Teacher, SAD 1 settle lawsuit

BANGOR – An Aroostook County teacher has settled his federal lawsuit against School Administrative District 1 for $15,000.

Gary Cole, 61, of Washburn sued SAD 1 in U.S. District Court in Bangor nearly two years ago over the curriculum of his seventh-grade social studies class. He claimed that after two years of teaching ancient and European history, he was prohibited from teaching Eastern civilizations shortly after a fundamentalist Christian angrily confronted him at an open house in 1997.

He also alleged that the district, made up of Mapleton, Presque Isle, Castle Hill, Chapman, Westfield and other communities, was not following the Maine Learning Results, which recommend seventh-graders study the history of the Eastern Hemisphere and Asia.

Cole’s case had been appealed to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, but oral arguments in the case had not been scheduled when the settlement was reached. Now that a settlement has been reached, it will be dismissed.

“We began this [litigation] with three goals in mind,” Cole’s attorney, A.J. Greif of Bangor, said last week. “To get the curriculum changed to what Mr. Cole had been teaching – the history of the Eastern Hemisphere, including its cultures and religions; to get a jury finding that Mr. Cole was a victim of retaliation; and to get a small monetary settlement.”

The attorney said that Cole had achieved two of those goals — one as a result of the jury verdict in the federal trial held earlier this year and the other with the settlement.

Melissa Hewey, the district’s Portland attorney, said Tuesday that SAD 1’s insurance carrier decided it was less expensive to settle the lawsuit than fight the appeal.

“The insurance carrier made the economic decision to pay a small amount in settlement,” she said, “rather than go through the appeal process and prevail.”

The four-day trial, held in August, focused on whether SAD 1 retaliated against Cole for exercising his First Amendment rights or whether the district would have taken the same action even if he had not been involved in activities protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The jury found that both had happened and did not award damages to the teacher.

Hewey claimed that decision was a total victory for the district, while Greif claimed it was a partial victory for his client.

Greif said last week that the reason Cole was not able to change the curriculum was because just before the trial began in late August, the teacher was reassigned to teach eighth-grade U.S. history. That meant he did not have standing to seek changes in the seventh-grade curriculum.

Hewey denied on Tuesday that Cole’s reassignment was related to the lawsuit.

This year, the district’s two middle schools merged, she said, and most staff members were reassigned.