Ferrill v. Oak Creek-Franklin Joint Sch. Dist.
| Decision Date | 19 June 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. 15-3805,15-3805 |
| Citation | 860 F.3d 494 |
| Parties | Pamela D. FERRILL, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. OAK CREEK–FRANKLIN JOINT SCHOOL DISTRICT and Oak Creek–Franklin Joint School District Board of Education, Defendants–Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Nicholas E. Fairweather, Attorney, Colin B. Good, Attorney, Hawks Quindel, S.C., Madison, WI, for Plaintiff–Appellant.
Kristofor L. Hanson, Attorney, Oyvind Wistrom, Attorney, Lindner & Marsack, S.C., Milwaukee, WI, for Defendants–Appellees.
Before Posner and Sykes, Circuit Judges, and Yandle, District Judge.*
Pamela Ferrill was hired as the principal of Edgewood Elementary School in the Oak Creek–Franklin Joint School District for an initial two-year term with an automatic third-year rollover unless the Board of Education opted out. Ferrill is black; the school district serves two predominantly white suburbs on the southern edge of Milwaukee County. During her tenure as principal, the Edgewood staff had exceedingly low morale, and Ferrill was plagued with multiple performance complaints. Staff described her as confrontational, inconsistent in her treatment of her subordinates, and quick to accuse others of racism. The superintendent of schools hired a consultant to help improve Ferrill's performance, but that effort failed and the consultant bluntly recommended that Ferrill be removed.
When the time came to review the rollover of Ferrill's contract, the superintendent recommended that the Board opt out. The Board accepted that recommendation. Ferrill found a new job, which the Board treated as a functional resignation of her position. She then sued the Board alleging claims of racial discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and retaliation in violation of her rights under Title VII and the First Amendment. The district judge granted summary judgment for the Board on some of these claims. Other claims were tried to a jury, which found for the Board after less than a half-hour of deliberation.
Ferrill concentrates her appeal on the judge's summary-judgment ruling rejecting her discrimination and retaliation claims related to the Board's decision to opt out of the third-year contract rollover. The judge's ruling was sound. Ferrill's shortcomings as Edgewood's principal were well documented and confirmed by an independent consultant, so she has not shown that she was meeting the Board's legitimate performance expectations and thus has not established a prima facie case of discrimination. The retaliation claim fails for lack of evidence connecting the Board's decision to activity protected by Title VII.
Edgewood Elementary School serves students in grades K–5 in the Oak Creek–Franklin Joint School District. In July 2008 Dr. Sara Burmeister, the district superintendent, hired Ferrill as Edgewood's principal for an initial term of two years. The contract contained an automatic rollover for an additional year unless the Board of Education opted out before January 31, 2010.
Ferrill's tenure as principal was turbulent. Edgewood was consistently plagued with low morale, the responsibility for which Ferrill attributes to others. Because we're reviewing a summary-judgment ruling, we describe the key events drawing reasonable inferences in Ferrill's favor.
In her first few months on the job, Ferrill learned that some of Edgewood's students—and even some parents—were referring to the bus that served a low-income neighborhood as the "ghetto bus." She also learned that some white students were calling black students derogatory names. Ferrill addressed these problems at an October staff meeting and urged the teachers to be proactive about addressing racial issues with their students.
In early November two fifth-grade students, one of whom is black, started spreading a false story that certain teachers were having sex in the faculty lounge. Ferrill reprimanded the students, spoke with their parents, and then discussed the matter with the two teachers at the center of the rumormongering. The black student had confided to Ferrill that he was afraid his misbehavior would mean he would no longer be called on in class. When Ferrill brought this concern to the attention of one of the wrongly accused teachers, the teacher interpreted her comment as an unwarranted accusation of racism.
Later that same month, Dr. Burmeister met with Ferrill to discuss the issues we've just recounted and also to address the rapidly deteriorating morale at the school and numerous complaints from teachers about Ferrill's management style. In brief, Ferrill was described as confrontational, inconsistent in her treatment of the staff, and quick to suggest that others were either racist or culturally insensitive. Teachers lodged similar complaints about Ferrill with Katie Kelso, the teacher's union representative, and in December she too spoke with Ferrill about the growing problems stemming from her discordant leadership style.
An incident in January 2009 continued this trend. A black student accused a teacher of hitting her, and the school district launched an investigation into the incident. Although the matter was being handled at the district level, Ferrill conducted her own independent investigation, which upset the teachers and staff, who thought that Ferrill was conducting her own investigation only because the student was black. It was widely believed that this extra layer of scrutiny would not have occurred had the student been white.
In the spring semester, Dr. Burmeister hired an outside consulting firm to help address the ongoing concerns about Ferrill's contentious management style. This intervention did not go well. The consultants reported that Ferrill resisted their efforts and faculty feared retaliation whenever they shared ideas that she might reject. The consultants frankly concluded that removing Ferrill was the only way to solve the ongoing strife. Around this same time, Kelso met with the entire teaching staff—twice—to address the still unresolved complaints about Ferrill.
At the close of the tumultuous 2008–2009 school year, Dr. Burmeister completed a year-end evaluation of Ferrill's performance. The evaluation listed her strengths and weaknesses in a few key categories. For example, the superintendent noted that Ferrill excelled at limiting the loss of instructional time but needed to improve her management techniques and interpersonal skills by (among other things) being more receptive and responsive to staff and parental concerns.
At the beginning of the 2009–2010 academic year, the district gave its employees a 3% cost-of-living raise. The pay bump came as a bit of a surprise because the district had frozen salaries. But with staff members retiring and new hires starting at lower salaries, the district lifted the pay freeze and instituted a uniform cost-of-living increase.
Also at the start of the new school year, Dr. Burmeister gave Ferrill a list of goals and objectives in an effort to improve her performance. The goals and objectives roughly tracked the issues the superintendent had identified in her year-end evaluation. At the top of the list was a requirement that Ferrill meet regularly with a mentor throughout the fall semester. Ferrill did so only four times before the mentor declared the effort futile and called it quits because Ferrill could not admit to any need to improve her job performance.
Another incident in November 2009 signaled the beginning of the end of Ferrill's tenure at Edgewood. Throughout the fall semester, a teacher had been requesting that a student teacher from Marquette University be placed in her classroom. It was the principal's responsibility to make the necessary arrangements with the university. Despite frequent reminders from the teacher, Ferrill did not follow up. When she finally contacted the university on November 18, she emailed the teacher advising that she would "stop down" to her classroom the next morning to discuss the matter. Ferrill never showed up. The teacher reported the no-show to the superintendent, who confronted Ferrill about her lack of follow-through.
On November 23 Dr. Burmeister met with Ferrill—this time with the human resources director in attendance—to address her continuing performance deficiencies. The meeting was tense, and when it wrapped up, the superintendent handed Ferrill a letter containing a detailed critique of her job performance.
On December 4 Dr. Burmeister gave Ferrill a formal performance-improvement plan covering the remainder of the school year. The plan was largely derived from the year-end performance evaluation from the previous year and the goals-and-objectives plan from the beginning of the fall semester. There was not enough time to discuss the plan in detail that day, so they agreed to meet on January 7, 2010, to review it more thoroughly. When the meeting date came, Ferrill arrived with an attorney. The discussion did not go well. Ferrill wanted to talk about racial issues at the school. Indeed, her attorney said the real problem was that the white faculty members did not want to take direction from a black principal. Dr. Burmeister tried to keep the focus on the performance-improvement plan. Ferrill disagreed with the plan and took issue with its factual foundations.
Based on this impasse and the failure of earlier intervention efforts, positive change seemed unattainable. On January 11 Dr. Burmeister recommended that the Board opt out of Ferrill's contract rollover. The Board accepted the recommendation. A week later Ferrill sent a letter to the Board taking issue with the performance-review plan and raising various racial issues at Edgewood, laying the blame at the superintendent's doorstep. She also sent two detailed letters to Dr. Burmeister raising similar objections.
The superintendent interpreted Ferrill's letter to the Board as an act of insubordination. Nonetheless, the Board treated her...
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