The night that would lead to Sean Bulson’s firing began at a crowded New Orleans bar. Then things get fuzzy.

The former superintendent of Harford County Public Schools said he woke up in his hotel room in the same clothes he wore the previous night, his phone and computer missing. He doesn’t remember much but suspects he was targeted: once by a woman in a green dress that night in New Orleans and then again, two years later, by the county executive and school board members who’d been critical of his leadership for years.

Bulson is speaking out for the first time since speculation about his behavior on a 2024 work trip circulated on social media during the winter and led the school board to fire him in February. He contends he did nothing inappropriate on the trip and that those suggesting otherwise were politically motivated, twisting a settled matter into a campaign against him just as his contract was up for renewal.

Bulson said County Executive Bob Cassilly was one of them. Cassilly, who called for Bulson’s resignation after the rumors spread, disputes that characterization, calling Bulson’s silence a leadership failure that led to his downfall.

The former schools chief said he didn’t think it was appropriate to share his side of the story publicly while it unfolded but wants to set the record straight now.

“I feel like there needed to be some closure,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Banner.

A brewing scandal

Bulson said he was a victim on the night of April 5, 2024.

“I can’t confirm I was drugged, but certain details from the evening kind of lead me to that,” he said. “There’s a lot of details that are unclear.”

Bulson and several Harford County school officials were in New Orleans for the National School Boards Association conference and went to a crowded bar that Friday night — that much he remembers.

“I might have had something put in a drink,” Bulson said.

It was a realization that came much later after reviewing the circumstances and reading about other instances of people being drugged in New Orleans, he said.

He remembers some parts of his walk back to his Marriott hotel room. Eric Davis, the deputy superintendent, was with him, and so was a woman whose name he doesn’t know.

“I don’t know whether I was getting help or what the overall circumstances were,” he said.

Davis didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Bulson denied having any intention of bringing an unknown woman back to his hotel room but said he vaguely remembers her being there. The next morning, when his stuff was missing, he called 911 from Davis’ cellphone and told the dispatcher he suspected a woman in a green dress took his property, which included a school-issued phone and laptop.

His personal phone, Apple Watch and iPad were gone, too. His wallet was there but cash and a credit card were missing, Bulson told The Banner.

He said he was fully clothed when he woke up, evidence nothing sexual happened with the woman in the green dress, as some have speculated. There were cigarette butts floating in his hotel room toilet, according to Bulson, and he does not smoke. Someone must’ve been waiting for him to pass out, he presumed.

Bulson reported his missing work phone and laptop to the school system’s IT office and to Aaron Poynton, the school board president at the time, according to a report by Maryland’s Inspector General for Education.

Poynton was among the Harford contingent at the conference, along with board Vice President Melissa Hahn and others Poynton informed about what happened to Bulson. Poynton had been at the bar that night, too, and didn’t notice anything unusual about Bulson’s behavior, though he said he left before Bulson did.

Hahn declined a request for a phone interview.

The following Monday, Bulson received a call from the hotel’s security that his electronics had been found in his room.

“The hotel claimed they found them in the safe,” he said. “I’ve never used a hotel safe in my life.”

Rumors started as the week went on. County leaders called Bulson, asking about the trip. They were concerned school data was compromised during the supposed theft. Clearly, someone on the board shared what happened with the public, Bulson said.

School system IT staff examined the laptop and determined no data had been compromised. Bulson got a new phone. Still, the rumors swirled. Bulson said his critics would bring up “salacious” theories about what happened during board meetings. And his laptop “became the subject of such interest,” he said. “A laptop I continued using for at least six more months.”

But nothing more came of it until January, when a local lawyer with a popular Facebook page posted an audio clip of Bulson’s 911 call, igniting a social media firestorm.

Within weeks, Poynton had resigned, Davis had been put on leave and Bulson had been fired.

There was only one reason that would happen nearly two years later, Bulson said: “to ensure that the board had leverage not to renew me.”

A ‘campaign’ against him

The 911 call dropped weeks before the Harford school board was expected to vote on whether to grant Bulson another four-year contract. He said he thinks it would have voted in his favor had the scandal not roiled the school system.

“During my time in Harford, student achievement in HCPS steadily improved in every way schools are measured by the state and nation,” Bulson said.

Pass rates for AP courses rose under his leadership, as did the number of students taking the classes. SAT scores were above the state and national averages, he said. Harford had the sixth-highest English scores on last year’s state test and classroom disruptions were cut by half over the last two years, he said.

But there had been calls for Bulson’s removal before: when a student at Joppatowne High fatally shot another teen, when the school system hired a teacher with criminal charges and when the system kept a book in school libraries that some families wanted banned.

But Bulson said there was a concerted effort to get rid of him for years.

“There was money invested in this campaign to have me removed,” he said. “I can’t identify the source of those funds, but what was done couldn’t have been done without resources to support it.”

Bulson wouldn’t name the people he suspected were behind the campaign but pointed to a video shared by the Turnbull Brockmeyer Facebook page purporting to show the inside of the hotel room he stayed in.

Adele Brockmeyer, the lawyer behind the page, said she had no involvement in any campaign against Bulson. The video Bulson referenced was created by another account, and she reposted it, she said. She doesn’t know who runs the account and said she wasn’t given any money or resources for the posts she created, including for the 911 call.

“It’s interesting that his first thing to do is try to shoot the messenger over a story that he covered up 18 months before,” Brockmeyer said.

She and her husband, Jack Turnbull, questioned Bulson’s claim he was drugged and wondered why he didn’t report it to police.

“One of the things that we look at as attorneys is how people act in the moment, not how they explain it later,” Turnbull said. “And how he acted in the moment tells us everything we need to know about that weekend.”

Bulson said Cassilly, the county executive, used the controversy to push him out — an effort he suspects began in 2022.

That year, Cassilly was a state senator who sponsored legislation to transfer the power to appoint three school board members from the governor to the county executive. He was campaigning for the job and was elected that November. Bulson said he believes Cassilly later appointed members to “do his bidding,” which Cassilly denied.

Each of the board members he appointed had qualifications the school system needed, Cassilly said.

“The school is full of education experts,” he said. “So we don’t need education experts. They need to be people who have some experience managing systems, working in large bureaucracies.”

Cassilly denied having anything to do with getting the 911 call posted by Turnbull Brockmeyer or any of the social media posts that followed.

He noted he’s also been attacked in social media posts by the same users who critiqued Bulson.

“Obviously, the people doing the video [about Bulson] were not taking orders from me,” he said.

He said Bulson asked to meet with him after the 911 call audio released and was “very upset about all of this.” He told Bulson he could not remain silent, Cassilly recalled.

“A good leader wouldn’t have waited two months to offer that explanation,” he said. “Sean Bulson is gone because Sean Bulson was not a good leader.”

Bulson said the district will struggle finding outside talent to fill the superintendent’s role, given the controversies and the state of the school board. He said some members were more focused on the idea the school system was indoctrinating students than on academic achievement.

For the time being, Bulson said, he isn’t looking to step back inside a public school system.

“I don’t know if that’s forever out of the cards, but I am not doing that right now,” he said.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.