Brownsville school district seeks dismissal of lawsuit
The attorney for the Brownsville Area School District has filed paperwork in federal court asking that a suit brought by a former district educator be dismissed. District Attorney R. Russell Lucas Jr. indicated that teacher Frank Bobeck had no basis to claim he was constructively dismissed from his job because Bobeck showed no evidence that school officials targeted him for dismissal.
Bobeck resigned from his job as a middle school technology teacher at the end of the 2003-2004 school year. In a suit filed earlier this year, he claimed that he felt compelled to resign because district officials made his job difficult after he publicly complained about lacking tools to effectively teach a technology class.
Bobeck’s suit claimed he had to use “antiquated text books, written before computers had become an integral part of our lives and was provided no modern equipment” when he started teaching the technology class in 2001. But Lucas indicated Bobeck made no formal complaints to school officials.
In his lawsuit, Bobeck named the district, former superintendent Gerry Grant, current superintendent Lawrence L. Golembiewski and principal Thomas Hisiro.
The district’s motion to dismiss the case, filed last week in federal court, stated that Bobeck was free to file grievances if he believed he was being subjected to poor conditions.
Bobeck’s suit, filed by attorney Edward A. Olds, stated that Bobeck objected to “pathetic conditions,” but school officials did not respond, so he took matters into his own hands during a November 2001 parent-teacher conference night.
“Bobeck decorated his room with symbols of ‘technology’ since there was no actual equipment,” the suit read. “He used cardboard boxes to symbolize computer and used signs to suggest where other equipment should have been located. He hoped to draw attention to the fact that the room was devoid of any tools necessary to teach technology.”
Two board members saw, and the suit indicated that they told Bobeck they would help, but did not.
The suit indicated that Bobeck spoke out about the deficiencies and made a video to show others the teaching conditions. Eventually, school officials saw the video and Grant warned Bobeck about his conduct, according to the suit.
In 2002, the suit indicated that Bobeck showed students a movie to pass class time, but the movie contained offensive scenes. Once he realized, the suit indicated that Bobeck shut the movie off, but he was suspended and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation.
After two bad evaluations, the suit stated Bobeck became increasingly depressed and eventually resigned and applied for disability retirement at the end of the 2003-2004 school year.
Although Bobeck claimed that the school district violated his First Amendment right to free speech, Lucas indicated that Bobeck never challenged any of the bad marks he got for his job performance.
“Bobeck fails to plead that he was ever specifically threatened with discharge and fails to identify any individual who specifically threatened Bobeck’s employment, or any comments made by any individuals concerning his employment,” Lucas wrote.
This is not Bobeck’s first legal go-around with the district. In his suit, he noted that he first sued in the 1990s, when he was passed over for a teaching job because the district did not give him preference for being a veteran. That suit ended with a Fayette County judge ordering him hired in 1998, according to the filing.
Bobeck’s current suit suggested that the 1998 decision “stirred up hostility among certain officials and decision makers in the district.”
Although he claimed to have difficulty with school officials, the suit indicated that once the dust settled, he had an “uneventful” time at the school until he was assigned to teach middle school technology.