Montgomery County’s school board and a former principal accused of sexual harassment and bullying have agreed to pay a teacher $300,000 to settle a lawsuit filed against them, the teacher’s attorney said Friday.
Joel Beidleman was a principal in the Montgomery County Public Schools district when reports by The Washington Post described widespread allegations against the educator going back to 2016. He was put on administrative leave in August, and the district said in January that he no longer worked for the system.
Beidleman has denied many of the allegations.
That reporting led to investigations by the county’s inspector general and superintendent Monifa B. McKnight resigned in February amid questions over how the district handled the allegations against Beidleman, who was promoted last year to lead a high school.
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Another fallout: a lawsuit filed last year by an unnamed teacher who said Beidleman harassed her when she worked at Farquhar Middle School in Olney, Md.
On Friday, attorney Jerry Hyatt said his client, who still teaches in the Montgomery district, was relieved by the settlement. “She loves teaching and she is ready to put this all behind her,” Hyatt said.
Liliana Lopez, public information officer for Montgomery public schools, said the district does not “discuss legal personnel matters, so we are not able to comment on this.”
Beidleman’s attorney, Donna McBride, also declined to comment. Beidleman did not return a call for comment.
The allegations against the former principal shook through the school system, sparking scrutiny of district leaders.
The Post has reported that the school system received at least 18 complaints alleging misconduct by him going back to 2016. Additional complaints were identified by a Baltimore-based law firm hired by Montgomery school officials to investigate the Post’s findings.
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In the meantime, the county’s inspector also launched investigations.
The first dug into Beidleman’s alleged pattern of behavior, which included complaints that the principal pressured job applicants for sex, sent inappropriate text messages to teachers, spoke inappropriately about students and encouraged teachers to consume alcohol in excessive amounts at staff events.
That investigation found that Beidleman had violated the school system’s sexual harassment and bullying policies, and that his “verbal comments of a sexual nature that unreasonably affected their work performance and created an offensive work environment.”
A second investigation looked at how the district could have ignored complaints — both formal and informal — about his behavior. The second report, released in January, found that the complaint system for Maryland’s largest school district was “chaotic.”
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But the Beidleman scandal lit a firestorm of controversy within the district. In January, amid the scrutiny, McKnight said the county school board indicated it wanted her to step down. The school board did not say whether McKnight’s characterization was accurate.
McKnight, the first woman to serve as the system’s head, agreed to leave in February.
Hyatt said his client was satisfied the district seems to be learning from the Beidleman case.
“They seem to be making policy changes and are putting more resources and effort into claims of misconduct,” Hyatt said. “I think she’s been very heroic.”
Dan Morse contributed to this report.
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