenger based on the OEA report made it appear she was behind the complaints that led to the investigation.

“The article makes it seem like I was resentful of how I had been treated. I didn’t file any of those allegations. Matter-of-fact, when people continued to tell me I should get a lawyer and that I was treated unfairly, all I said was I wanted it to be over,” Everage said.

Lori Hundley, Farrah Guerrant and Amy Longwill said they are three of a handful of parents who wrote leters to the OEA — without influence from Everage — asking for an investigation into the events that led to Everage’s departure from the coaching position.

The parents said last week while Everage wasn’t interested in pursuing the matter, they felt she had been “forced” to resign and didn’t feel it was right. They said they are unhappy with the conclusion of the OEA’s investigation, because they don’t think investigators looked deep enough.

“I think they should have contacted softball parents period, people who had a stake in it. I don’t think that happened,” Hundley said.

Everage said one of the things that upset her about the report, too, was that she had been promised by OEA that she would not be named in it. She has since attempted to contact the person who spoke with her from the agency, but they are on vacation. She said she didn’t want the continued publicity, but she felt she had to clarify statements made within the report.

After the article was published in The Advocate-Messenger last week, Longwill said she reached out to OEA, because she wanted to know if other investigations were ongoing.

“In my report, I made some pretty substantial allegations that she was being held to a different standard than other coaches. I wanted to know if that was being investigated at all,” Longwill said.

She said they responded to her call, but would not confirm if there were any further ongoing investigations or not.

Hundley said she asked administrators if anything moral or legal had been found that would keep Everage from being a coach. She was told no.

LaFavers said the district stands by the report given from the OEA, but he doesn’t fault the parents for seeking out that option when they felt something was wrong.

“In this case, we had a small group of parents who were very concerned about this situation. They sought out the Office of Educational Accountability to do an investigation, which is great,” he said. “The thing about the Office of Educational Accountability is that they are the most thorough and independent investigative organization for educational matters in Kentucky. They are designed to create finality. In other words, they investigate disputes or issues and render verdicts that are final so that the community can move on and find common ground.”

LaFavers said the investigation was done over a “period of several months, interviewing more than a dozen people and combing through a significant number of documents.”

“Their conclusion was that the Boyle County School District, it’s board  and it’s school administrators did everything related to this case properly, that no board policy or law was violated by any school official,” he said.

Boyle Co Final Report