Former Central Bucks School District superintendent Steven Yanni and former Jamison Elementary School principal David Heineman have appealed their terminations by the school board over their handling of abuse allegations in an autistic support classroom.
The Central Bucks school board voted to terminate the duo last month, nearly a year after a classroom aide reported the abuse.
A report from the watchdog group Disability Rights Pennsylvania released in April found that students were illegally restrained, creating a “reasonable likelihood of bodily injury” and likely interfering with their breathing.
The school board had initially stood by the district’s leadership, but their tune shifted after the report’s publication. Yanni and Heineman were placed on leave the following day, and a two-day termination hearing was held in August.
Yanni, who has accepted a position the CEO of Northwood Academy charter school in Philadelphia, filed his appeal Monday in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas.
The filing rehashes the arguments Yanni made during the August hearing, including that he did not make an immediate report to ChildLine, Pennsylvania’s reporting system for child abuse or neglect, because he relied on the assessment of district officials during an internal investigation.
Yanni’s appeal also says he did not remove the accused teacher and educational assistant from the classroom because the members of his leadership team closest to the investigation told him there was no reason to suspect abuse.
The 139-page court filing attacks the termination hearing process, and calls the school board biased. It notes that board member Jim Pepper‘s son was one of the victims of abuse.
Pepper recused himself from the hearing and other votes related to the investigation but the appeal alleges that “he actively participated in the Board’s investigation and disciplinary actions and made public allegations.”
Pepper declined to comment.
“For almost a year now, there has been inaccurate and defamatory information shared about me,” Yanni said in a statement. “My appeal corrects the record and clearly articulates the truth around the Jamison situation.”
The Central Bucks School District declined to comment on the case because it is active litigation.
Heineman, meanwhile, appealed his termination Oct. 29 by filing a petition through the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s tenure appeal process, according to a copy of his appeal obtained by The Inquirer. That process, unlike Yanni’s appeal in court, is private.
The former principal accuses the board of terminating him after 26 years as a district employee over a series of “unproven allegations” that were made at his termination hearing.
These include the notion that as principal he created a “chilling effect” that deterred staff from making reports to ChildLine, and that he threatened to fire the classroom aide for making the allegations.
Heineman‘s petition notes that in the days after the allegations of abuse were made, the district’s leadership “unanimously agreed that there was no abuse, and no need to make a ChildLine report.”
Heineman also says that there is no basis to the way he was characterized during the termination hearings.
“CBSD’s allegation that Mr. Heineman ‘does not care about children’ carries no support in the record, and appears to be, once more, inflammatory rhetoric made more for the public than for purposes of meeting CBSD’s burden to terminate Mr. Heineman,” the petition says.
Central Bucks also declined to comment on Heineman’s appeal. The attorney representing Heineman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The school district responded to the petition this week, according to a copy of the filing obtained by The Inquirer that denies most of Heineman’s claims and stands by the termination decision.
As for the allegation that the top leadership of the school concluding that there was no abuse before making a ChildLine report, Central Bucks says, “regrettably admitted.”