Nobody has said that that wasn’t one of the reasons he got fired.

As far as “second-hand source”, the only two primary sources for the call between the substitute teacher and his supervisor are the two of them (unless the line was tapped or one of them was recording it or on a speaker phone.) The *reporter* was the second-hand source. It sounds like the reporter messed up badly by not getting both sides (though Sinclair might have declined to comment or referred all questions to higher ups.) If Sinclair fails to actually deny making the comment about the wizardry complaint, and Piculas doesn’t claim to have been misquoted, then all the evidence we have is that Sinclair said it. Has either of these occurred? (It doesn’t matter whether or not there actually was a complaint, only that Sinclair told Piculas that there was one.)

All the other quotes I’ve seen sound like classic Watergate non-denial denials.

In a not unkind support of public school superintendents in general: they’re usually elected within their city or county school districts, are not directly professionally involved in education, and are generally unpaid, apart from meager stipends to cover travel or other small expenses. Most of them are genuinely concerned about how the schools are faring, but some are axe-grinders with specific and often controversial agendas of their own: the teaching of X in the classroom, salaries - nearly always too high - paid to teachers or administrators, or the “waste” of taxpayer’s money, or merely as a forum to get themselves publicly noticed, for example. Most of the folks I’ve run across in my experience have been not so awful; they ran for office generally because they saw the district’s need in one area of another and thought they might be able to help. I have seen a few who were totally at odds with the schools and the folks who ran them, however. But for the most part, these types don’t appear very often, and when they do they’re so obviously there to cause problems for everyone that they’re gone by the next term, with sorrowful goodbyes from the voters, one and all.

“You really can’t count on every Web site … because you’re likely to get information that isn’t true,” she said.
Gee, ya think?