Local Superintendant Plagiarizes for Newsletter: Pass or Epic Fail?

[XLFD]

The Ludington Torch editorial staff (including you) liberally borrows articles from other sources of news and information, but we always encourage you to release the source so as not to get yourself in trouble from the original writer of that material.  This concept should be fairly clear to someone who has risen to the level of superintendant of schools, but that appears not to be the case here. 

Note that this takes place in Zeeland, Michigan-- the same place where Ludington's Ice Cream magnate (Robert) Barry Neal has a nice estate he lives at (correction: where the LLC he manages has a nice estate used for dairy farm purposes w/o those messy cows).  Another coincidence between Mr. Neal and the superintendant is that he has a second name of Barry, Dave Barry.  Showing that perhaps his mama did a bit of plagiarizing of humorist Dave Barry's name. Just kidding, Super Dave, I'm not dissing your mother here.  Here's WOOD's coverage of the mess, slightly edited.  The video was for when the story broke and the prose was issued today.

 

Superintendent caught plagiarizing: woodtv.com

 

ZEELAND, Mich. (WOOD) - At the first school board meeting since the Zeeland superintendent admitted to plagiarism, several people said they think the board should fire him.

A May 2012 letter written by Superintendent Dave Barry was admittedly plagiarized from an online education blogger. Barry copied 396 words of the 437 in the blog verbatim into an employee newsletter with his name signed at the bottom.

When 24 Hour News 8 called to confront Barry early last week, he admitted he didn't cite the source of the letter, calling it "a mistake." Later that day, he released two apologies via email. One was addressed to his staff and the other to blogger Mike Rutherford.

Most of the public comments at the Monday night Zeeland school board meeting were about the incident.

The majority of those who commented were in favor of firing Barry.

The school board said it will take those comments into consideration and that it will make an announcement regarding Barry's future at Zeeland on Thursday.

On May 15, the head of the Zeeland school board released a statement about the incident:

"Superintendent Barry has made the Board aware of issues involving plagiarism in a recently published employee publication. The Zeeland Board of Education is taking this matter very seriously and we intend to review the incident thoroughly. We plan to conclude our review of the situation in a timely manner."

http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/ottawa_county/public-comments-...