Alabama's State Education Superintendent Eric Mackey responded on Tuesday to reporting from 1819 News showing that a faculty member at a very controversial LGBTQ-affirming K-12 charter school had apparently been appointed to the State Textbook Committee without approval from the two appointing authorities.
Last week, 1819 News reported that Emily Eddings-Sandley, an employee of the controversial, pro-LGBTQ+ charter school Magic City Acceptance Academy (MCAA), was apparently appointed to the official state textbook committee last month.
According to state law, only two bodies are responsible for approving committee members: the State Board of Education (BOE) and the Alabama Senate. The former appoints 14 members after receiving recommendations from the superintendent, while the latter approves another nine recommended by the governor.
Eddings-Sandley was not approved by the State BOE in the June 11 resolution appointing its 14 members to the committee, and the Alabama Senate likewise did not approve her nomination during the 2026 legislative session. However, a letter bearing Mackey's signature was sent to Eddings-Sandley, informing her that she had been appointed to the State Textbook Committee.
During a meeting of the State BOE on Tuesday, Mackey apologized and acknowledged that the letter had been sent in error to Eddings-Sandley and others.
"It got out that a letter had been sent to somebody who wasn't approved by the board, so they shouldn't be on the textbook committee," Mackey said. "And it was an error inside the department, and I'm sorry about that. There was that one letter, and there's actually more than one; people who should not have gotten a letter. We will fix it. And we're also going to have some changes to internal processes to make sure something like that doesn't happen again. And we will deal with personnel as we need to to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"I don't know what to tell you other than I'm really sorry that it happened. I think it's a real travesty because you've got people working really hard to get things done. There are a lot of great things happening, as we demonstrated this morning. I'm going to celebrate all the good things that are going on. But then that means, as superintendent, I have to also own up to it when bad things happen," he added.
Mackey's apparent culpability rested mainly on his signature being on the letter sent to Eddings-Sandley, which appears to be the only available document tying her to the textbook committee. Mackey acknowledges the error, adding that he regularly signs numerous documents.
"I sign latterly, and it's not an excuse, but I sign hundreds of documents a month, hundreds," Mackey said. "I do read them, but on things that are like a letter that goes to multiple people – and that happens a lot – where you might get 20 people, 40 people, in some cases 100 people, who get essentially, word-for-word, the same letter, but they go to different people. I read the first one, and then I approve all of them. I won't say that I go through and read every one of those if I know they're exactly the same."
"In this case, there was supposed to be 22 letters. The routing slip said there were 22, but there were more than 22 in this stack. That is an error. That is a problem on our end. We will fix it," he continued. "My apologies to the board for anything that you've had to deal with. I don't want to really get into, internally, what we're doing to fix it, but we're fixing it."
Mackey also acknowledged the unfortunate timing, noting that the inquiries began when he was out of the country.
A spokesperson from Mackey's office at the Alabama State Department of Education provided 1819 News with the letter sent to Eddings-Sandley.
Eddings-Sandley has not responded to inquiries from 1819 News.
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