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After Ryan used the email in campaign videos to defend omitting Atlanta Public Schools from his employment application, Coweta County Schools released records showing a different email chain. Meals on Wheels Board Chair Cynthia Bennett says Ryan previously manipulated the presentation of communications during a separate dispute.
Coweta County Schools says an email used by County Commission District 3 candidate Tim Ryan to defend himself against allegations that he omitted a teaching job from his employment application does not match the school system’s records.
The dispute centers on Ryan’s response to recent reporting that he failed to disclose his 2019-20 employment with Atlanta Public Schools when he applied to teach in Coweta County in March 2022. Ryan has publicly acknowledged leaving the Atlanta job off his application, but argued in campaign videos posted June 10 and June 11 that Coweta Schools already knew about the position.
In the videos, Ryan displayed what he described as an email exchange with Coweta County Schools Certification Specialist Kim McCambry. Ryan told viewers the emails proved the district knew about his Atlanta Public Schools employment.
“What did he say? That Coweta County Schools didn’t know. Oh, really,” Ryan said in a June 10 video before displaying the email. Later in the same video, he concluded, “So they knew.”
The email Ryan displayed shows him asking whether Coweta could use employment verification documents from Atlanta Public Schools. The response shown in Ryan’s copy states: “I don’t need anything from APS because all of your experience comes from DeKalb County Schools.”
However, Coweta County Schools says the email Ryan circulated does not match the version contained in the district’s Gmail records.
In a statement provided to The Citizen, Public Information Director Dean Jackson said the district reviewed the email chain referenced in Ryan’s campaign videos and found significant discrepancies.
“The subject line, time stamps and content of the emails produced by Mr. Ryan do not match those contained in our records,” Jackson wrote.
According to Jackson, the district has no record of receiving the May 3, 2022 email Ryan displayed publicly. Instead, Coweta’s records show a differently worded email received May 4, 2022.
More significantly, Jackson said the May 5, 2022 response Ryan circulated bears the same timestamp as an email in the district’s system but contains different content and a different subject line.
The version released by Ryan carries the subject line “Employment Verification – Tim Ryan” and includes the statement that no information was needed from Atlanta Public Schools.
The version released by Coweta County Schools carries the subject line “Re: Direct Deposit Authorization – Tim Ryan.” In that email chain, Ryan asks McCambry to let him know if she is still missing employment verification from Atlanta Public Schools. McCambry’s response at 11:35 a.m. on May 5, 2022 consists of three words:
“Received, thank you.”
Salary verification, not hiring
Jackson also argued that Ryan’s defense does not address the omission on his original employment application.
According to Jackson, the emails Ryan relies upon were exchanged nearly two months after he submitted his March 10, 2022 application and approximately one month after the Coweta County Board of Education approved his hiring on April 12, 2022.
“The May 3rd/5th emails, even if valid, would have come well after his application, interview, criminal background check, certification check with the Professional Standards Commission, previous employment records and recommendations, a recommendation to hire from the interviewing team and Human Resources, and Mr. Ryan’s formal approval for hire,” Jackson wrote.
Jackson said McCambry was not part of the hiring process. Instead, her role was to collect and verify years of experience for salary placement after an employee had already been hired.
“The Certification Specialist with whom Mr. Ryan is emailing would not have been a part of the interview process,” Jackson wrote. “Her role would be only to compile relevant years of experience to determine pay scale after the fact.”
According to records previously released by the district, Ryan’s March 10, 2022 application listed teaching experience in DeKalb County Schools but omitted his approximately three-quarters of a school year at Atlanta Public Schools.
Why the omitted APS employment matters
Ryan has repeatedly argued that his omission of Atlanta Public Schools from his Coweta application was insignificant because Coweta eventually learned he had worked there. The controversy has drawn attention, however, because the omitted employment sits within a broader record of documented concerns spanning multiple school districts and organizations.
In Coweta County Schools alone, The Citizen reviewed a 152-page personnel file containing complaints, investigations, witness statements, administrator findings, and disciplinary records involving Ryan at Madras Middle School and Smokey Road Middle School.
The Citizen also interviewed three former students and three parents who described the personal fallout from Ryan’s classroom conduct. Allegations documented through personnel records, parent complaints, student statements, and interviews included pulling a crying student into a closet and telling her he would date her if he were her age, repeatedly telling gifted students they were not good enough for advanced classes, commenting on a parent’s chest size, describing sexual activity with his wife to middle-school students, and behavior that parents and students said contributed to severe anxiety, panic attacks, and school transfers.
The concerns were not limited to Coweta County.
Records previously obtained by The Citizen show Ryan was permanently barred from returning to a Gwinnett County middle school campus following student complaints regarding inappropriate comments. School records documented multiple student statements and disciplinary action by the district.
At Atlanta Public Schools, Ryan resigned approximately two weeks after an incident in which he took a student’s sandwich, placed it down the front of his pants, removed it, and ate it while the student was visibly upset. The resignation occurred nearly three months before the end of the school year.
Outside education, Ryan’s conduct also led to conflict with Meals on Wheels Coweta. The nonprofit sent cease-and-desist letters, had Ryan trespassed from its property, and publicly objected to an unauthorized fundraiser conducted through Ryan’s campaign platform. The fundraiser resulted in the purchase of a commercial mixer so large that Meals on Wheels leaders said it could not fit in the organization’s kitchen and could not be used.
Against that backdrop, the dispute over whether Ryan accurately represented his Atlanta Public Schools employment history — and whether the email he now cites in his defense matches district records — carries significance beyond a single employment application.
In his June 11 video, Ryan acknowledged leaving the Atlanta position off the application but maintained that he had later informed the district about it.
“I did, I did,” Ryan said when discussing the omission. “But I had already told them about it.”
A familiar complaint
The controversy prompted a response from Cynthia Bennett, chair of the board of Meals on Wheels Coweta.
Bennett has previously told The Citizen that communications Ryan published in a 2026 Substack post defending himself during the “Mixer-gate” controversy did not accurately reflect the context of the original exchanges.
Asked how she would characterize Ryan’s presentation of those communications, Bennett used a single word.
“Manipulate.”
Bennett said emails and text messages included in the Substack post contained real communications, but she believes they were presented outside their original context.
“Those words were used, but not in the context that they were presented,” Bennett said. “The content was manipulated.”
Bennett stopped short of alleging that communications were entirely fabricated.
“It wasn’t manufactured, because it was like, well, I said those things to him,” Bennett said. “It was not in the context of the messages…”
The Meals on Wheels dispute began after Ryan used his campaign Facebook page to raise money for a commercial mixer despite not being authorized to solicit donations on behalf of the nonprofit.
Conflicting versions
Ryan continues to maintain that the email he displayed proves Coweta County Schools knew about his Atlanta Public Schools employment.
Coweta County Schools maintains the opposite — that the email Ryan presented publicly does not match the records maintained in the district’s Gmail system.
The dispute leaves voters with two versions of what is purportedly the same email exchange, bearing the same participants and the same timestamp, but containing markedly different content.
Tim Ryan faces Republican Dakota Caldwell in Tuesday’s runoff for the party nomination for Coweta County Commission District 3.
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