By Madeline Abel
According to the New York Times, high school journalism students in Kansas managed to make their recently hired principal resign.
On March 6, 2017, Pittsburgh Community School in Kansas introduced their new principal, Amy Robertson. 17 year-old journalist student Maddie Baden saw this as a perfect opportunity to interview the new principal and find out some background information.
Throughout the multiple interviews Baden had with Robertson, she began to realize the inconsistency in the principal’s answers. When asked, Robertson said she got her master’s and doctorate’s degrees from Corllins University; however, the school website lists no physical address as well as numerous consumer complaints and warning about lack of accreditation.
Robertson also added that she earned her bachelor’s degree of Fine Arts from the University of Tulsa. However, when the students looked, they realized the college does not offer that type of degree. The students also discovered her profile on LinkedIn, a website where people can manage their professional identity. The website did not identify where Robertson got her master’s degree or PhD, and instead listed N/A.
On Tuesday, April 4, the school’s board of education met and announced that Robertson had resigned from her $98,000 a year position as principal.
The schools superintendent, Destry Brown, said he was proud of the students, but disappointed in how the whole thing unfolded. He believes that the false information would have eventually been uncovered and the students just help to speed things up. He said, “I have a little bit of heartburn over the whole article. I wasn’t going to stop that because I believe in that whole First Amendment thing.”
The group of journalist students that uncovered the real truth behind Robertson were all members of the student-run newspaper, The Booster Redux. The group has been highly praised by many important people within the journalism world, including Tom Rosenstiel, the executive director of the American Press Institute. He added that what the high schoolers did “really stands out” in the community.