(Photo courtesy of Diane Douglas)

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas

The latest dispute between the state's school chief and the Arizona Board of Education became a police matter Monday when Diane Douglas filed an assault complaint against Greg Miller, the board's president.

Douglas has been insisting for months that the board's employees report to her, but her bid to get a judge to rule that way was rebuffed.

In the interim, she has told Board of Education investigators they must access teacher files at her office and cannot log in online. That led to Miller during a board meeting to accuse Douglas of endangering children.

Douglas spokesman Charles Tack said it went downhill from there.

“She started to ask what the issue was with investigators not being able to come in to our building where they have access,” Tack said. “And he then grabbed her on the arm and said, 'You're out of order,' and grabbed her again and then slapped her microphone away from her.”

Miller, however, said what he did was justified.

"She was out of order again and, similar to the last time, I took her microphone away and pushed it up,” Miller said. “Obviously, I must have poked, bumped her arm or something when I did that.”

But Tack said this has happened before.

“Today we saw that he's apparently unable to control himself,” Tack said. “When he gets frustrated, he feels the only thing he can do, instead of appropriately addressing the situation by calling the superintendent out of order, is physically grab her and assault her.”

Miller said Douglas was trying to camouflage the underlying dispute by filing the police report.

“The real issue is her obstruction of the board's staff access to the teacher certification database is putting children at risk in classrooms,” he said. “She is going to have to be held accountable for that.”
 
Miller said Douglas is "protecting pedophiles in the classroom" by delaying investigations.

A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety confirmed Douglas did file a complaint and a report was taken but could not provide more information.