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Mami! Who You Gonna Believe, Me or Those Lying Emails?

How nice, our first scandal with the new Superintendent of Schools, and he hasn't even been hired yet! There are many elements to this story that are simply preposterous:

School Board members, community leaders and reporters have received about two dozen e-mails that appear to have been sent from deLuzuriaga to Carvalho between July and September 2007. Another e-mail purports to show Carvalho coaching School Board member Perla Tabares Hantman on how to challenge Crew -- then his boss -- about budget problems last September.

Hantman said she does not recall the message and said she still has ''total confidence'' in Carvalho.

Carvalho, an 18-year teacher and administrator, has not yet accepted the position; he also is weighing an offer to become the schools chief in Pinellas County.

During an interview Thursday at the high school where he began his teaching career, Carvalho denied writing the e-mail to Hantman and said he was never romantically involved with deLuzuriaga.

He said the e-mails were doctored in an attempt to torpedo his ascent to the top of the Miami-Dade School District, and described his relationship with the reporter as professional but ``friendly.''

Carvalho, 44, who is married, acknowledged he once went on a bike-riding trip with deLuzuriaga and others, and that she met Carvalho's daughter and nephew at his district office.

DeLuzuriaga informed her editor at the time, Bob Radziewicz, of the outing with Carvalho. Radziewicz, now a University of Miami journalism professor, said he advised her to keep Carvalho at arm's length. ''I said you want to be careful. He is a school official,'' he said.

Carvalho said he has asked the school district to search for all of his e-mails from last summer and make them public. He has also asked for an investigation into how the messages were accessed and distributed.

''Some of the contents of the e-mails suggest to me that somebody has manipulated them,'' Carvalho said after meeting with students at Miami Jackson High. ``What they are attempting is damaging and hurtful and untruthful. They are using them to damage my character.''

DeLuzuriaga, 27, now a reporter at the Boston Globe, worked at The Herald from October 2006 to September 2007. Contacted in Boston, she declined to discuss the e-mails Thursday.

''I can't comment right now,'' she said.

The Herald could not authenticate the messages because the company does not save internal e-mails dating back that far. Some of the messages appear to be from private e-mail accounts maintained by deLuzuriaga and Carvalho.

Carvalho said he no longer uses the private e-mail address listed in the messages. However, he provided that address to the Pinellas County School Board in a July 10 letter.

So these are emails from a "private email address" that Carvalho maintained on his school computer? Hmm.

Carvalho believes someone at the school accessed that private email address on his school computer and doctored the emails? Hmm.

Carvalho denies writing the email coaching Hantman on how to fire Crew but Hantman does not deny it and only fails to recall it? This is an email from Carvalho's private email account on a school computer? Hmm.

Carvalho denies having an affair with the Herald schools reporter but she does not deny it and simply "can't comment on it." Hmm.

Oh well, makes perfect sense to me. God I love this town.

BTW, Tania forget riding around Boston on a stupid Vespa, we want to hear from you.

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on September 12, 2008 (boomark / email).