EDUCATION : Student Pays Price for His Disruptions : Teacher wins damages against boy who threatened her. Educators, others hail decision as beneficial.

In Room 120-South of Campbell County High School, Andy Bray launched a campaign two years ago against his Spanish teacher, Fran Cook.

He yelled. Red-faced and clench-jawed, he furiously snapped pencils in two. Asked to use a vocabulary word in a sentence, he chose matar --to murder--and said he’d “kill the cook.” There was never a lull in his behavior.

But on the second floor of the Campbell County Courthouse last month, Senora Cocina-- as her classes call her--got the last word.

A circuit court jury ordered Bray to pay $33,700 for harassing and intimidating his instructor. Cook, 55, says she’ll use the $25,000 in punitive damages to establish a fund for threatened faculty.

Now, as the academic year begins, school superintendents in northern Kentucky and across the Ohio River in Cincinnati are making sure their staffs and students know that disruption and threats in school can be costly indeed. Editorials in local newspapers, as well as educators across the country, are applauding Cook’s decision to take young Bray to court, as well as the jury’s decision to back her up.

“This is a really nice twist,” said Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center--a joint project of the U.S. departments of Justice and Education and Pepperdine University. “Usually if the teachers have attempted any kind of discipline, the teacher gets sued. . . . To me, this is a promising tool.”

Bray’s attorney, Timothy J. Nolan, disagrees. He says Bray was only joking and notes that his client never physically harmed Cook. He adds that the judgment will be difficult to collect from an 18-year-old college student who worked recently in a restaurant and as a landscaper.

“This was a character assassination,” said Nolan, “a reflection of the frustration people have toward juveniles today.” He said Bray is considering appealing.

In recent surveys, one in 11 American teachers report being attacked at school--with 95% of those attacks coming from students. And 41% of teachers report losing “a fair amount of teaching time” because of discipline problems.

So even in this blue-collar town of 6,500, flanked by suburbs to the north and farms to the south, unruliness and violence are far from unthought of in the halls of academia.

Well before the incidents that led to the lawsuit, Campbell County High had formed a discipline committee, which reported that teachers thought students were “obnoxious,” “loud” and had a “lack of respect for authority . . . no fear of punishment.”

Bray did not fit that stereotype, Cook believed, at least not while he took Spanish 1 or Spanish 2 from her. The youngest of five children, a churchgoing boy, he rarely spoke in class and earned good grades.

In the fall of 1993, however, he seemed different from the start. In October, the teacher called his mother in to discuss Bray’s tardiness, cursing and class interruptions. In the spring, he began working matar into every sentence that he could. Sometimes the verb’s object was the Spanish word for “cat” or “dog,” but other times it was “teacher” or “redhead”--Cook has auburn hair.

An assistant principal suggested Cook take Bray into the hallway for a private talk. Cook said she did, asking Bray why he kept saying he wanted to kill her. She said Bray calmly responded: “Probably because I do.”

When the school year ended, she thought the worst was over, although her class was well behind in the textbook.

But the next fall, Bray sent a letter, which she confiscated from a student: “I am afraid now that I am gone, the class will no longer be disruptive and may even begin to do their homework,” the missive read. “This cannot be permitted to happen. . . . You can still drive the Cocina crazy.”

For this, the administration meted out 40 minutes’ detention. Cook was horrified. She called an old college friend, attorney Philip Taliaferro III.

He urged her to press criminal charges. Bray was sentenced in juvenile court to community service. Nolan said his client also got sensitivity counseling. A restraining order was imposed, keeping Bray 500 feet away from Cook.

But the civil suit was also necessary, Taliaferro said, because “we wanted to make a point. Juvenile court is confidential. We wanted the message out. We could have sued the administrators or the parents, but it was Andy Bray who was responsible for his behavior.”

In a press conference after the suit was filed, Bray said tearfully: “It was foolish. It was a mistake. I mean no harm toward Mrs. Cook or anybody else.”

But Cook did suffer. Her stomach was constantly upset. She lost 30 pounds. She had nightmares. She stopped watching the Campbell County Camels play football. She skipped graduation for fear that she would see Bray. She retired two years ahead of schedule.

She doesn’t regret leaving, although the verdict makes her feel “kind of like Joan of Arc,” she said.