Suit Pits Teacher Against School District : Courts: Jury is now hearing a so-called whistle-blower case in which Sheila Hopper accuses officials of retaliation after she complained about problems in special education programs.

It was never about money, Sheila Hopper says.

The special education teacher says she filed her federal lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District on behalf of thousands of learning-disabled students--students such as 10-year-old Evangelina at Nestle Avenue Elementary School in Tarzana. A fifth-grader when Hopper met her, the girl could not spell her own name, let alone read.

But regardless of how it began, federal case No. 93-2441--initially filed to force the district to comply with federal education mandates--has become a so-called whistle-blower suit. It is indeed a matter of money now--and a matter of reputation--for Hopper and the nation’s second-largest school district.

Hopper, a fiery and eloquent 56-year-old, alleges that district officials began retaliating against her after she began making noise, denying her promotions and even falsely accusing her of child abuse. The suit, which went to trial Tuesday, does not specify a sum, but seeks compensation for “loss of reputation, humiliation, extreme emotional distress, depression and physical illness.”

“I have been repeatedly retaliated against by the district,” said Hopper, who has taught in L.A. Unified classrooms for more than two decades. “I deserve compensation. This has significantly affected my life.”

Many colleagues, administrators and parents who have dealt with Hopper, however, say she is a woman in love with conflict, obsessive over issues as grand as federal lawsuits and as trivial as where she was seated at a PTA luncheon. It is they, some say, who should be compensated for emotional distress.

About 200 parents and 11 of 15 teachers at Nestle signed a petition last spring asking for Hopper’s immediate removal, citing, among a four-page list of complaints, her “constant browbeating and abuse” of colleagues. The petition was never sent to district officials, gatherers said, because Hopper herself requested a transfer shortly thereafter.

“I think basically she’s a good teacher,” said Howard Friedman, assistant general counsel for the school district. But Hopper sees herself as “Joan of Arc, maybe . . . Captain Ahab.”

Hopper’s attorney prefers a different analogy, calling the Sheila Hopper-school district conflict a “classic David and Goliath” duel. And he points out that when Hopper complained that the district was failing to meet the needs of special education students, state and federal authorities said she was right.

For better or worse, Hopper--who frequently and proudly refers to herself as a whistle-blower--has undoubtedly been a shrill call in the ear of the district for at least five years. Now, a jury of four men and four women will offer its own take on the longtime teacher.

A wiry and energetic wife and mother who quotes detailed special education laws from memory, Hopper contends that the harassment began not long after she met Evangelina in 1988. Hopper complained to district officials that the girl, who was enrolled in a regular fifth-grade class, had never been evaluated despite her obvious learning disabilities.

“It happens all the time,” she said. Children with apparent learning disabilities wait months or even years to be assessed and directed to appropriate classes. And once an assessment is made, many students still do not receive the level of special instruction deemed necessary, she said.

Hopper compiled her documents on Evangelina and special education problems in general and took them to district officials in 1989. When they failed to respond, she said, she upped the stakes, filing formal complaints with the state Department of Education. The charge: The district chronically failed to meet guidelines for evaluating and teaching special education students.

The district receives about $20 million a year in federal funds to operate programs for about 60,000 students with special needs, but Hopper contended it was not spending the money properly. Another teacher, for instance, had requested in 1987 that Evangelina be evaluated. A year later, no assessment was even being planned.

The Department of Education investigated and upheld Hopper’s claims. But nothing changed, Hopper said, and she went a step further--to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. In early 1990, the OCR also found the district out of compliance.

The state and OCR ordered the district to correct the deficiencies. L.A. unified officials say some problems have been addressed; Hopper says most still have not.

As the letters and complaints were flying back and forth between Hopper, the district and various governmental agencies, the retaliation was beginning, Hopper contends.

One month after filing the complaint with the Office of Civil Rights in January, 1990, Hopper’s principal at Nestle Elementary, Jacklyn Thompson, filed child abuse charges against Hopper with the police and school district. Among other things, she alleged that Hopper had pulled a student’s arm behind his back until the boy cried, and pushed him, causing him to hit his eye on a file cabinet.

The police quickly dropped the case for lack of evidence. The district investigated and Thompson levied the harshest suspension possible under the teachers’ contract: Hopper would be suspended for 15 days.

Hopper appealed, her attorneys contending in documents that the charges were bogus and filed “only because she is a whistle-blower.”

A state hearings officer ruled in favor of Hopper, saying Principal Thompson’s investigation was so poorly conducted as to be “incredible” and that there was no evidence of abuse.

In her suit, Hopper also contends that she has suffered stress-related skin rashes from the retaliation, and that she was denied a job at another elementary school after officials there learned she had named that school specifically as one that violated the special education mandates.

“This is pretty much a standard response in LAUSD,” said James Fosbinder, Hopper’s attorney. “If someone challenges the system, they are branded unreliable, unstable.”

Los Angeles attorney Bonni Garcia, who is representing the school district, said Hopper was just another malcontent and promised in opening arguments Tuesday that the defense would provide ample evidence the district committed “no acts of retaliation.”

The lawsuit now focuses on the alleged retaliation but initially aimed at a far larger target. Hopper wanted a judge to order the district to either comply with the education mandates it was violating or repay the federal government upward of $300 million in special education funds. The judge agreed to hear the retaliation charges but tossed out other parts of the suit.

As for Hopper’s prickly relationship with the district, her critics say she brought many problems upon herself.

A group of parents, teachers and teacher aides from Nestle Avenue Elementary gathered at a Tarzana residence recently to discuss their dealings with Hopper--who requested a transfer at the end of the last school year and now teaches at Darby Avenue Elementary in Northridge. Displaying a thick stack of handwritten letters from Hopper to back up their tales, they told of several incidents that they said began as “petty” and “trivial” disagreements and were fanned by Hopper into heated battles.

There was the dispute over a parking space, which so escalated that Hopper demanded that the teachers union settle the squabble. Then there was the time Hopper complained to her principal that other teachers and PTA members purposely slighted her at a school luncheon. The offense? She was seated at the end of the table.

But Roger Segure, who as director of grievance processing for the teachers union, United Teachers-Los Angeles, has handled several cases for Hopper in recent years, says her popularity, or lack thereof, is irrelevant.

“Whether she’s likable to people is not the issue,” Segure said. The issue is: “She blew the whistle and the district retaliated.”

Although battling the second-largest school district in the nation has been both physically and emotionally exhausting, Hopper said, she is getting used to her role as head boat rocker.

“People say to me, ‘Why don’t you get on with your life?’ ” she said. “I’m committed to this.”