Karen Ray testified for the first time Thursday for a discrimination lawsuit she filed against the district and tearfully described several instances where she felt afraid of the Jefferson City High School administration.
Her harassment seemed to begin during the 2012-13 school year when one of her yearbook students sent two questions to every building administrator in the district: "What do you like most about your job?" and "What do you like least about your job?"
Assistant Principal David Wilson started asking how students get their questions and wanted the student journalists to submit questions to him before interviews, she said in her testimony. He would get "angry" anytime students had impromptu questions for him.
Assistant Principal Jeff West also came in and questioned her about the interview protocol for the journalism class.
Ray sent a letter to them explaining the situation and how she had reviewed her student's questions before they were emailed to administrators.
Her letter detailed how she was "slammed" with the classes she was teaching and wanted to know why her classroom only had 17 computers for the 25 students. She also described how she was stressed having to sustain the newspaper without any financial assistance from the school and why the journalism class was suddenly being scrutinized by the administration.
She was later called into a meeting with former principal Jeff Dodson, Wilson and West who said they were taking the Red & Black newspaper class away from her and giving it to a different teacher. She went on to explain why that wouldn't work; the newspaper and yearbook classes share equipment, content material and budgets.
Ray stated her qualifications to teach the journalism class and expressed how she didn't want to lose it.
At that point, Ray said Dodson yelled, "This is not an interview," and kept repeating that the change was "best for kids," and the newspaper "needs a fresh set of eyes."
Ray went back to her classroom in tears and said to her students, "They screwed Pete Stein, and now they're screwing me." She also said she probably said the F word. The situation with Stein, a former high school teacher, was not clarified.
Ray wrote a letter to the administration asking them to reconsider their decision.
Dodson offered her a "senior editor" position, but as far as she was concerned, the position did not exist, nor did she receive a formal offer.
In another meeting with Dodson, he told her "everyone is replaceable," "he can pay two (new) teachers for the price of one (veteran) teacher," and "he wanted to get a man in the journalism department."
Ray said she panicked, assuming she would not be rehired for the next school year and began seeking other employment. Ray was presented a contract for the next school year, but she was offered a position at Nixa Public Schools and decided to take that.
She canceled her future contract with the school district and was told by the district's human resource director, Penney Rector, she did not need to write a resignation letter.
She testified Dodson yelled at her for not submitting a resignation letter and threatened to call Nixa and tell them what a "trouble-maker" she is.
Ray said she did not cite the hostile environment as a reason she was leaving the school district in her resignation letter, instead citing a desire to be closer to family. She said she was fearful Dodson would retaliate if she unveiled the true reasons.
On May 1, 2013, Wilson and West pulled Ray out of her classroom while she was teaching to meet with her in the hall. They told her Brian Hodge, the new journalism teacher, would sit in on her classes and she would train him.
However, with the yearbook already gone to print and the newspaper wrapping up, Ray testified there wasn't anything for him to see.
"Please just let me be with my students," she recalled from the encounter. "I'm already heartbroken enough."
Wilson was shouting at her in the hallway, and one of her students had opened the door, at which point Wilson reached over Ray's shoulder and slammed the door shut. She pleaded with him to go back inside, and he said, "You're not going anywhere," according to her testimony.
Later that night, she called Dodson, asking him to "call off your thugs."
"It wasn't very professional, but it's how I felt," she testified.
The next day, Wilson called her out of class again, shouting at her, calling her "nearly insubordinate" and throwing a crumpled paper in her direction.
Shortly after the incident in the hallway, Wilson, Dodson, West, teacher Brent Whelan and Hodge - who was replacing Ray - met with Ray's journalism class. Hodge said the students were combative with their questions about his qualifications.
"I felt humiliated," he testified. "These were children who never held jobs or had a high school diploma and they were questioning my ability. I wanted them to give me a chance."
Students in previous testimonies said Wilson and West were condescending, yelled at students and "got in their faces."
Hodge said they raised their voices a couple times but did not consider it yelling. He said they did not intrude the students' personal space.
In one of Ray's later meetings with Dodson, she told him they were "bullying" her and said, "You guys are a bunch of sexist pigs and shouldn't be around kids."
Ray met with Rector and explained everything that had happened during her exit interview with the district. She described the "bullying," losing her newspaper class to a teacher she felt was less qualified than her and the other teachers who experienced "harassment."
She left the district at the end of the 2013 school year for the Nixa position where she earns about $12,000 less a year.
Ray testified she still has nightmares about her encounters with the principals.
She said she thinks she was pushed out of the district because of her age and gender. The reason for the litigation is mainly so the treatment she experienced never happens to any other teacher or student, she said.
Tammy Ferry, former girlfriend of Wilson, testified via video what the other teachers said about Wilson and Dodson referring to older teachers as "old dead weight" is accurate. She heard the two make those claims numerous times at school and socially.
Ferry works in the technology department of the district and dated Wilson for a year-and-a-half. She heard them refer to the older teachers as "old wood," "dead wood" and "dead weight" and had obvious plans to push those teachers out so they could hire younger teachers because they would "do what they're told."
"I like to think in some ways it bothered David (Wilson) because he would say sometimes that Dodson would get carried away, and they'd have to reel him back."
She too experienced harassment from a former supervisor and a colleague in the technology department. She filed two grievances, but the district found there to be no evidence of wrong doing in either case. When she was "sexually assaulted" by one of her colleagues, she was told by Rector there was nothing she could do because there were no witnesses or video proof.
Ferry called the grievance process taxing and difficult.
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Previous coverage:
JCHS teachers felt 'bullied' by administration, May 12, 2016
JCHS administration called 'aggressive,' May 11, 2016
JCPS discrimination trial gets underway, May 10, 2016