In November 2005, the complaint goes on to say, Coleman announced she was leaving, as did Kim Pollock, the teacher Briaan Barron liked so much. Head of School Bernie Noe called a faculty meeting to discuss what one white teacher called, in an e-mail, "the fact that our community is losing some fantastic teachers of color at an alarming rate." The meeting turned dramatic. Sims brought up his objection to the D'Souza invitation, the complaint relates, whereupon a white staffer admitted her role in asking the conservative to come. "Shame on you," retorted Sims. That prompted a white male staffer to rise to the woman's defense, according to the complaint, "in an aggressive tone."
The next day, the complaint laments, Noe suggested that Sims apologize to the woman but said nothing about the man who aggressively rose to her defense.
A promotional brochure for the school.
A promotional brochure for the school.
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The following month, Sims sent a mass e-mail to the school's entire staff, labeled "A Valentine for Kim Pollock," which read: "After learning that the administration is spending hundreds of hours dealing with the D'Souza debacle, I'm left to wonder how this school might look if the administration spent hundreds of hours supporting retention efforts." The administration apparently took umbrage, because Noe subsequently placed Sims on two months' probation, according to the complaint. After that, the complaint says, Lakeside stalled at giving Sims a new yearly contract, prompting the teacher to enter a Ph.D. program in women studies at the University of Washington, although he still works part time at Lakeside. (Coleman took a teaching job in California after leaving Lakeside, and Pollock returned to Bellevue Community College, where during her 14-year tenure she had founded the ethnic and cultural studies department, which she now chairs.)
Lakeside has denied the suit's allegations, and claims, in its answer to the complaint, that Sims' and Coleman's "damages, if any, were caused by their own conduct." School officials have declined to discuss the case in detail, and Sims and Coleman declined to be interviewed for this story.
But since the teachers filed their initial allegations, they and the school have submitted hundreds of pages of documents in court, including internal e-mails, reports, and meeting notes. These provide an unusual glimpse into the inner life of a school that, as one document states, has long gone by the ethos: "Punish in private, praise in public."
The plaintiffs suggest that one of the e-mails they include, from a longtime African American teacher named Phyllis Byrdwell, is evidence of prior discrimination complaints. That e-mail, sent to all faculty members in the heat of the D'Souza debate, really speaks of isolation as much as anything else. Here, Byrdwell writes poignantly about what it felt like to be, as she puts it, "the only person of color on BOTH campuses" before others came along. She continues: "I can remember my first year and how hard it was to even ascertain HOW to 'fit in.'...During my tenure here, I have had to be the 'voice' that spoke to issues regarding race and it is actually refreshing not to have to be the only voice anymore."
The most compelling voice in these documents, however, belongs to Coleman, whose anguish virtually jumps off the pages. In an e-mail to Noe and a separate year-end review filled out by teachers, she writes that she had been attracted to the school because of its new mission, but ultimately decided to leave "because my current situation at Lakeside was absolutely unbearable. I felt like the students were holding me under a microscope. I felt attacked by parents, and I felt marginalized by those who claimed to be addressing my concerns."
When she announced her resignation, Coleman continues, she was "bombarded by false promises and lots of meetings" with, among others, the school's diversity committee and "community members wanting to discuss white privilege." All to no avail. She writes: "I have lost the ability to peacefully fall asleep after a long day's work rather than spend hours tossing and turning, full of regret and anticipating how I will be able to survive the next day....I have lost control over my desire to not cry in public but have been reduced to tears at the thought of returning to Lakeside or even spending another moment there."
At a Starbucks on Aurora Avenue near the Lakeside campus, administrator T.J. Vassar reveals himself to know something about feeling isolated at the school, as well as the way in which its good intentions can backfire. Easygoing, with a deep-throated laugh, and wearing a navy V-necked sweater and glasses, Vassar remembers back to the mid-'60s, when he and two other students became the first African Americans to attend Lakeside.
The school had just started the Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program, known as LEEP, which offers summer classes to promising disadvantaged youth.
In 1965, some Lakeside students showed up at what was then called Washington Jr. High School (now Washington Middle School), where Vassar was a student, and talked about a summer program at a school the young man had never heard of. "I didn't have anything else to do that summer, so I said yeah," Vassar recalls. Afterward, the school invited him to attend as a full-time student.
