New legal filing in CBSD teacher retaliation case accuses district, attorneys of lies

A new federal court filing alleges that Central Bucks School administration and its Philadelphia lawyers intentionally misled the public and made false accusations against a popular middle school teacher in an attempt to distract from its controversial school board policies.

The new complaint filed Monday in U.S. Eastern District Court is the most in-depth public statement by the ACLU of Pennsylvania and teacher Andrew Burgess since the April release of the district’s internal investigation report into allegations it discriminates against LGBTQ+ students.

The new filing described a $1 million district-led investigation as a “highly visible and public campaign” to damage Burgess’s reputation in the community and shift blame away from the school board and its policies, which have been under scrutiny since 2021 as allegedly anti-LBGBTQ+.

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Neither school board President Dana Hunter, district administration or Duane Morris attorney Michael Rinaldi, one of the lead investigators, immediately responded to emails Monday requesting comment on the new filing. The district and Hunter have denied its policies single-out the LGBTQ+ community.

Earlier this year, the ACLU and Burgess sued the district and Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh for civil rights violations alleging retaliation against him for filing a federal discrimination complaint on behalf of a transgender student who endured unresolved harassment and bullying at school last year.

Central Bucks School District suspended Burgess a second time with pay on April 21, one day after a special board meeting where the findings of the Duane Morris report were presented. He remains “indefinitely” suspended, according to the filing.

The 151-page Duane Morris report alleged there is no widespread discrimination of LGBTQ+ students and the administration addresses problems promptly. The report accused Burgess and “democrat activists” of conspiring against the Republican-majority school board to create a public perception the district ignored LGBTQ+ student complaints of harassment, and recommended suspending him without pay.

In his newly amended complaint, Burgess alleges the district and its Duane Morris attorneys repeatedly lied about his character, motivations, and the circumstances surrounding his filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

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Among the latest allegations from Burgess and his attorneys outlined in the filing:

• District administrators, including Lucabaugh, were aware Burgess filed an OCR complaint weeks before his first suspension because he told them about it at an April meeting. Duane Morris has claimed the district knew nothing about the OCR complaint until investigators found it.

• Duane Morris falsely accused Burgess of covering up alleged abuse of a transgender student, when there were no allegations that the child was the victim of abuse as defined under Pennsylvania’s Child Protection Law.

• The district suspended Burgess for three months last year for violating a board policy requiring employees report bullying complaints to building principals weeks before the language was added to the policy in June 2022.

• Duane Morris attorneys never spoke to the student or his family, on whose behalf Burgess filed the OCR complaint, who could have corroborated his account of the matter, and instead falsely accused Burgess of manipulating the student into not reporting bullying to school counselors and administrators.

• Duane Morris did not interview any students in the LGBTQ+ community or their families, though their complaints about a hostile school environment were the catalyst for the district's internal investigation.

• District administrators failed to notify Burgess it had initiated a misconduct investigation against him and mandated that he participate in an interview with Duane Morris under a threat of  “potential adverse employment consequences,” and “criminal consequences” if he declined to participate.

• The district falsely accused Burgess of filing the OCR complaint on behalf of the student without getting parent permission, though the complaint included a consent form signed by the student’s mother.

Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, believes the district used Burgess as a “scapegoat” to distract from its “egregious failure” to support LGBTQ+ students in the district.

“What they’ve done here is illegal retaliation,” Walczak added. “They were warned by the Office for Civil Rights not to retaliate against Andrew or anyone else who filed complaints, and they did it anyway, at the cost of over a million dollars to district taxpayers.”

The district suspended Burgess in May 2022, then “involuntarily” reassigned him to a different grade in a new school for the 2022-23 school year a week before the start of classes.

The U.S. The Department of Education investigation into six discrimination complaints against Central Bucks School District is ongoing.

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This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: ACLU filing argues CBSD board smeared Andrew Burgess