Former Principal Gets Day in Court on Whistleblower Claim
Former principal claims she was wrongly demoted after school asked her to improperly administer the MEAP test.
A former Livingston county principal is getting her day in court. The Michigan Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the Hartland school district to dismiss the case, so now the whistleblower suit is going to trial.
Tracy Sahouri says the school wrongly demoted her from principal to teacher because of several things she reported that were protected under the whistleblower act, including that the school asked her to improperly administer the MEAP test.
Her attorney Tom Pabst says the lawsuit will help other school employees know that the whistleblower act can protect them.
“You do the right thing to protect the kids anyhow and the law will protect you as a whistleblower,” he said. “It will give you a cause of action if they act like these administrators acted and wrongfully fire a person who’s got the courage to do the right thing.”
An attorney for the school district says Sahouri’s contract as principal was not renewed because she committed misconduct in the administration of the MEAP test, not the school. Sahouri still works for the district, but she is now a teacher.
But Pabst said the school district used Sahouri as a scapegoat. If the case goes to trial, he said, “I think they’re gonna clobber the school district for what they did to Tracy. And they should – she did the right thing and they punished her for it.”
