Two of the three school superintendents that West Jefferson Hills Superintendent Terry Kinavey is accused of plagiarizing said they have never met her and did not give her permission to use their work.

"I've never heard of this lady and have never talked to her. This is the first knowledge I've had of any of this," said Michael Shonk, superintendent of the Unit Seven Schools in Tolono, Ill., in an interview Monday.

Likewise, Joan Carr, superintendent of the Edmonton Catholic Schools in Alberta, Canada, said through a spokeswoman last week that she did not know Mrs. Kinavey and did not give permission for portions of her "message from the superintendent" letter to be used by Mrs. Kinavey.

The plagiarism issue was one of the focuses of the seventh continuation of Mrs. Kinavey's termination hearing last week.

Among the charges facing Mrs. Kinavey is that she improperly intervened in the hiring of an English and reading teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School and plagiarized the work of other professionals in letters and articles she produced for the district.

According to charges filed by the district, Mrs. Kinavey used passages from letters written by Ms. Carr, Mr. Shonk and Marsha Hurda, superintendent of the Spring-Ford Area School District in Royersford, near Philadelphia, in two back-to-school welcome messages she published. Dr. Hurda could not be reached for comment.

One of the welcome back messages was a column in the district's newsletter. The other was an August 2009 letter to parents and guardians.

Mrs. Kinavey also stands accused of submitting a column titled "Interactivity in the Classroom for Fourth and Fifth Grades," for the district newsletter that Mr. Weiss contends was copied from an RM Easiteach brochure. The column said the district purchased RM Easiteach software & interactive whiteboards for the fourth and fifth grades.

Another plagiarism charge alleges that Mrs. Kinavey in a letter to faculty and staff discussing the differences between ordinary and extraordinary uses "verbatim paragraphs" from two articles written by leadership expert John C. Maxwell, without citing the source.

In his testimony last week, West Jefferson Hills solicitor Ira Weiss said school board members were told about the documents by district staff members after he was authorized by the school board to conduct an investigation into Mrs. Kinavey.

The investigation was initiated in September after Mrs. Kinavey was accused of removing teaching candidate Denise Breisinger's name from a draft agenda in August, when she was expected to be hired as an English and reading teacher at the high school. Mrs. Kinavey later reposted the job as an English-only job.

Mrs. Breisinger was hired by the board for the English-only position on Sept. 22, the same night the board suspended Mrs. Kinavey.

Mr. Weiss said after he started his investigation into the plagiarism charges after "a number of staff people reported to board members" that Mrs. Kinavey had published letters that weren't her own work."

Defense attorney Ernest DeHaas asked Mr. Weiss how he determined that the documents were not Mrs. Kinavey's original work. Mr. Weiss said he obtained copies of the documents, typed several lines from each one into the Internet search engine Google and found they matched documents that were online.

Mr. DeHaas questioned if Mr. Weiss checked with the sources of the documents to see if Mrs. Kinavey had permission to use the contents. Mr. Weiss said he did not do so because he did not believe it was necessary.

Mr. Weiss said that it was his belief that for Mrs. Kinavey to place her name on work that belonged to someone else clearly the fit the description of plagiarism.

Mr. DeHaas asked Mr. Weiss what district policy was violated by Mrs. Kinavey. Mr. Weiss cited a policy prohibiting plagiarism among students in the district.

Mr. DeHaas contended that policy applied only to students. But Mr. Weiss argued that "if students are held to that standard, the superintendent should be held to a higher standard."

Mr. Weiss also said there is a district policy that refers to "the honesty and integrity of the staff," though he said he did not have a copy of the policy with him at the hearing.

A copy of the newsletter containing Mrs. Kinavey's welcome back column was obtained by the Post-Gazette. What appears to be verbatim passages from messages from Marsha Hurda and Joan Carr are found in the column by Mrs. Kinavey.

The column is under the logo "Message from the Superintendent," with the headline "Welcome to the West Jefferson School District." Mrs. Kinavey's picture is beside the column.

The column appears to be created by using full sentences and paragraphs from the letters that appear under Dr. Hurda's and Ms. Carr's names on their district's websites. Inserted into the column in the newsletter is the West Jefferson Hills mission statement.

There does not appear to be any original writing in Mrs. Kinavey's column. All of the paragraphs can be found in the letters of either Dr. Hurda or Ms. Carr.

Another welcome document signed by Mrs. Kinavey, and obtained and reviewed by the Post-Gazette, is the August 2009 letter that was sent to parents and guardians instructing them on how to help their students learn.

Every sentence in the letter is identical to a letter written by Mr. Shonk to parents and guardians of the Unit Seven Schools. The only difference is the salutation and in the last sentence, where Mrs. Kinavey's letter references the West Jefferson Hills School District and Mr. Shonk's letter references the Unit Seven Schools.

The Post-Gazette could not obtain copies of the article "Interactivity in the Classroom" or the letter to faculty and staff discussing the difference between ordinary and extraordinary.

Mr. Weiss said "98 percent" of the article about interactivity came from the Easiteach brochure.

Mr. DeHaas contended the article was a description of what the software purchased by the district could do. In the newsletter, the article appears next to Mrs. Kinavey's welcome message. But the article does not have her name attached to it.

The district dropped two of the 15 allegations against Mrs. Kinavey. One accused her of using the work product of another professional educator for a professional development planner and technology plan in the summer of 2009 and removing the educator's name to make it appear it was her own work.

The other dismissed charge involved the accusation that in December 2008, Mrs. Kinavey unilaterally revised and authorized the posting to the district's website several revised policies with getting approval from the board.

The hearing resumes at 5 p.m. Monday in the high school cafeteria.

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