Another Durham Public Schools administrator has been fired by the school board following charges of obstructing a police investigation into allegations that an autistic kindergartener was tied to a chair.

The school board fired Tanya Giovanni, a deputy superintendent who had been indicted in January along with two other DPS administrators and was charged Feb. 5 on five counts of felony obstruction. The board voted 5-0 to terminate Giovanni on March 6.

A lawyer for Giovanni, who has pleaded not guilty, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Giovanni also didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Giovanni was the DPS deputy superintendent of administrative, legal and compliance services. She earned an annual salary of $174,500. She was suspended with pay Dec. 19 amid search warrants executed at the school district’s headquarters. The district suspended the three administrators while it investigated them.

A letter to Giovanni from the school board, signed by chair Betina Umstead, said Superintendent Anthony Lewis recommended her termination after concluding Giovanni “failed to cooperate” with a child abuse investigation, made unilateral decisions she did not communicate, and improperly approved $250 bonuses for some employees.

Tounya Wright, the former principal at Eno Valley Elementary School, was charged with three felony counts of obstruction and one count of perjury. Wright resigned in January, shortly after the indictment. Wright has pleaded not guilty.

Ayesha Hunter, the district’s former senior executive director of employee relations, was charged with six counts of felony obstruction and two counts of perjury. She was fired by the school board in February. She also pleaded not guilty.

Neither Wright nor Hunter have responded to WRAL’s requests for comment.

The family of the student has filed a lawsuit over the incident, naming Wright but not naming Giovanni or Hunter.

WRAL News previously reported on the incident at the center of the investigation, in which police were looking into allegations that an employee tied up a 6-year-old student with autism using a rope. The alleged incident occurred at Eno Valley Elementary in November 2024, court records say

According to a search warrant executed in the case, police believed the alleged abuse was brought to light because a custodian witnessed it, discreetly took photos, and provided those photos to the front office.

Police believed there was then a “coordinated effort to deflect liability,” as well as to fabricate and conceal key information and a timeline, the warrant said. Police said they spent months trying to obtain the photos and any investigative records maintained by the administrators.