Branden Durst fired these employees. Now they’re suing the school district

Two former employees have sued a North Idaho school district over allegations that they were not paid for multiple days of work done before they were terminated from their positions.

Steffie Pavey, the former business manager for the West Bonner School District in Priest River, and Shawna MacDonald, a former payroll employee, filed the lawsuit against the school district on Monday.

According to the suit, both women were fired from their jobs last month by incoming Superintendent Branden Durst, whose appointment in June met with controversy.

The former employees said Durst informed them in mid-July via email that they had been terminated. Copies of emails from Durst to Pavey and MacDonald included in the lawsuit show that Durst told the women their contracts had expired at the end of June.

Both women had previously continued their jobs at the district during gaps in their employment agreements, the lawsuit said, and they didn’t believe an agreement was a requirement for continued employment.

The lawsuit said neither woman has been paid for work done in July — approximately 48 hours for Pavey and 39 hours for MacDonald.

In his emails, Durst told Pavey and MacDonald to invoice the district for the hours they had worked in July so they could be paid as independent contractors. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the plaintiffs had sent those invoices. The lawsuit called Durst’s assertion that the women became contractors when their employment agreements expired “erroneous.”

Pavey and MacDonald are asking for the district to pay the wages they say they are owed, as well as any legal fees from the lawsuit.

Earlier this month InvestigateWest reported that Durst, a former Idaho Freedom Foundation analyst who was a far-right candidate for state superintendent of public instruction in the Republican primary last year, replaced three district employees with temporary picks of his own.

That included Pavey’s former business manager position, for which the publication said Durst hired Melissa Reilly. Reilly, an accountant, is married to Dave Reilly — a noted alt-right figure who moved to North Idaho after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he was seen wearing a pin with the logo of a white supremacist group.

At least one former West Bonner teacher said employees are leaving the district in droves, in part because of a recent failed levy and because of Durst’s appointment. Durst told the publication that he has seen a lot of interest in open positions regardless of an “exodus of teachers that don’t want to work with me.”