Woman claims retaliation in suit against school system

PANAMA CITY — Bay District Schools bookkeeper Holly Julian claims she was the victim of retaliation for blowing the whistle on her supervisor’s misconduct in a lawsuit against the Bay District Schools.

The lawsuit was crafted by Julian’s attorney, Cecile Scoon, on Dec. 19, 2011. District officials said Wednesday they have not been notified of the lawsuit.

“We have seen no lawsuit and to my knowledge no one has been served,” School Board attorney Franklin Harrison said in an email. He declined further comment on the lawsuit since he had not seen it.

Julian and her attorney said the district would be served Friday.

“I’m expecting once they are served, we are probably going to get more witnesses,” Scoon said.

The complaints surfaced after Julian went to former Dean Bozeman School principal and superior Bill Payne, who has since resigned from the district, to raise concerns about inappropriate comments a teacher made in her daughter’s science class. Julian and her attorney argue that as a result of that action, her working conditions changed to try to isolate her from other employees and a negative performance review was placed in her personnel record.

“My biggest thing is that the system is broken and needs to be fixed,” Julian said. “The moving of one person did not solve the problem, which is that the system allowed this to happen.”

The lawsuit outlines three complaints against the district.

The first grievance is that Julian, while employed as the bookkeeper at Bozeman, engaged in an activity protected by the state’s Whistle-blower’s Act and that she was subject to adverse treatment as a result.

The lawsuit also alleges the district is negligent for not acting on claims made against Payne during his employment as principal at Bozeman. “The district office should be held liable for its actions in negligently supervising of Mr. Payne,” the lawsuit states.

The final charge made against the district is the failure to provide requested records, including personnel files or any handwritten notes of any allegations of sexual harassment.

Julian took a position at the district office as a bookkeeper in April 2011, about a month after she requested a copy of her own personnel file and discovered a negative evaluation of her work by Payne.

The suit asks for injunctive relief, attorney fees and costs, and compensatory damages for pain and suffering in excess of $15,000. The plaintiff also has requested she be returned to her position as bookkeeper at Bozeman and that any negative reports written by Payne be removed from her personnel file. Julian has requested a jury trial.

Julian said it has been “uncomfortable” working at the district office but has no plans to leave her current job. She wants her old job back but would not want to displace the person who currently has the position.

“I’d hate to displace the person that is there now,” she said. “There are a lot of people who have been hurt by this, and I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

Payne resigned from the district in November following an investigation by the law firm Harrison, Sale and McCloy, which represents the School Board. The investigation concluded there had been an inappropriate relationship between the principal and another member of the administrative staff and that he had made inappropriate off-color comments.

However, it said no reports of retaliation could be independently verified, but that they did “not appear to be completely baseless,” noted the written report following the investigation.

The report cited there was no evidence of mismanagement or whistle-blower retaliation at Bozeman and that witnesses who made such complaints confirmed they did not suffer any sexual harassment or discrimination by the principal, but they did believe the principal treated them unfairly.