Tustin Teacher Gets $3,500 to Settle Harassment Claim

The Tustin Unified School District has agreed to pay $3,500, in addition to reinstating 34 days of sick leave, to teacher Kent Moore, who filed a workers compensation complaint alleging that he became ill as a result of three years of harassment and mistreatment by his employers.

The school district offered the settlement the day Moore’s case was to be heard by the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, according to both Moore and Tustin schools Supt. Maurice Ross.

Moore said the harassment began with a survey sent out to several teachers in 1986 by his then-supervisor, asking them to comment on Moore’s job performance but not to tell him about it.

Moore alleged that he was badly treated because he was a member of the Orange County Grand Jury when it launched several investigations of County Schools Supt. Robert Peterson, a friend of Ross.

Moore served on the grand jury in 1981-82 and has been a member of the Assn. of Former Grand Jurors ever since. For the last few years, he has been on the association’s education subcommittee, which suggests topics for the grand jury to investigate. And he said that his troubles at the school district began when he joined that subcommittee.

“All I can say is that I was a company man, I was respected by my supervisors, I got along well at the district level, and all of a sudden it deteriorated,” Moore said. Ross vehemently denied that Moore’s involvement with the grand jury had anything to do with his treatment by district administrators.

“That is absolutely ridiculous,” Ross said. “This is the first I’ve ever known he was still on the education subcommittee.”

Moore, in documents filed with the state appeals board, alleged that he suffered from “gastrointestinal and mental distress” as a result of the district’s behavior. As a result, he said, he missed 34 days of school in that period. Moore, whose title is work experience coordinator, helps to place learning disabled students in part-time jobs.

He said that when he learned of the survey, he complained to his supervisor that such an evaluation, without the consent of an employee, was a violation of the district’s master contract with teachers.

Moore said he tried to get a response, or a chance to include his own comments on the survey, but was rebuffed at every level, either by failure to answer his memos or bullying from some superiors who were angered that he questioned their motives. He finally went to the superintendent with his complaint, he said, but eventually had to ask the district teachers’ union to intervene on his behalf.

In the meantime, he alleged, his supervisors piled more duties on him. One time, he said, they required him to fill out a log documenting what he did every 15 minutes of his workday. It was a requirement that no one else in his position had to meet, he said.