Former Superintendent Lost Lawsuit

A former superintendent for the Goodrich School has lost the lawsuit after such a long battle ensured. The former superintendent lost not just once but twice, as the battle went on in court for an entire year. Kimberly Hart is the former superintendent who chose to file the lawsuit, stating that she was discriminated on due to her gender and also had to deal with retaliation as well. Hart’s complaint was first filed in December of 2009 but it was then dismissed in November of 2010. Hart was not satisfied with the dismissal and chose to appeal it two months later, in January of 2011.

However, Hart now has to deal with the fact that she has lost the lawsuit, as a ruling came from the Michigan Court of Appeal and the ruling was not in favor of her. Instead, the ruling was in favor of the Goodrich Schools, along with its board member, Michael Tripp. The court chose to rule out Hart’s claims, based on the fact that she did not have much evidence at all to even prove that anything like this had ever taken place.

Hart once worked as a teacher for the Goodrich school, as well as principal. In 2004, while Hart was working as the principal for the school, she filled out an application to replace the former superintendent, Raymond Green, once he announced that he would be retiring after serving in the position for quite some time. Hart was then approved to fill in the position as superintendent, which is a position she first started during the 04-05 school year. The board president at the time, Michael Thorp, rated Hart’s performance after her first year on the job, stating that her performance was, in fact, exemplary.

After Thorp was replaced by Tripp as the board president, Thorp ended up saying Hart was off and on, causing some conflicts. Tripp often had conflict with Hart due to their different roles and differing opinions of the school district. When leaving an evaluation, Tripp said he did not favor her approach with things how the types of relationships she kept. However, Hart says she felt as though Tripp supported her until about March of 2007, when she found out that he was thinking of buying her contract out or putting her on administrative leave instead of keeping her within the position. During that same month, he edited the contract, renegotiating it. Under the new contract she would be the superintendent from July of 2007 until June of 2008, which would basically be one more school year. During the July 2007 meeting, one board member suggested that Hart be put on administrative leave. A few weeks later, the board decided to vote together, suspending her without pay. She was then replaced with a man.

Because of this, Hart believed she was forced to leave her position due to her gender. Unfortunately for her, she did not have the evidence to prove that this is what was really happening.