Opinion ID: 2771330
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Vare Middle School

Text: Daniels’s troubles continued at Vare, where Rachel 1 The record suggests that Daniels filed the complaint on November 1, 2010, but the parties and the District Court indicate that she filed the complaint on October 28, 2010. This minor difference is immaterial to the outcome of the case. 7 Marianno and Kenneth Christy served as the principal and assistant principal, respectively. For her first week or two at Vare, Daniels was not assigned to a classroom; instead, she was told either to remain in the main office or to go to the teachers’ lounge. Moreover, even after she received a classroom assignment, it took weeks and repeated requests before she was provided with keys to her classroom. Furthermore, Daniels was required to “float” among different classrooms, whereas other teachers did not need to do so. According to Daniels, students with extreme disciplinary problems and academic challenges were “dumped” into her class, but when Daniels wrote incident reports about her students, Marianno and Christy would not initiate appropriate disciplinary action. Indeed, they did not take disciplinary action when a student stood on Daniels’s desk, kicked papers onto the floor, and threatened to “kick [Daniels’s] ass,” conduct that led Daniels to file a police report. Id. at 127. Marianno and Christy likewise failed to investigate or take disciplinary action when students wrote threats and profanities on the window of Daniels’s classroom door. In addition, Marianno refused to discipline one of Daniels’s students who loudly used profanity when Marianno observed Daniels’s class. At some point during the year, Marianno told Daniels, “If you are not comfortable with the children of this culture perhaps you should leave.” Id. at 126. In December 2010, Marianno assigned Daniels to teach subjects for which Daniels did not have a certification. On December 20, 2010, after Daniels had missed school on December 10 due to illness, Christy sent Daniels a disciplinary attendance memorandum. The memorandum listed Daniels’s absences on September 8, 13, and 14 as “unauthorized leave 8 without pay” and warned Daniels that “additional absences or latenesses will lead to more severe disciplinary action.” Id. at 213. On February 22, 2011, Daniels filed a second PHRC complaint, this time concerning her treatment at Vare. In this complaint, Daniels alleged that Christy’s attendance memorandum falsely listed her as having taken “unauthorized leave” for a period during which she had not yet been assigned to Vare. She also complained that Marianno had assigned her to teach subjects for which she was not certified, had not provided her with a permanent classroom or keys to any classroom, and assigned students with the worst behavioral problems and the lowest academic scores to her. Daniels claimed that SDP retaliated against her because she had filed her October 28, 2010 PHRC complaint. The certificate of service of the February 22, 2011 complaint is dated April 12, 2011. Marianno and Christy each testified at depositions that they had no knowledge of Daniels’s PHRC complaints during the time that they took the adverse actions of which Daniels complains. During the 2010-11 school year while Daniels was assigned to Vare, Daniels began seeing doctors for anxiety and depression, conditions that she attributed to her hostile treatment at school. Starting in March 2011, Daniels began a period of medical leave from Vare due to her anxiety. While Daniels was on leave, Marianno telephoned Daniels requesting her students’ grades. After Daniels faxed her the grades, Marianno called again, screaming at Daniels for the grades’ low quality. After the 2010-11 school year ended, Daniels participated in the site selection process for the upcoming year, which resulted in her assignment to teach middle-year literacy at Penrose Elementary 9 School beginning September 2011.