ADVERSE EMPLOYMENT ACTIONS AND PUBLIC SCHOOL ...

The researcher divided these five cases as those in which the employee prevailed and
those in which the school system prevailed.
Table 46
Upstanding Behavior--Employee Prevails
Case Year State Action PP
Ledew v. School Bd. 1984 FL T E
Patten v. Grant Joint Union High School Dist. 2005 CA R E
Fiero v. City of New York 2008 NY R E
Table 46 is made up of three cases where employees prevailed on claims that they had
been subjected to adverse employment actions due to the inappropriate or illegal activities of
their superiors. Ledew was terminated following a meeting he had with a State Attorney where
he reported administrative irregularities in Ledew v. School Board (1984 U.S. Dist.). Like
Ledew, Patten exposed irregularities by her school board in Patten v. Grant Joint Union High
School District (2005 Cal. App.). Patten revealed that the school board was trying to execute a
fund transfer scam from the state whereby the Grant Joint Union School District would retain a
significant portion of state funding that legally should have been returned. Financial concerns
were not the only issue as shown in Fiero v. City of New York (2008 U.S. Dist.). Fiero was
reassigned to another school after rebuffing his principal’s sexual advances and requests to help
her falsify evaluations. In each of these cases, the administrator reported the behavior in a
manner timely enough to deal with situation.
Unlike the cases in Table 45, the cases in Table 46 were in similar standing, but the
administrators failed to report the actions soon enough.
369