Fired SAU 44 superintendent Judith McGann won an appeal before the state Board of Education yesterday, leaving her former school board to decide whether to give her a new hearing or appeal to the state Supreme Court.

McGann was fired in September 2008 after the SAU 44 Joint Board claimed she hid information about incomplete bookkeeping and misused federal grants for the school districts of Northwood, Nottingham and Strafford. Her appeal hearing later that year included three nights of testimony, and board members deliberated for six hours before upholding their decision.

But the SAU failed to give McGann a fair hearing when it refused her access to the work of an accountant who was the board's expert witness, concluded a hearing officer with the Education Department. Refusing McGann access to the work papers denied her right to meaningful cross-examination of the accountant, Peter Foley wrote in his October report.

A separate state investigation into SAU finances concluded in April that no mismanagement of federal funds occurred during McGann's tenure.

The Board of Education yesterday voted 5-1 to uphold the hearing officer's report, over the board chairman's objection that such a decision effectively makes new law by extending the legal right of discovery in administrative hearings.

Since upholding the report of the hearings officer means approving all its conclusions, the board would be extending the right of attorneys to compel the production of information beyond the limits now applicable to administrative hearings, Chairman John Lyons Jr. said. The board could have sent the report back to the hearings officer and asked for more information, he said.

Andru Volinsky, attorney for McGann, said earlier in the hearing that a fired employee should have access to the work papers of an expert when the testimony is central to the employer's case.

"This isn't run-of-the-mill discovery," Volinsky said. "It's when this is of unparalleled importance."

The attorney for the SAU board said the documents analyzed by accountant John Sullivan were available as public records. When asked why he had not disclosed the requested papers, attorney Ed Kaplan said he refused because neither the constitutional right of due process nor the regulations governing school administrative hearings required it.

"There was nothing that required production of the documents," he said. "We were in the middle of a hearing and wanted to get on with it."

Kaplan argued that accepting the hearing officer's report would "bring our system to a stop" by allowing attorneys to compel production of myriad documents before administrative hearings.

The SAU board must now decide whether to appeal the decision, schedule a new hearing or reinstate McGann. The board will make that decision Monday, said Jack Caldon, chairman of the Nottingham School Board.

McGann has since taken a job as a special education coordinator near the Seacoast, Volinsky said, and her name is listed as the special education administrator for Cooperative Middle School, which serves Exeter and surrounding towns.

"She couldn't find work as a superintendent so she has taken a much lower level job," Volinsky said.

McGann had worked for the SAU for 28 years before she was fired. She had been superintendent for four years.