A former teacher who says St. Paul Public Schools retaliated against him for criticizing the district’s racial equity policy has accepted a $525,000 settlement.
Aaron Benner was set to go to trial next month in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, where he was going to ask for more than $2 million.
Instead, the school board on Tuesday night formally approved the $525,000 payout, which Benner will share with Minneapolis attorney Ashwin Madia.
Board members had met twice in closed meetings in recent weeks to discuss the case.
The deal “enables the District to avoid the time, expense and uncertainty of protracted legal proceedings regarding its previous policies, practices and expectations,” the school board said in a written statement.
Benner, 50, was one of five teachers at a 2014 school board meeting who spoke out against Superintendent Valeria Silva’s efforts to move more children into mainstream classrooms and reduce suspensions for African-American students.
Benner, who is black, argued the racial equity policy was “crippling our black children by not holding them to the same expectations as other students.”
In the year that followed that board meeting, as Benner shared his views with local and national media outlets, the school district opened four separate personnel investigations against him, one of which was for taking a sick day without a doctor’s note.
Benner said he also had unruly students placed in his classroom, he was encouraged to change schools and his teaching assistant was fired and not replaced.
Evidence uncovered in the run-up to trial suggested that Silva, other top administrators and board members were concerned that the black, media-savvy teacher was undermining their efforts to create a more equitable school system.
Benner quit in August 2015 to work for a charter school. He said in his lawsuit that he left because he feared he would be fired.
“I had no choice, no choice but to resign,” he said in a deposition.
U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson, in a May ruling allowing the case to go to trial, said a reasonable juror could agree with Benner that he was forced to quit.
The school district had argued that because Benner left for a job that paid just as well, he was not harmed and had no grounds to sue.
RACIAL EQUITY
Benner and the other teachers at the 2014 board meeting were among the first to say publicly that Silva’s racial equity initiatives weren’t working.
While negotiating for a new contract in 2015-16, the teachers union coalesced around the message that St. Paul schools were increasingly unsafe places to work and they weren’t getting help to manage their classrooms. The result was a multi-year exploration of a restorative approach to student discipline that both the teachers and district supported.
Suspensions for district students dropped dramatically after the racial equity policy was adopted but bounced back in the following years. The district still reports wide racial disparities in both discipline and academic achievement and one of a number of districts under monitoring from the state Department of Human Rights.
RETALIATION CASES
Silva, who left the superintendency with a buyout in 2016, was among the witnesses Benner was expected to call had the case gone to trial.
To support his case, Benner was preparing to present evidence of other St. Paul district teachers who were subjected to retaliation after speaking out about apparent wrongdoing.
One is Peggy Anne Severs, who was fired after she complained that Silva was violating federal law by moving special-education students into regular classrooms without reviewing their Individualized Education Plans. The former Battle Creek Middle School teacher received a $75,000 settlement in 2017 after filing a lawsuit.
Substitute teacher Candice Egan got a $20,000 settlement in 2018 after filing a lawsuit charging that the school district blacklisted her for telling reporters about a 12-year-old student who assaulted her.
Another teacher, Paddy Boyt, has said her work hours were reduced and she was transferred to another school after she reported a fellow teacher’s sexual harassment.
Benner, who now is dean of students at Cretin-Derham Hall, released the following statement:
“I thank God for all His blessings. This past year has been wonderful. I turned 50 in January, got married in July and now this. I also want to thank all my former students, parents, and coworkers who were willing to testify on my behalf.”
The district’s insurer will cover $475,000 of the payout, which includes the district’s $100,000 deductible.
The school district typically places legal settlements on its online agenda days before the meeting. The Benner settlement was not on the online agenda when Tuesday’s meeting began but was added just before the board voted.
Correction: This article has been updated to correct the year of the 2014 school board meeting where Benner and others criticized the racial equity policy.