Ventura Teacher Wins 2nd Round in Fight to Keep His Job : Courts: A judge finds no grounds for the school district’s attempt to dismiss special education instructor Bryan Bowman.

A Ventura special-education teacher has won a second round in the battle to keep his job after Ventura school officials accused him of improperly touching and disciplining students.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Barbara Lane ruled recently that she found no grounds for the Ventura Unified School District’s attempt to dismiss Bryan Bowman in 1993 for alleged improper actions.

Lane ordered the court’s 148-page statement of decision sealed because of the sensitive nature of the allegations and because of the age of some of the students involved.

The judge gave no details about how she reached her decision, but said in her order to close the file that it “fully vindicates” Bowman. Although Lane’s ruling backs up an earlier decision clearing Bowman of the charges, Ventura educators are pushing ahead with another layer of appeal.

Bowman’s attorney, Paul D. Powers, said Monday that he was served last week with a notice that the district is taking the case to the state Court of Appeals.

Meanwhile, Bowman, a 40-year-old Ventura native, remains on paid leave, Powers said. His client is wondering what it will take for Ventura Unified officials to drop their efforts, Powers said.

“How would you like to have the inference that you are a child molester blasted across the paper in the same community where you grew up and went to school?” Powers said.

If Bowman prevails on state appeal, the district will be liable for all of his legal costs, Powers said. So far, that amounts to about $85,000, he said.

Ventura Unified Supt. Joseph Spirito could not be reached for comment Monday. Other district officials would say little, citing the judge’s order to seal the decision.

“We are appealing basically because we don’t agree” with Lane’s decision, said Jim Wells, president of Ventura’s Board of Education. “I wish I could tell you more, but we were specifically instructed by our attorneys not to talk about it.”

The school district’s attorney, Mary Jo McGrath, also could not be reached for comment.

According to court documents, complaints about Bowman’s behavior began to crop up in 1989, when he was a substitute teacher at Juanamaria School. The complaints by parents, teachers and classroom aides continued after Bowman was hired as a teacher at Blanche Reynolds in 1990 and did not cease until the district fired him in October, 1993, the documents show.

Many of the accusations concerned alleged inappropriate touching and cruel behavior that Bowman exhibited toward his students, who were mentally retarded or had other severe learning handicaps.

In its statement of more than 80 charges, for instance, the district alleged that Bowman allowed children to sit on his lap up to 20 minutes at a time and frequently gave them full frontal hugs and “pecks” on the cheek.

He was sometimes physically rough with students, the district charged, one time grabbing the arm of a student and forcibly sitting the child down on the pavement. On another occasion, he allegedly confined a girl to a chair by stretching masking tape across her lower body.

Colleagues occasionally reported that Bowman unnecessarily teased and taunted some students to the point of crying, telling them not to act like “tards,” the district alleged.

Bowman appealed his dismissal to a state administrative panel and that panel agreed last year that Bowman had engaged in much of the conduct attributed to him by the district.

That included making sexual comments about other school employees, holding children on his lap and calling them derogatory names. But two of three judges on the panel decided that such conduct was not grounds to fire Bowman.

School district officials appealed the administrative panel’s decision, bouncing the case into Lane’s court. In court papers opposing the appeal, Bowman’s attorneys defended his behavior.

Powers said Bowman, the only male special-education teacher at Blanche Reynolds, was being singled out for a teaching style that would not be questioned in a female instructor.

Hugs, caresses and kisses on the cheek, as well as physical restraints, were necessary and even beneficial for Bowman’s students, a large portion of whom had Down’s syndrome, according to Powers. Children with Down’s, which causes mental retardation, tend to be more loving and affectionate but also more difficult to deal with, Powers argued in court papers.

A “hands-on” approach was thus appropriate, Powers said. He also noted that Bowman had received two awards for excellence in teaching during his tenure, including one given by the district.