In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 15-3805 

PAMELA D. FERRILL, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

OAK CREEK-FRANKLIN JOINT 

SCHOOL DISTRICT and

OAK CREEK-FRANKLIN JOINT 

SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD OF EDUCATION, 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 13-cv-0858 — Lynn Adelman, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED JUNE 2, 2016 — DECIDED JUNE 19, 2017 

____________________ 
2 No. 15-3805 

Before POSNER and SYKES, Circuit Judges, and YANDLE, 

District Judge.

*

SYKES, Circuit Judge. Pamela Ferrill was hired as the principal of Edgewood Elementary School in the Oak CreekFranklin Joint School District for an initial two-year term 

with an automatic third-year rollover unless the Board of 

Education opted out. Ferrill is black; the school district 

serves two predominantly white suburbs on the southern 

edge of Milwaukee County. During her tenure as principal, 

the Edgewood staff had exceedingly low morale, and Ferrill 

was plagued with multiple performance complaints. Staff 

described her as confrontational, inconsistent in her treatment of her subordinates, and quick to accuse others of 

racism. The superintendent of schools hired a consultant to 

help improve Ferrill’s performance, but that effort failed and 

the consultant bluntly recommended that Ferrill be removed. 

When the time came to review the rollover of Ferrill’s 

contract, the superintendent recommended that the Board 

opt out. The Board accepted that recommendation. Ferrill 

found a new job, which the Board treated as a functional 

resignation of her position. She then sued the Board alleging 

claims of racial discrimination in violation of Title VII of the 

Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and retaliation 

in violation of her rights under Title VII and the First 

Amendment. The district judge granted summary judgment 

for the Board on some of these claims. Other claims were 

 

* Of the Southern District of Illinois, sitting by designation. 
No. 15-3805 3

tried to a jury, which found for the Board after less than a 

half-hour of deliberation. 

Ferrill concentrates her appeal on the judge’s summaryjudgment ruling rejecting her discrimination and retaliation 

claims related to the Board’s decision to opt out of the thirdyear contract rollover. The judge’s ruling was sound. 

Ferrill’s shortcomings as Edgewood’s principal were well 

documented and confirmed by an independent consultant, 

so she has not shown that she was meeting the Board’s 

legitimate performance expectations and thus has not established a prima facie case of discrimination. The retaliation 

claim fails for lack of evidence connecting the Board’s decision to activity protected by Title VII. 

I. Background 

Edgewood Elementary School serves students in grades 

K–5 in the Oak Creek-Franklin Joint School District. In July 

2008 Dr. Sara Burmeister, the district superintendent, hired 

Ferrill as Edgewood’s principal for an initial term of two 

years. The contract contained an automatic rollover for an 

additional year unless the Board of Education opted out 

before January 31, 2010. 

Ferrill’s tenure as principal was turbulent. Edgewood 

was consistently plagued with low morale, the responsibility 

for which Ferrill attributes to others. Because we’re reviewing a summary-judgment ruling, we describe the key events 

drawing reasonable inferences in Ferrill’s favor. 

In her first few months on the job, Ferrill learned that 

some of Edgewood’s students—and even some parents—

were referring to the bus that served a low-income neighborhood as the “ghetto bus.” She also learned that some 
4 No. 15-3805 

white students were calling black students derogatory 

names. Ferrill addressed these problems at an October staff 

meeting and urged the teachers to be proactive about addressing racial issues with their students. 

In early November two fifth-grade students, one of 

whom is black, started spreading a false story that certain 

teachers were having sex in the faculty lounge. Ferrill reprimanded the students, spoke with their parents, and then 

discussed the matter with the two teachers at the center of 

the rumormongering. The black student had confided to 

Ferrill that he was afraid his misbehavior would mean he 

would no longer be called on in class. When Ferrill brought 

this concern to the attention of one of the wrongly accused 

teachers, the teacher interpreted her comment as an unwarranted accusation of racism. 

Later that same month, Dr. Burmeister met with Ferrill to 

discuss the issues we’ve just recounted and also to address 

the rapidly deteriorating morale at the school and numerous 

complaints from teachers about Ferrill’s management style. 

In brief, Ferrill was described as confrontational, inconsistent 

in her treatment of the staff, and quick to suggest that others 

were either racist or culturally insensitive. Teachers lodged 

similar complaints about Ferrill with Katie Kelso, the teacher’s union representative, and in December she too spoke 

with Ferrill about the growing problems stemming from her 

discordant leadership style. 

An incident in January 2009 continued this trend. A black 

student accused a teacher of hitting her, and the school 

district launched an investigation into the incident. Although the matter was being handled at the district level, 

Ferrill conducted her own independent investigation, which 
No. 15-3805 5

upset the teachers and staff, who thought that Ferrill was 

conducting her own investigation only because the student 

was black. It was widely believed that this extra layer of 

scrutiny would not have occurred had the student been 

white. 

In the spring semester, Dr. Burmeister hired an outside 

consulting firm to help address the ongoing concerns about 

Ferrill’s contentious management style. This intervention 

did not go well. The consultants reported that Ferrill resisted 

their efforts and faculty feared retaliation whenever they 

shared ideas that she might reject. The consultants frankly 

concluded that removing Ferrill was the only way to solve 

the ongoing strife. Around this same time, Kelso met with 

the entire teaching staff—twice—to address the still unresolved complaints about Ferrill. 

At the close of the tumultuous 2008–2009 school year, 

Dr. Burmeister completed a year-end evaluation of Ferrill’s 

performance. The evaluation listed her strengths and weaknesses in a few key categories. For example, the superintendent noted that Ferrill excelled at limiting the loss of instructional time but needed to improve her management techniques and interpersonal skills by (among other things) 

being more receptive and responsive to staff and parental 

concerns. 

At the beginning of the 2009–2010 academic year, the district gave its employees a 3% cost-of-living raise. The pay 

bump came as a bit of a surprise because the district had 

frozen salaries. But with staff members retiring and new 

hires starting at lower salaries, the district lifted the pay 

freeze and instituted a uniform cost-of-living increase. 
6 No. 15-3805 

Also at the start of the new school year, Dr. Burmeister 

gave Ferrill a list of goals and objectives in an effort to 

improve her performance. The goals and objectives roughly 

tracked the issues the superintendent had identified in her 

year-end evaluation. At the top of the list was a requirement 

that Ferrill meet regularly with a mentor throughout the fall 

semester. Ferrill did so only four times before the mentor 

declared the effort futile and called it quits because Ferrill 

could not admit to any need to improve her job performance. 

Another incident in November 2009 signaled the beginning of the end of Ferrill’s tenure at Edgewood. Throughout 

the fall semester, a teacher had been requesting that a student teacher from Marquette University be placed in her 

classroom. It was the principal’s responsibility to make the 

necessary arrangements with the university. Despite frequent reminders from the teacher, Ferrill did not follow up. 

When she finally contacted the university on November 18, 

she emailed the teacher advising that she would “stop 

down” to her classroom the next morning to discuss the 

matter. Ferrill never showed up. The teacher reported the 

no-show to the superintendent, who confronted Ferrill about 

her lack of follow-through. 

On November 23 Dr. Burmeister met with Ferrill—this 

time with the human resources director in attendance—to 

address her continuing performance deficiencies. The meeting was tense, and when it wrapped up, the superintendent 

handed Ferrill a letter containing a detailed critique of her 

job performance. 

On December 4 Dr. Burmeister gave Ferrill a formal performance-improvement plan covering the remainder of the 
No. 15-3805 7

school year. The plan was largely derived from the year-end 

performance evaluation from the previous year and the 

goals-and-objectives plan from the beginning of the fall 

semester. There was not enough time to discuss the plan in 

detail that day, so they agreed to meet on January 7, 2010, to 

review it more thoroughly. When the meeting date came, 

Ferrill arrived with an attorney. The discussion did not go 

well. Ferrill wanted to talk about racial issues at the school. 

Indeed, her attorney said the real problem was that the 

white faculty members did not want to take direction from a 

black principal. Dr. Burmeister tried to keep the focus on the 

performance-improvement plan. Ferrill disagreed with the 

plan and took issue with its factual foundations. 

Based on this impasse and the failure of earlier intervention efforts, positive change seemed unattainable. On 

January 11 Dr. Burmeister recommended that the Board opt 

out of Ferrill’s contract rollover. The Board accepted the 

recommendation. A week later Ferrill sent a letter to the 

Board taking issue with the performance-review plan and 

raising various racial issues at Edgewood, laying the blame 

at the superintendent’s doorstep. She also sent two detailed 

letters to Dr. Burmeister raising similar objections. 

The superintendent interpreted Ferrill’s letter to the 

Board as an act of insubordination. Nonetheless, the Board 

treated her accusations seriously. Ferrill was placed on paid 

administrative leave while her allegations were investigated. 

Dr. Burmeister was cleared of any wrongdoing, racial or 

otherwise. Later in the semester, Ferrill accepted a job with 

another school district, which the Board construed as a 

resignation. See WIS. STAT. § 118.24(6) (stating that an admin-
8 No. 15-3805 

istrator cannot be under contract with two school boards 

simultaneously).

Ferrill then sued the school district and the Board. (We 

will refer to the defendants collectively as “the Board.”) The 

suit alleged claims of racial discrimination in violation of 

Title VII, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq., and § 1981 arising from 

the Board’s decision to place her on administrative leave and 

opting out of her contract rollover. She also alleged retaliation claims under Title VII based on the same two employment actions. Finally, she asserted a claim for retaliation in 

violation of her rights under the First Amendment. 

The Board moved for summary judgment. The district 

judge granted the motion in part, holding that the evidence 

was insufficient to create a triable issue of fact on the discrimination and retaliation claims related to the Board’s 

decision to opt out of Ferrill’s contract rollover. The remaining claims were tried to a jury, which returned a verdict for 

the Board after just 20 minutes of deliberation. 

II. Analysis 

Ferrill’s appeal is limited to the judge’s ruling on summary judgment that the evidentiary record was insufficient 

to warrant a trial on the discrimination and retaliation claims 

stemming from the Board’s decision not to roll over her 

contract. We review that ruling de novo. Turner v. The Saloon, 

Ltd., 595 F.3d 679, 683 (7th Cir. 2010). 

 “The legal analysis for discrimination claims under 

Title VII and § 1981 is identical, so we merge our discussion 

of the two claims.” Smith v. Chicago Transit Auth., 806 F.3d 

900, 904 (7th Cir. 2015). Last year we overruled a line of our 

cases separating discrimination claims into “direct” and 
No. 15-3805 9

“indirect” categories and assigning different legal standards 

to each. See Ortiz v. Werner Enters., Inc., 834 F.3d 760, 765–66 

(7th Cir. 2016). We clarified in Ortiz that all discrimination 

cases present the same basic legal inquiry: At the summaryjudgment stage, the proper question to ask is “whether the 

evidence would permit a reasonable factfinder to conclude 

that the plaintiff’s race, ethnicity, sex, religion, or other 

proscribed factor caused the [plaintiff’s] discharge or other 

adverse employment action.” Id. at 765. 

Nothing in Ortiz, however, displaced the burden-shifting 

analysis established in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 

411 U.S. 792 (1973), which is sometimes referred to as the 

“indirect” method of proof. 834 F.3d at 766. (It’s not our 

prerogative to displace a decision method established by the 

Supreme Court.) The McDonnell Douglas framework is just 

“a formal way of analyzing a discrimination case when a 

certain kind of circumstantial evidence—evidence that 

similarly situated employees not in the plaintiff’s protected 

class were treated better—would permit a jury to infer 

discriminatory intent.” Smith, 806 F.3d at 905. 

The parties and the district judge used the McDonnell 

Douglas burden-shifting method to analyze this case, so we’ll 

do the same. This familiar framework requires the plaintiff 

to carry the burden of production on a four-part prima facie 

case. The plaintiff must first show that “(1) he is a member of 

a protected class; (2) he performed his job to his employer’s 

expectations; (3) he suffered an adverse employment action; 

and (4) one or more similarly situated individuals outside 

his protected class received better treatment.” Id.; see also 

Coleman v. Donahoe, 667 F.3d 835, 845 (7th Cir. 2012) (citing 

McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 802). If the plaintiff makes 
10 No. 15-3805 

this prima facie showing, the burden shifts to the employer 

to come forward with a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason 

for the challenged employment action. Smith, 806 F.3d at 905. 

If the employer does this, then the burden shifts back to the 

plaintiff to produce evidence establishing a genuine dispute 

of fact about whether the employer’s reason was a pretext 

for discrimination. “Pretext” is more than a mere mistake; it 

“means a lie”—a “phony reason” for the employment action. 

Id. (quotation marks omitted). 

The crux of this case is the second element of the prima 

facie case, which asks whether the plaintiff was meeting the 

employer’s legitimate performance expectations. We agree 

with the district judge that Ferrill has not made the required 

showing. The uncontroverted evidence all points in one 

direction: Ferrill’s job performance during her two years at 

Edgewood was fraught with problems and fell well below 

the district’s legitimate expectations, creating serious erosion 

in morale at the school. Staff repeatedly complained that her 

management style was confrontational and inconsistent, and 

she was sometimes nonresponsive. She was prone to hostility toward opposing viewpoints and quick to intimate that 

those around her were racist. Importantly, these shortcomings were confirmed by the independent consulting firm 

that was brought in to evaluate the situation and help Ferrill 

improve. That effort bore no fruit; the consultants ultimately 

recommended that the only way to restore the school’s 

deteriorating morale was to remove Ferrill. 

Dr. Burmeister herself experienced Ferrill’s resistance to 

improvement firsthand and over an extended period of time. 

She implemented essentially the same set of goals and 

objectives no fewer than three times during the course of 
No. 15-3805 11

two school years and amid persistent friction between Ferrill 

and her subordinates. To no avail; there was no meaningful 

improvement. Ferrill admits that she simply disagreed with 

the substance of the improvement plans. 

Ferrill’s response is to argue that her year-end evaluation 

identified some areas in which she was meeting the district’s 

expectations. True, but the superintendent’s review also 

identified serious weaknesses in her job performance. A 

reasonable jury could not conclude, based on that evaluation 

alone, that Ferrill was performing up to standards. More to 

the point, Dr. Burmeister reiterated the weaknesses in 

Ferrill’s performance throughout the 2009–2010 school year 

with no discernable improvement. The year-end review 

hardly establishes that she was meeting the district’s legitimate expectations. 

Equally faulty is Ferrill’s argument that the 3% raise at 

the beginning of the 2009–2010 school year demonstrates 

that Dr. Burmeister thought she was meeting expectations. 

The record is unequivocal that this was a district-wide costof-living increase, so no conclusion about her performance 

can be drawn from it. 

Finally, Ferrill argues that all of Dr. Burmeister’s criticisms can be traced to racial issues at Edgewood. In short, 

she maintains that once she embarked on her effort to raise 

awareness of racism, the superintendent became intent on 

removing her no matter her performance. To support this 

theory, she points to what she calls the “suspicious timing” 

of her first meeting with Dr. Burmeister to discuss 

performance problems. That meeting, in November 2008, 

occurred soon after she drew attention to racially charged 

incidents at the school. There was no suspicious timing at 
12 No. 15-3805 

work here. The Board’s decision to opt out of the rollover 

came more than a year later. 

Even if we set aside the McDonnell Douglas framework 

and approach this case in the more straightforward way 

specified in Ortiz, summary judgment for the Board was 

appropriate. Undisputed evidence establishes that the Board 

decided to stop Ferrill’s rollover because of her persistent 

resistance to improving her performance, which was well 

documented and confirmed by an independent consultant. 

On this record, a reasonable jury could not conclude that the 

Board took this action because of Ferrill’s race. 

Ferrill’s claim for retaliation fares no better. A retaliation 

claim arises when an employee engages in activity protected 

by Title VII and suffers an adverse employment action as a 

result. See Boston v. U.S. Steel Corp., 816 F.3d 455, 464 (7th Cir. 

2016). The parties debate whether Ferrill has shown that she 

engaged in protected activity in the first place. “Protected 

activity” is “some step in opposition to a form of discrimination that the statute prohibits.” O'Leary v. Accretive Health, 

Inc., 657 F.3d 625, 631 (7th Cir. 2011). It’s not necessary that 

the employee opposed a practice that is actually prohibited 

by Title VII; the employee need only have a “good-faith and 

reasonable belief that he is opposing unlawful conduct.” Id. 

(emphasis added). 

A threshold difficulty is that Ferrill’s efforts to raise 

awareness of racial issues at Edgewood focused almost 

entirely on behavior by the students and did not concern any 

employment practice by the school district. Student behavior 

falls outside the ambit of Title VII. See Artis v. Francis Howell 

N. Band Booster Ass'n, Inc., 161 F.3d 1178, 1183 (8th Cir. 1998). 

That said, in her meeting with Dr. Burmeister on January 7, 
No. 15-3805 13

2010, Ferrill did suggest—through her attorney—that white 

faculty members were reluctant to take direction from a 

black principal. Though this complaint is highly generalized 

and only tenuously connected to an employment practice by 

the district, we’ll assume for the sake of argument that it’s 

enough to qualify as opposition to a form of discrimination 

prohibited by Title VII. 

Even with that generous assumption, Ferrill’s claim fails 

for lack of evidence of causation. To prevail on a retaliation 

claim requires “proof that the desire to retaliate was the butfor cause of the challenged employment action.” Univ. of Tex. 

Sw. Med. Ctr. v. Nassar, 133 S. Ct. 2517, 2528 (2013). As we’ve 

explained, the evidence establishes beyond dispute that 

Dr. Burmeister’s recommendation that the Board opt out of 

the contract rollover was motivated by Ferrill’s persistent 

resistance to improving her performance, which spanned the 

entirety of her two-year tenure and was confirmed by an 

independent consultant. Ferrill asserts that Dr. Burmeister 

would not have taken this step but for a desire to retaliate 

against her for complaining about racism at the school. The 

record does not support that assertion. 

AFFIRMED.