A former teacher will get $30,000 in a settlement with Park City School District after she says she faced retaliation for reporting that her students had been sexually harassed by a classmate.
The agreement ends the high-profile lawsuit filed by Kathy Moore early last year. Her case initially brought statewide attention on the wealthy northern Utah district — which has repeatedly been under fire recently for issues spanning from racist bullying (which the feds are investigating) to environmental waste concerns — for how it was allegedly responding to cases of student-on-student misconduct.
The Salt Lake Tribune received a copy of the settlement this week through a public records request. Originally, the district declined to disclose the amount that Moore would receive, but The Tribune appealed and was given an unredacted version.
The money is ultimately paid out with taxpayers funds, as Park City School District is in the state’s public school system.
Moore’s attorneys didn’t respond to a request for comment on the settlement Friday. The school district declined to speak to it.
The document was signed in June but not approved by a judge until October, when the case was dismissed by the court.
Moore agreed to drop her claims and not apply to work at the district in the future. According to the document, she will be receiving $28,500, and her attorneys will get $1,500. The settlement specifically states the school district is not admitting fault.
Park City settlement by Courtney on Scribd
It comes roughly three years after Moore said her issues with the district started.
In December 2020, Moore said in her lawsuit, five of her female students at Parley’s Park Elementary came to her after a recess to tell the teacher that a male student had touched them inappropriately.
He had also laid flat on top of one girl and wouldn’t get off when she asked, according to Moore’s recounting of what the girls told her. And this wasn’t the first time, the girls said to her. “They were very shaken up,” Moore later recounted to The Tribune. “These girls were visibly shaken.”
Moore said as a teacher she was a mandatory reporter for sexual harassment and assault, and so she went to the principal to report the misconduct. She said they butted heads over how to handle the situation.
At one point, she said he instructed her to segregate her class by gender — having the boys sit on one half of the room and girls on the other. Moore didn’t support doing that, she said in her lawsuit, thinking it didn’t actually address the problem. But she followed the direction from her boss anyway.
Then the principal said that the separation wasn’t just in the classroom — that the kids also were not allowed to eat lunch or play at recess with students of the opposite gender.
The decision upset parents, according to the lawsuit. And Moore’s suit said she was unaware of any further action taken to investigate the girls’ complaint, correct the boy’s alleged behavior, or to prevent future harassment.
By failing to take action, she alleged, Park City administrators violated Title IX, the federal law that protects students from sexual discrimination. And then, she said, they retaliated against her.
About a month after she brought up the concerns about harassment, Moore said, she was demoted and transferred to another school — despite having received only top marks on her employee evaluations up until then, according to the lawsuit.
Moore saw it as a demotion. She wasn’t given a teaching job. Instead, she was called a permanent substitute. And, she said, she was rarely assigned to a classroom.
Following a semester there, she said, the district sent her a non-renewal letter in April, saying her contract would not be extended for the following year. The district also put a letter in her file warning other districts in the state not to hire her, she said.
That letter, she said, made it difficult for her to find another job. She applied to multiple open positions and was turned down, before landing at a private school.
In her settlement, the district agreed to remove that letter from Moore’s personnel file and to be a “neutral reference” for any future employers asking about Moore.
Moore had originally asked in her lawsuit to be paid back for lost wages, as well as to be reinstated in her job. The settlement does not include the last provision.
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