Olathe Public Schools offered woman $200,000 to keep quiet about sexual harassment
The Olathe school district said it would pay $200,000 to a district administrator who said she was sexually harassed by the man who worked in the office next door to her, but there were three conditions:
She would have to quit her job, not sue the district and keep her mouth shut about everything.
Details of the settlement agreement add new information to a situation that The Star first reported this week concerning the district’s handling of sexual harassment complaints filed last year against Olathe Public Schools curriculum and assessment director Rich Wilson.
Wilson was disciplined for behaving unprofessionally toward that female administrator and two other women who worked in the district office.
After separate investigations, he was found to have committed sexual harassment as defined by the district’s policies in one of those cases, according to documents obtained by The Star. Then-Superintendent John Allison also faulted his behavior toward the other women but those cases didn’t meet the district’s definition of sexual harassment.
All three complaints included accusations that he had made inappropriate remarks and “eyeballed” the women’s bodies, which led to letters of reprimand being placed in Wilson’s personnel file.
As The Star previously reported, the woman with the office next to Wilson’s was offered severance, if she quit and observed a non-disclosure agreement.
When she refused that, she was barred from district property last fall and told she could work from home when she did not let the matter drop, according to the documents. She was assigned reduced duties and told that her position was being eliminated at the end of this school year.
The moves came after Wilson filed a complaint against her, according to her attorney Mark Dugan, in which Wilson claimed she had “maliciously” accused him of harassing her by touching her on her upper thigh, calling her his “work wife,” and staring at her body.
In reprimanding Wilson, Allison had found that all of that had occurred, but he did not think it met the definition of sexual harassment.
After Wilson filed his complaint, Dugan’s client was given two choices, Dugan said.
Work at home until her position was phased out. Or resign immediately. Allison’s successor, current superintendent Brent Yeager, held the district’s top job at the time. When Wilson was disciplined last April, Yeager was assistant superintendent and Wilson’s direct supervisor.
Since the first story was published Wednesday, The Star has obtained a copy of the proposed severance agreement.
The district proposed paying her an amount equal to her salary for the remainder of this school year, pay for what she would have earned next school year and 12 months of free health insurance.
Total: $199,761 and 29 cents.
The deal hinged on her agreeing to drop the right to sue the district and to keep confidential the terms of the settlement and not speak publicly about her complaints.
She refused and later filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a prelude to filing a lawsuit.
“We expect at some point we’ll have a right to sue letter, then we’ll file a lawsuit against against the district,” Dugan said. “We’ll lay it out in more detail when we do that.”
The district declined to discuss the harassment claims other than to say they were investigated thoroughly and that Olathe Public Schools takes sexual harassment claims seriously. Wilson declined comment.
He still has his job, which pays more than $100,000 a year. One of the other women who made a complaint quit to take a lower-paid position at a Missouri college. The other asked to be reassigned so that Wilson was no longer her supervisor.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
