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Opening Arguments

All in the family

In this day and age, when anybody can be with anybody else without fear of embarrassment or recrimination, it's odd to see a story about two people who kept their marriage secret for five years. But that's what Mishawaka Schools Superintendent R. Steven Mills and Joann Shaw, the district's director of literacy programs, did, and for the most old-fashioned of reasons, that people should not supervise people they are married to and people in supervisory positions know this very well. So now the superintendent has been suspended and will likely be fired:

School City of Mishawaka policy does not expressly prohibit nepotism.

The office of St. Joseph County Prosecutor Michael Dvorak told Fox 28 the school board's lawyers have not presented them with any evidence of criminal activity. If Mills had benefited financially from the situation, that would be a crime.

While it was technically against the law for Mills to fail to disclose his marriage, he is unlikely to be prosecuted for that.

It's Shaw who benefited from the arrangement, not Mills. The new interim superintendent says he's been friends with Mills for years and was Shaw's direct supervisor but had no idea they were married. Now, that's some good secret-keeping.

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