As to the legalities of this case, it's a matter of record that the teacher with the phobia, being of advanced years and work experience, shoud not have been shuttled around from one school to another, and to a school of younger-aged students. Already, the district administrators show themselves to be a calloused lot. More than that, once they became aware of the teacher's health issues, the administrators shoud have forthwith accommodated her needs. They were not unreasonable. She had performed her services dutifully and well. So it's not really her motives that shoud be questioned, but those of the administrators who wanted to "squeeze out" the experienced teach, and put the money into the technology and technician they had in mind. An online course in French still requires a technician, so this is a case where the administrators were promoting not just a new form of hi-tech pedagogy but were favouring someone in the technical field to replace someone with lots of inter-human teaching experience.
As to the phobic condition to which the teacher was subjected, apparently thru much of her life, we now make room and practice accommodation for persons with Disabilities, is a mtter of professional insensitivity to begin with. The profound ethical dimensions of the administrators failure in sensitivity to a person who had served long and well, and ineptitude in not accommodating once her condition became known (known because she was forced to reveal her medical record in order to not suffer the injustice that the school district was hell-bent on adminstrating). To this injury, the school district was in error further to stigmatize the lady by publicly using devious rhetorical devices on her: "She wants money," says the spokesman, trying to undermine her integrity by assigning his version of her motive to sue. What woud be wrong if she wants money? Money is a typical way in our system of rectifying an injustice and humiliation and loss of self-esteem thru the process launched by district in putting her in conditions where her phobia was bound to undermine her teaching. And let's face it, the district spokesman is still trying to intimidate her. It's clearly, however, the district that is trying to enrich itself with money that woud far more justly go to this teacher. When the district says the teacher woud have gotten 89% of her salary by retiring, it shows itself to be calculating for its own budget and projects with her gone. The 89% woud come from a very different financial source (an insurance plan) than the annual budget of the district. In other words, the district wanted her money for its program, and from its venal perspective considered that she woud get a good deal, that woud cost them nothing. And that's the point. The district played with the health and self-respect of the long-serving and experienced teacher in order to get salary funds that woud otherwise go to her. The district criminally overlooked the teacher's pride in her work, while she did indeed need the environment she had had where she was able to manage her phobia and other physical and mental health issues. And the district squeezed her out, in order to squeeze the funds for her salary for purposes that simply erased her as a human being (yes, with rare phobia) and as a good teacher.
-- Albert Gedraitis
myFoxdc.com (Jan15,2k13)
By AMANDA LEE MYERS
Associated Press
CINCINNATI (AP) - A former high school teacher is accusing school district administrators of discriminating against her because of a rare phobia she says she has: a fear of young children.
Maria Waltherr-Willard, 61, had been teaching Spanish and French at Mariemont High School in Cincinnati since 1976.
Waltherr-Willard, who does not have children of her own, said that when she was transferred to the district's middle school in 2009, the seventh- and eighth-graders triggered her phobia, causing her blood pressure to soar and forcing her to retire in the middle of the 2010-2011 school year.
In her lawsuit against the district, filed in federal court in Cincinnati, Waltherr-Willard said that her fear of young children falls under the federal American with Disabilities Act and that the district violated it by transferring her in the first place and then refusing to allow her to return to the high school.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Gary Winters, the school district's attorney, said Tuesday that Waltherr-Willard was transferred because the French program at the high school was being turned into an online one and that the middle school needed a Spanish teacher.
"She wants money," Winters said of Walter-Willard's motivation to sue. "Let's keep in mind that our goal here is to provide the best teachers for students and the best academic experience for students, which certainly wasn't accomplished by her walking out on them in the middle of the year."
Waltherr-Willard and her attorney, Brad Weber, did not return calls for comment Tuesday.
Winters also denied Walter-Willard's claim that the district transferred her out of retaliation for her unauthorized comments to parents about the French program ending - "the beginning of a deliberate, systematic and calculated effort to squeeze her out of a job altogether," Weber wrote in a July 2011 letter to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The lawsuit said that Waltherr-Willard has been treated for her phobia since 1991 and also suffers from general anxiety disorder, high blood pressure and a gastrointestinal illness. She was managing her conditions well until the transfer, according to the lawsuit.
Working with the younger students adversely affected Waltherr-Willard's health, the lawsuit said.
She was "unable to control her blood pressure, which was so high at times that it posed a stroke risk," according to the lawsuit, which includes a statement from her doctor about her high blood pressure. "The mental anguish suffered by (Waltherr-Willard) is serious and of a nature that no reasonable person could be expected to endure the same."
The lawsuit was filed in June and is set to go to trial in February 2014. A judge last week dismissed three of the ex-teacher's claims, but left discrimination claims standing.
The lawsuit says that Waltherr-Willard has lost out on at least $100,000 of potential income as a result of her retirement.
Winters said that doesn't make sense, considering that Waltherr-Willard's take from retirement is 89 percent of what her annual salary was, which was around $80,000.
Patrick McGrath, a clinical psychologist and director of the Center for Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorders near Chicago, said that he has treated patients who have fears involving children and that anyone can be afraid of anything.
"A lot of people will look at something someone's afraid of and say, 'There is no rational reason to be afraid of that,'" he said. "But anxiety disorders are emotion-based. ... We've had mothers who wouldn't touch their children after they're born."
He said most phobias begin with people asking themselves, "What if?" and then imagining the worst-case scenario.
"You can make an association to something and be afraid of it," McGrath said. "If you get a phone call that your mom was just in a horrible accident as you're locking the door, you can make an association that bad news comes if you don't lock the door right. It's a basic case of conditioning."
Read more: http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/20592156/teacher-with-fear-of-young-kids-sues-ohio-district#ixzz2I6NuPPRy
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