In response to sustained pressure from the school community and state elected officials, the Albemarle County School Board has requested a formal investigation into its own policies and practices regarding “the response to allegations of sexually inappropriate conduct by staff.” The board’s August 4 action follows the arrest in June of Michael Swiney, a social emotional learning coach at Hollymead Elementary, on 11 counts of child sexual abuse that allegedly occurred in 2024 and 2025.
Albemarle County Public Schools (ACPS) families were kept in the dark for five months about the ongoing police probe into allegations against the coach and have demanded an objective and transparent investigation to address whatever systemic breakdowns allowed the events to happen. In that special meeting, the board announced that Harman Claytor Corrigan Wellman—a Richmond-based law firm that has served as defense counsel for the board and school division in both past and currently active legal proceedings—will perform the review.
“We want a thorough, timely, and robust investigation by Harman Claytor, and we anticipate that ACPS will give them full access to the facts,” said board member Bob Beard of the Samuel Miller district. “We want to know what happened, and we want to make sure that our kids at ACPS are safe always, our staff is safe, our parents are safe, and to make what happened at Hollymead never happen again.”
Harman Claytor’s past work on litigation in which they defended ACPS and the school board (ACSB) includes Ibanez v. ACSB (filed in 2021), Mais v. ACSB (2022), and the recent/ongoing Doe v. ACSB and Jimmy W. Belew v. ACPS (2025). The Mais case involved allegations that a school division employee’s complaints of abuse were ignored by building and division administrators and Human Resources staff, and was eventually settled out of court. Jimmy Belew confirmed for the Gazette that his case is actively ongoing.
Conflicted
Attendees of the August 13 School Board meeting questioned how Harman Claytor can be an objective investigator given its past work for the school division. “The [selected] law firm must be independent of this division,” said Christina Ra, an officer in the all-volunteer ACPS Family Council. “A firm that has ACPS as a client owes a duty to defend ACPS, [whereas] an investigator owes a duty to the facts.”
Other speakers called the arrangement a blatant conflict of interest, but the legal rules that govern conflict-related violations for lawyers allow for fine distinctions in how they’re applied. Under Virginia Bar Association rules, simply representing ACPS in the past, or even currently defending the division in other litigation, doesn’t automatically create an ethical conflict for Harman Claytor. A legally perilous conflict could be created, however, if the firm’s own prior advice turns out to be relevant to the investigation.
“This [situation] is potentially what is called a ‘personal interest’ conflict,” said George Cohen, a UVA law professor whose specialties include professional responsibility and legal ethics. “The question would be, is the lawyer conducting the investigation limited in a material way by the lawyer’s own interest?
UVA Professor of Law George Cohen Photo: University of Virginia.“So, if Harman Claytor was involved in or had knowledge of, for example, hiring, vetting, overseeing the learning coaches, or was consulted about how to handle the accusations once they were made—and the objective of its investigation is to assess how well the accusations were handled—then the lawyers would have an incentive not to investigate things that might implicate the firm,” said Cohen. “That’s the potential problem.”
Cohen also pointed to reasons why the board could benefit from hiring a law firm they have already worked with. “If [the firm is] familiar with the board and the operation of the schools then you don’t have to bring them up to speed on those aspects, and perhaps they have expertise in dealing with the issues that could produce efficiencies,” he said. In this scenario there may even be instances where the law firm does have “some peripheral involvement” in the subject of the investigation, but the School Board could agree with “informed consent” to continue nonetheless.
Known Unknowns
The agreement between the board and Harman Claytor has not been released as of this publication, so provisions regarding the projected cost, timing, and reporting requirements of the investigation are unknown to the public. Meanwhile, other recent revelations have heightened the public’s concerns about how the board is managing the process.
During an August 13 bail hearing for the accused, Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Lawton Tufts said that he “had reason to question the trustworthiness of [ACPS],” asserting that the division had been “uncooperative” and had failed to meet its mandatory reporting obligations. School Board Chair Rebecca Berlin subsequently wrote a detailed letter to Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley defending ACPS against Tufts’ characterization and insisting that all reporting was done properly. Her letter was released to press outlets at the same time she sent it to Hingeley.
Hingeley chided Berlin in his reply the following day. “It’s not clear why you immediately chose to make your position on Mr. Tufts’ comments a matter of public debate without first giving me a chance to meet with you, explain the Commonwealth’s position, and point out factual inaccuracies in your letter,” he wrote. “I was in Court … on August 13, and I support and endorse the statements Mr. Tufts made concerning the actions of ACPS in the Swiney investigation.”
Another revelation involved the board’s longest-serving member, Kate Acuff, who recently admitted to news outlet Cville Right Now that she had prior notice of the case. She said she had been told by now-resigned Superintendent Matt Hass months ago that a school staff member had been put on administrative leave and that police were investigating, but never shared that information with other board members. A group of county residents launched a legal petition on August 25 seeking her formal removal from the School Board, charging that her silence delayed the board’s eventual policy changes designed to protect students.
In the letter to the Commonwealth’s Attorney, Berlin referred to a mandatory Title IX investigation that was conducted by an outside consulting firm soon after Swiney was put on leave. That inquiry found Swiney “not responsible” for conduct that violates Title IX (an administrative judgement that does not reflect the accused person’s criminal guilt or innocence), but a speaker at the July 16 board meeting highlighted a potential internal conflict within ACPS.
Albemarle County School Board chair Rebecca Berlin. Submitted photo.“On the school division’s organization chart, you can see that the Title IX coordinator [Erin Stone] is also the division’s assistant legal counsel,” said Hollymead parent Phil Riese. “One duty is advocating for students who may be victims of sexual misconduct, but the other duty is protecting ACPS from lawsuits.” While this dual role sometimes occurs in small districts due to staffing shortages, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights explicitly discourages combining the positions on conflict-of-interest grounds.
Further, using information drawn from Virginia Freedom of Information Act requests and court transcripts, Riese discovered a concerning discrepancy in Stone’s reporting of events. Stone told the board in June that both the county police and Child Protective Services were contacted about an incident involving Swiney back in March of 2025 and declined to open cases, but prosecutor Tufts stated in court that no such report to either agency was filed by ACPS at that time.
When Riese asked the board to clarify which account was true, Berlin said the division “does not have any record to definitively resolve that question” and that “establishing that history accurately … is part of why the board directed [the investigation].”
From a pure organizational function perspective, parents have also asked how school division staff could have spent months coordinating with outside officials on multiple fronts—including a Title IX probe, a county police investigation, scrutiny by Child Protective Services, and scores of interviews conducted with parents, students, and other employees—while the School Board remained unaware that anything was amiss.
Recouping Public Trust
Parents continue to request an objective investigation that will provide credible results, and ask what will happen if Harman Claytor is found to have participated in previous decisions that it will now be charged with investigating. Cohen said the School Board might consider, if nothing else, the element of public relations in its choice to hire the firm.
“I think it’s a question of, not so much whether the law firm is acting ethically, but whether this is a good thing for the School Board to be doing if there’s a strong degree of concern among families,” said Cohen. “It’s an appearance-of-independence question, yes, but at the end of the day the law firm technically does not owe any duty to the parents. They represent the School Board; the School Board is the client.”
The School Board may choose to enhance public support for its investigation by committing in advance to releasing the eventual report prepared by Harman Claytor to the public, allowing for redactions of sensitive information such as children’s names. “Often if you’re going to do an internal investigation, the whole point of it is to make it public,” said Cohen. School division communications chief Jason Grant said he could not speculate on whether assurances would be made to release Harman Claytor’s report to the public, in full or redacted, until the contract is finalized.
Board members said they requested updates from Harman Claytor at 60-day intervals and cautioned that answers may be a long time coming. “I think it’s important to make sure that we understand this is going to be quite a long process,” said Jim Dillenbeck, “and there may be information that we’re not able to share with the public, and so we ask for patience. We’re all committed, obviously, to greater safety and better structures, but it’s going to take some time.”
