The School Board of Alachua County has reached a tentative settlement with two plaintiffs in a defamation suit involving former Superintendent Carlee Simon and former Alachua County Public Schools employee Prescott Cowles. Details of the settlement were not disclosed in the filing. 

Details of the settlement were not disclosed in the filing, but Simon told Mainstreet that it is a “nuisance settlement,” where finishing the legal proceedings would exceed the cost of settlement. The settlement does not include or imply any admission of wrongdoing on the defendant’s part. 

“I have been very ready to go to trial… there are statements in the complaint that are not true or accurate,” Simon told Mainstreet in a phone call

The settlement was filed, at the plaintiff’s request, the day before a scheduled hearing, and about a month after the plaintiffs’ deposition was canceled. Several claims in the suit are still disputed. 

The suit, filed in 2022 by former Camp Crystal Lake (CCL) director Scott Burton and his wife, Alachua Elementary School principal Holly Burton, cites defamation, intentional interference with a contract and intentional interference in business relationships, claiming damages in excess of $15,000. 

At the time of the suit, Holly Burton was the principal of Chester Shell Elementary School. The initial moment of tension identified in the suit as a public “CommUNITY” meeting in Hawthorne, where the suit says Simon, though not invited, presided and made a surprise announcement about a plan to replace Shell with a new K-12 school. 

During that meeting, the lawsuit complaint says Holly Burton spoke up for the importance of Shell, and soon after, Simon began making accusations against Scott Burton in his role at Camp Crystal Lake. 

A Nov. 11, 2021, email from Simon to school board members, attached as an exhibit to the suit, states that Simon and her team had “discovered” some “alarming information” about Scott Burton. She wrote that she had concerns about “apparent fraud” on Scott Burton’s part and voiced a concern about the Burtons’ residency onsite at CCL without paying rent, utilities or property taxes. 

The lawsuit’s response is that Scott Burton’s contract requires him to live onsite, and previous camp directors had not been required to pay for utilities or rent. As the Burtons did not own the property, property taxes did not apply. 

Simon’s email complained that Scott Burton had been committing theft by gift, by providing scholarships to friends of the director and other affluent families that could otherwise afford the camp. The lawsuit claims that all children who applied during the application period got at least a partial scholarship. 

ACPS has since amended its scholarship program, awarding scholarships based on the availability of funds, which are now provided entirely through charitable donations.

The suit states that Cowles, named as a defendant in the original suit but later removed, assisted Simon by pointing her to the scholarship program and technical purchases, and provided many of the allegations against Scott Burton to the media. 

At the time of the suit, Cowles was ACPS’s Special Projects Manager for the Department of Analytics, Evaluation and Accountability, according to his LinkedIn profile. He had served from August 2019 until December 2020 as a camper specialist and registrar at Camp Crystal Lake. 

Cowles was also running for a school board seat at the time of the suit, which was submitted shortly before early voting opened for the August 2022 election, a race which Prescott lost, but took 45.97% of the vote, according to the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections Office.

Cowles said he worked at CCL every summer from 2014 to 2021. 

A judge denied the case twice, and the third filing excluded Cowles from the list of defendants. 

Cowles no longer works for ACPS, serving instead as executive director of the Florida Diabetes Camp since December of 2023. 

Burton also no longer serves as Camp Crystal Lake’s director. 

In November of 2021, the complaint says Holly Burton also received her first low performance evaluation in 23 years with ACPS, though Simon had never visited Shell during the school year. The suit states that Holly Burton was offered no feedback to account for the low score, and when she asked to meet with Simon about it, was told that “Dr. Simon does not believe that any individual should be rated as highly effective because that would indicate one has hit their ceiling.” 

According to the suit, in November 2021, the Burtons also signed a lease for a home away from CCL, “having been subjected to constant threats of loss of their [SBAC]-provided employment and housing.” 

The lawsuit states that the next month, on the last workday before winter break, the district ordered Scott Burton to sign a lease with ACPS in order to reside at CCL for any length of time. The suit states that the lease was inconsistent and in conflict with Burton’s employment contract and past district practices. 

In January 2022, Simon notified ACPS’s human resources department that Scott Burton was involved in an incident involving “serious concerns about financial mismanagement and fraud” at CCL, according to the suit. The complaint says he was placed on administrative leave almost immediately, frozen out of email accounts and denied access to his records. 

According to the suit, at an unknown date, an audit of CCL was completed clearing Scott Burton, who had to request records for the information from the audit. 

The district’s 2021 independent auditor’s report from June of that year did note a lack of scholarship policy, and recommended the district adopt a written policy to establish a scholarship committee “to ensure compliance with the intended purpose of the donation.” 

On Feb 8, 2022, the suit says Scott Burton demanded a retraction of false and defamatory statements that had been made up to that time, and on Feb. 16 an investigative review committee met to review the investigative report. According to the suit, though the committee was not provided the audit, it “found no probable cause to sustain any violations of law or school board policies.” 

The school board fired Simon on March 1, 2022, but the suit states that she continued making defamatory statements about Scott Burton through televised SBAC meetings and local media outlets. 

“Simon is not a party to the contract between Mr. Burton and the [school board] but is instead a third-party interloper who has interfered in the relationships,” the lawsuit states. 

After multiple amendments to the Bartons’ original complaint, and after Simon served a proposal for settlement in November of 2023, the case was transferred from circuit court to an Alachua County court. 

In March, County Court Judge Kristine Van Vorst recused herself from the case. 

On Dec. 16, H. Bryan Boukari, attorney for the plaintiffs, filed a notice of settlement, and the same day, County Court Judge Adam Lee recused himself from the case. 

Simon said part of the reason the suit has taken this long is because judges have needed to recuse themselves due to relationships with the Burtons or their lawyer. 

Though no longer named in the case, Cowles still disputes many of the suit’s claims, saying the superintendent was named on the agenda of the CommUNITY meeting, and that Simon made no surprise announcement. He said the CommUNITY meeting took place “well after” documents and concerns about Scott Burton had already been reported and discussed with the Auditor General’s office. 

In response to the suit’s claim that he provided allegations to the media, Cowles said the Alachua Chronicle first reported the allegations after obtaining the investigation report. He also quoted the ACPS Employee Handbook’s instruction under “Whistleblower Protections,” requiring employees to report “any conduct or activity that is or appears to be… Fraud, gross mismanagement, malfeasance, misfeasance, gross waste of public funds, abuse or gross neglect of duty.” 

“When the plaintiffs agreed to settle out of court on the day before they were scheduled to be deposed, they eliminated the opportunity for the truth to come out through the legal system,” Cowles wrote in an email to Mainstreet. 

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with responses from Prescott Cowles and Carlee Simon and additional information from available documents.