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Costs Mount As School Board Appeals Judge's Ruling in Favor of Fired Teacher |
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By Rob Kuznia
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Wednesday, June 20 2007 |
 Matef Harmachis/Courtesy photo
The board's appeal is in response to Superior Court Judge James Brown’s decision on April 10, which upheld the 2-1 decision of an administrative law panel nearly a full year before in favor of Matef Harmachis.
Meanwhile, as the school district gears up to fight the second ruling in favor of the 50-year-old teacher – who wants his job back – its costs are mounting. If the school district loses, its legal bills could surpass $500,000, lawyers and school officials said.
Moreover, Harmachis has been on paid leave for nearly the entire three-year period, receiving a salary of about $60,000 plus around $15,000 in benefits, Superintendent Brian Sarvis said. Considering these ongoing expenses, the case could cost the school district around $725,000.
The costly case comes at a time when the district is reeling financially: this spring, due to declining enrollment and a union-bargained teacher raise, the school board cut $2.5 million in programs from its $125 million budget. Eleven teachers were laid off.
Although a trial date for the appeal of Judge Brown's ruling has not yet been set, a hearing is scheduled for Aug. 1, during which Harmachis’ lawyers will try to recover their attorneys’ fees from the district.
Sarvis said the board is pressing on because it believes Judge Brown “got it wrong” on April 10.
“We still don’t think we can have him around students -- we still don’t think he acts appropriately around students,” he said Monday. “We think students deserve more protection than that.”
But Harmachis’ lawyer, Bob Bartosh, said it’s the school officials who have it wrong.
“The school board doesn’t like to be told they're wrong,” he said. “The district was very unwavering in its belief that Harmachis would be a threat.”
Harmachis did not return a call seeking comment.
HISTORY
The saga began in June of 2004, when the two brothers – neither of whom were Dos Pueblos students at the time – walked into Harmachis’ classroom to visit a friend who was in the history class. One of the twins wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the insignia of the Israeli Police Department.
Harmachis – who was known as an advocate for the left and a critic of Israel’s policies in the Middle East -- claimed that the shirt also bore the image of a gun, which he thought violated school policy. The twins have denied that the shirt depicted a gun.
Nobody disputes that Harmachis told the boy to turn the shirt inside out or leave the room, and that the boy refused. What happened next, though, has been a matter of intense debate.
The brothers say Harmachis hurled obscenities, grabbed the teen by the arm, spun him around and led him out of the classroom, where, following a heated exchange about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Harmachis referred to the boy as “Israeli trash.” Harmachis has testified that he never grabbed the boy by the arm and spun him around, but instead gently touched him on the arm before escorting him out the door.
And while he admitted to using some profanity, he denied making any anti-Semitic comments.
“Some time later,” reads a statement on a MySpace page dedicated to supporting Harmachis in the case, “Matef found the youth still outside his classroom and they got into a spirited discussion lasting three to four minutes about Israel and the Middle East. Matef was put on paid leave.”
Click here to see the MySpace page
Not long after, the boy’s father, an attorney and prominent rabbi in town, filed a complaint asking the school district to fire Harmachis on the grounds that he physically and verbally assaulted his son. The family also filed a criminal complaint, which was ultimately dropped by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department for lack of evidence.
In January of 2005, half a year after the Dos Pueblos incident, the school district reassigned Harmachis to Santa Barbara High School. About a month later, he got into another confrontation with a student, this time involving the use of a cell phone in class.
When Harmachis tried to confiscate it, the boy put the phone into his shirt pocket. Harmachis reached for it, making physical contact with the boy. The boy said that when he uttered, “Don’t touch me,” Harmachis responded: “Touch you? I’ll knock your dumb ass out!” Harmachis was again put on paid leave – where he has remained ever since – and the school board later voted to fire him.
THE INITIAL HEARING
In January of 2006, an administrative law hearing began with what is known as the Commission on Professional Competence. Such proceedings are essentially relaxed courtrooms, in which lawyers from both sides present their cases to a state-appointed administrative law judge and two other members of a panel.
At the hearing, school district attorneys introduced a third claim: that Harmachis had sexually harassed a female student. The girl testified that Harmachis had planted a kiss on her cheek during a hug. She also said he told her she made him forget about his wife when they saw each other at a grocery store.
Harmachis denied the kiss allegation, but not the grocery-store comment, although he added that his wife was present at the time.
At the hearing, Harmachis’ lawyers also tried to paint Dos Pueblos’ principal at the time, Dave Cash, as biased toward the boys, who had spent a year studying in Israel but planned to return to Dos Pueblos the following year. Cash told a district-hired investigator that their “family is awesome; their dad is a personal hero of mine.”
They also presented the commission with Cash’s favorable job-performance reviews of Harmachis.
“I appreciate your willingness to engage the students in a consistent critical analysis of history and current events,” he wrote.
At the hearing, Cash testified that Harmachis seemed to want to “fool” the school district into granting him tenure -- a status public school teachers receive after two years on the job that makes it more difficult to fire them. During those first two years, he said, Harmachis dressed conventionally, but on the third year he began to sport African garb.
In the end, the panel, led by state Administrative Law Judge Samuel Reyes, ruled 2-1 in favor of Harmachis. However, in a report the panel voiced concern about some behaviors – such as his use of profanity – and even found him “unfit to teach” in some respects. But ultimately, the panel decided that the charges lodged against him did not warrant termination.
The school district appealed, and a decision was handed down a year later -- this past April.
Bartosh estimated that the next appeal process could take at least six months. In the meantime, the school district will continue to pay Harmachis his full salary, plus benefits.
As for the attorneys' fees, Harmachis’ lawyers say they are owed $237,000 – an amount they will try to recover from the district on Aug. 1, unless both sides reach a settlement before then. On the school district's side, Sarvis estimated that the legal fees have reached $200,000. |
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