Big Lawsuit Against SPS Reinforces Idea of Poor District Decisionmaking

As I previously reported, the district is now in court stemming from a case a former student (now an adult) has brought who alleges damage against his person stemming from teacher James Johnson punching him in the face in 2019 at Meany Middle School.

I do have to apologize to a helpful reader who alerted me that this case was going forward and said the plaintiff was asking for $124M. I did not think that could be true. Actually, he wants between $76M-$124M. The Seattle Times has this story and they report:

His lawyers say (Zakaria )Sheikhibrahim’s life unalterably changed after the assault: He suffered a traumatic brain injury and has major depressive and post-traumatic stress disorders. He also has memory loss and, now 21, has been unable to hold a steady job.

I think some of the above claims are unlikely to all be true but because this plaintiff probably would not take a lowball settlement that SPS likely offered, they are now in court.

As I also said before, SPS will do near anything not to be taken to court. Do they save money not going to court on lawyer fees? Sure, but they also do not want dirty laundry aired in public. And now that is happening, complete with multiple SPS senior staff testifying, including former superintendent Brent Jones.

What is troubling is how often they do not want to fire a teacher because they are afraid of being sued. SPS thinks it's just easier to pay off a teacher than have to go to court (and many other districts seem to do this as well). But the problem with this course of action is that the teacher generally stays in SPS and just gets moved around as Mr. Johnson did in this case.

It appears that Johnson seemed to be bad news all around as girls in his class said he called them "honey" and touched their shoulders, making them uncomfortable.

Lara Hruska, one of Sheikhibrahim’s attorneys, and her colleagues say a central question in the case is whether Seattle Public Schools chose to shield adults at the expense of the children it’s supposed to safeguard. And they believe there is a racial component.

 

They specifically named a group of Black leaders who engaged in what Hruska labeled a “misguided effort” to protect those in their network, in what she called “a devastating part of the nepotism” in the district. 

The district says:

The district admits the specifics of the case should never have happened - "Violence is never the answer, especially with children," stated Shellie McGaughey, a district attorney.

The KUOW series also revealed that Johnson had been disciplined in previous school districts, including a formal reprimand in 2004 in Clover Park School District, south of Tacoma, for allegedly pushing a student into a locker. Seattle Public Schools has said it was unaware of these incidents because Johnson did not disclose them during hiring. 

 

So KUOW was able to find out about issues in another district but SPS HR doesn't background check teachers themselves? 

I think this is a sticky union point that needs to be addressed. Should teachers/staff have to disclose troubling interactions with students in another district when they apply to SPS?

Sheikhibrahim’s attorneys argue that Seattle Public Schools had ample warnings that Johnson was a danger to students. In 2010, Mark Perry, Johnson’s former principal at Nova High School in Madrona, reprimanded Johnson, asked for an investigation into his alleged inappropriate conduct with students, and declined to renew Johnson’s contract that year. In 2011 he wrote to the district’s human resources and legal departments that Johnson was a “danger” to students and was unfit to be a teacher.

“It is only a matter of time, I believe, before something serious happens involving a student and/or possibly a parent,” Perry wrote.

Mark Perry was one of the finest principals to ever work in SPS. That he was not listened to by HR was wrong. Perry would have no reason to ever make statements like those if he did not believe them to be true.

The district’s attorneys argued that earlier complaints against Johnson did not rise to a level that required formal discipline. But the district acknowledged in court documents that the overwhelming majority of the allegations levied against Johnson concerned alleged inappropriate interactions with female students.

When you read that Johnson had multiple complaints lodged against him by parents and students at multiple schools and yet he continued to be employed certainly seems to make the case that someone higher up was protecting him. 

And I see yet another position at SPS that I had never heard of:

The district’s attorneys and Misa Garmoe, the district’s executive director of employee and association relations, who was in court this month, also declined to comment.

Here was the district's thinking:

Firing would likely be seen “as a strong action on the part of the district in protecting students from inappropriate teacher behavior,” John Cerqui, then the district’s deputy chief legal counsel, and Stan Damas, the former executive director of labor and employee relations, wrote in the memo. But firing also carried a risk that Johnson could sue.

Another option was to assign Johnson to a different school, which would avoid “the expense and embarrassment of litigating” a case the district would likely lose, the memo read. It also noted that Johnson was an effective math teacher, in a position that could be “difficult to fill.”

I would like to ask how they gauge him "an effective math teacher" if there were students in the class either afraid of him or uneasy around him. 

Johnson did not leave SPS until 2021.

The case is expected to go on another week or so. I suspect that unless the plaintiff's lawyers are able to provide real proof of their claims, their client will get far less than he is asking for. But he will get a settlement out of SPS. Sadly, it appears there may be other former students in the wings who may end up suing as well. As I have previously reported, insurance costs are going up generally for districts but SPS has been paying out so much over the last decade, their premiums are really going up.