She wore a green dress and was gone when he woke up. Her name is unknown, and so are the events that took place inside the Harford County superintendent’s hotel room that night in New Orleans.

The encounter that came to light last month spurred the school board to put Sean Bulson on paid leave and launch multiple investigations. Then Monday night, they announced they’d voted to fire the superintendent months before his contract was up.

Bulson could not be reached for comment.

With nearly eight years at the helm of Harford County Public Schools, Bulson is one of the longest-serving superintendents in the state. He’s earned praise for raising test scores and won the state’s Superintendent of the Year award. But discontent with his leadership long predates questions about what happened at a work conference in New Orleans.

The calls for his ouster started “from day one,” said DeLane Lewis, head of the Harford chapter of Together We Will, a social justice advocacy nonprofit. “It really has, I would say, nothing to do with his performance or the school’s performance.”

Bulson has publicly sparred with Republican County Executive Bob Cassilly over the years, as they sniped at each other in media interviews and press releases. Conservative politicians and the local chapter of parent group Moms for Liberty have lambasted Bulson over budget decisions, mask mandates and a school shooting.

His alleged indiscretion, his critics said, was the final straw.

The rumors

Cassilly said he had heard rumors that something happened at the conference in New Orleans.

Bulson and most Harford school board members were at the annual meeting of National School Board Association in April 2024. But at the time, the former state senator said in an interview, he didn’t pay the rumblings any mind.

“Allegations of this kind were so common in the General Assembly just to destroy somebody’s career,” Cassilly said. “You sleep with her. She’s sleeping with him. You know, that kind of stuff.”

Then, nearly two years later, Facebook erupted.

On Jan. 5, the Turnbull Brockmeyer law firm posted audio of a 911 call from a New Orleans hotel room. The caller, purportedly Bulson, said on the recording that a woman in a green dress, whose name he did not know, had stolen his wallet and electronic devices while he had been sleeping.

A Jan. 12 investigation report by the Maryland Office of the Inspector General for Education determined nothing was actually stolen, despite concerns from County Councilman Tony “G” Giangiordano that school property was involved. As it turned out, Bulson had forgotten he’d stashed his devices in the hotel room safe.

Cassilly said he sat down with Bulson in January and presented him with two options: respond or resign. Bulson chose silence, he said.

Bulson has yet to speak publicly about the situation. His deputy, Dyann Mack, was appointed interim superintendent.

Bulson, 57, has led Harford County Public Schools since 2018, joining the system after a stint as a superintendent in North Carolina and 16 years in Montgomery County schools before that. He earns $293,220 a year, state data showed.

Bulson tries to remain a neutral figure in the community, said Lewis, the social justice group leader. She said she doesn’t agree with him on everything but that he is willing to listen and consider other perspectives.

A turning point for him, she said, was his mask mandate in August 2021: “They’ve been going after him ever since.”

The board supported Bulson’s decision to require masks in school buildings when students returned to in-person learning that year, but it led to an unruly protest outside the school system headquarters in Bel Air. An adult tried climbing over a railing to force her way inside, protesters banged on the meeting room windows, and the school board quickly kicked out the disorderly audience.

“The board’s desire to do this does not reflect the values of our community, which is about personal liberties,” Del. Lauren Arikan, a Republican who represents Harford and Baltimore counties, said that day about the mask mandate.

The rivalry

Reflecting local values is a challenge for Bulson, said Cassilly, a Harford County native.

Bulson isn’t from the area, a predominantly white and Republican county that has seen rapid population growth over the last decade, particularly among Black residents.

Regularly sporting his signature bow tie, Bulson isn’t shy about publicly advocating for what he wants. And neither is Cassilly.

Cassilly attended his first school board meeting as county executive in January 2023, a month into his term.

It was budget season, and the new leader told Bulson and the board that he wanted to be as forthcoming as possible about the fiscal challenges facing them. His predecessor had spent money “fairly aggressively,” Cassilly said, and his budget would be much more conservative.

“My pledge to you is, I’ll work with you transparently, diligently and in good faith to help all of us do the right thing for the children that we all love so much,” he said at the time.

That April, the fighting started.

During his first budget presentation, Cassilly said the schools had been funded far above state requirements, leaving them with a $92 million surplus. “Yet the schools continue to ask for more,” he said.

Bulson fired back a few days later.

“County Executive Bob Cassilly shows he doesn’t care about the children of Harford County, and instead plans to use them as pawns in his game of politics,” the school system stated in a news release.

By that May, the two found common ground, sending out a joint statement that explained how they balanced the school budget.

But the same fight occurred the following year. And the year after that.

Yet the two have worked together, Cassilly said, on the district’s apprenticeship program and school infrastructure projects. But certain situations call for public feuds, especially in districts where leaders are members of opposing political parties, he said.

In Harford’s case, Cassilly is the conservative. He labeled the teachers union, or “the 500-pound gorilla in the room,” as the progressives, lumping Bulson in with them.

“If one side decides to play public politics, the other side better play the same way,” he said.

Cassilly, who’s running for reelection, has publicly criticized the school system, like when Fox45 reported that a Harford school employed someone who faced gun-related charges.

He told The Banner that Bulson should pay his teachers more and the “bureaucracy,” or Bulson’s fellow school system leaders, less. Test scores should be higher, too, he added.

Bulson is the second-longest-serving superintendent in the Baltimore region after Sonja Santelises, who’s nearing the end of her 10-year run as the head of Baltimore City Public Schools.

In 2023, Harford and Baltimore Schools were among the few districts that outpaced the state in their improvements on English test scores.

The noise

At the first school board meeting after the 911 audio was released, about a dozen community members lined up to tell the board how they felt about the situation. Some speakers, like William Martino of the conservative parent group Moms for Liberty, called out Bulson.

“The superintendent, on government funds, made poor decisions, reckless actions toward government property, immoral behavior, negligent handling of proprietary information and then tried to cover it all up,” he said, leveling a volley of accusations. “These are not the characteristics of the leader we need in our school system.”

Del Sellers, a parent from Bel Air, talked about how he’s tired of seeing Harford schools in the news.

“I’d like to think things are going to change, but I’ve been back in the county for four years, and it’s just been a hot mess all four years,” he said.

Bulson’s critics and supporters have found common ground on one issue: They want the focus back on education.

“Our focus is on the success and well-being of children and families ensuring all have what they need to be successful, safe, stable, and supported,” Harford’s NAACP chapter wrote in a statement. “Despite recent developments we have confidence that district leadership has the same goal and are focused on the future.”

At the meeting, Mack, the interim superintendent, said the school system will get through these challenging times for the sake of the district’s No. 1 priority: students.

“We need to make the noise stop,” she said. “It serves as a distraction to our work.”

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.