Bennington-area school officials have agreed to pay a former elementary school teacher $97,500 to settle a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination and wrongful termination.
Rosa Van Wie, a former fourth-grade teacher at Bennington’s Molly Stark Elementary School, alleged that her teaching contract was not renewed in 2020 because of her race, because she knelt and stayed silent during the Pledge of Allegiance, and because she told a school resource officer he appeared to be singling out a Black student due to the child’s race.
Van Wie, whose father is white and mother is Black, sued Molly Stark Elementary, school principal Donna Bazyk, the school district, the supervisory union and Superintendent James Culkeen in Bennington Superior civil court in 2021.
The parties finalized the settlement on Friday. This happened after the Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union and the Southwest Vermont Union Elementary School District boards authorized their representatives to sign the agreement during a special meeting earlier this month.
The defendants denied any misconduct or liability under the settlement.
Van Wie, 32, agreed to release the defendants from any further claims in the matter, after which she would receive $97,500 through her attorney, according to a copy of the agreement that VTDigger obtained from the supervisory union on Tuesday.
The document also states that Van Wie would dismiss her lawsuit.
In a statement, the supervisory union and school district boards maintained that Van Wie resigned rather than face the non-renewal of her employment for legitimate and non-discriminatory reasons. Despite this, the school district said it believes settling the case is in the best interest of the school community, allowing the district to focus on educating children rather than expending resources in court.
The boards said they are committed to promoting inclusion and equity at a time when they are “attempting to reconcile and address the racism inherent within our systems.”
“We are continuously working on our own implicit biases to ensure the SVSU is an inclusive and supportive working and learning environment,” the supervisory union told VTDigger in a statement.
Van Wie’s attorney, James Valente, said the settlement came during mediation, after the parties had almost finished exchanging information about evidence and witnesses in the civil case. He said Van Wie’s side had already deposed multiple witnesses at that point, including Culkeen, Bazyk and Bennington Police Chief Paul Doucette.
The school resource officer whom Van Wie alleged singled out a Black student among a class with “severe behavioral difficulties” was a member of the Bennington Police Department. According to the lawsuit, Van Wie later learned the officer had been instructed to interact with students who had experienced negative interactions with police, and she believed the officer was racially profiling the student.
Valente said the ultimate measure of whether the school district is committed to eliminating racial discrimination is if it delves into Van Wie’s allegations now that the district isn’t facing a lawsuit.
“If they don’t do that — to try to determine whether their own personnel acted properly or improperly — in my view, their statement has really no credibility,” Valente said in an interview.
Shortly after she filed the lawsuit in June 2021, Van Wie told VTDigger that if she were awarded any money in the case, she would apply it to scholarship funds for her marginalized students. She didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday on the settlement agreement.
Van Wie has moved to Littleton, New Hampshire, and appears on the current staff directory of Barnet School, a pre-K to 8th grade school in Caledonia County.