Hannah Sparling

hsparling@enquirer.com

Kings Local Schools will pay more than half a million dollars to settle a lawsuit that accused a teacher of abusing students with disabilities.

The teacher, Amanda Kitcho, was accused of screaming at and provoking her elementary school charges; throwing their belongings in the trash; taking food from their lunches; lying to them and secluding them behind dividers and in a restroom.

Kitcho could not be reached for comment. In the past, she has denied the allegations. She was allowed to resign in 2012 instead of being fired. A top official in the Kings district, located in Warren County, wrote her a reference letter for future jobs. Kitcho no longer has an Ohio teaching license.

The settlement includes $258,000 for the five students and their families plus $367,000 in attorney fees, for a total of $625,000.

On Friday, Dawn Gould, community relations coordinator for the school district, issued this statement: "At Kings Local Schools, every child deserves respect and the assurance of a safe environment in which to learn. We strive to accomplish this every day. The safety and security of our students and staff are our highest priority.

"With our insurance company paying this settlement, our hope is that the families involved, and our district can move forward in a positive direction."

Attorney Christopher Finney, who represented the students and their parents, said he’s glad to get money for his clients, but he’s disappointed in the district’s handling of the case. Rather than working to fix systemic problems, Finney said, Kings’ focus was on hiding what happened.

“The school board should be ashamed, and they’re not,” Finney said. “They’re very smug about it. They wrote the check, and they’re done.”

The lawsuit was filed in January 2014 on behalf of five multi-handicapped students at Kings’ Columbia Elementary School, for grades five and six. The children are identified only by their initials, but the brunt of the alleged abuse seemed to fall on a child with numerous mental and physical disabilities identified only as H.M.

According to the lawsuit:

Kitcho often screamed at H.M. and told the student she hated her.

H.M. uses a walker, but rather than helping her with the walker, Kitcho made H.M. crawl to the bathroom. A librarian reported this, saying it looked like “a dying dog trying to get to the side of the road. That’s how pathetic it looked to me.”

Kitcho was heard saying it was her “perverse pleasure” to provoke and ridicule her students.

As a punishment, Kitcho would seclude H.M. in a bathroom, with the child belted to her chair. When H.M. learned how to unbuckle herself and crawl to open the bathroom door, Kitcho would stand against the door, blocking H.M.’s exit while the girl screamed and tried to push her way out.

The lawsuit details several cases in which coworkers reported Kitcho to superiors only to be ignored and told to keep quiet. And, according to the lawsuit, it wasn’t until a teacher’s aide quit and threatened to take the case to news outlets that the school district responded.

Ex-Kings teacher, officials accused in abuse lawsuit

Kitcho resigned in March 2012. The resignation didn’t take effect until that August, though, so she was put on administrative leave, with full pay and benefits, in the interim.

The assistant superintendent at the time, Tina Blair, wrote a letter for Kitcho’s file, stating Kitcho earned “proficient” and “distinguished” marks on her evaluations and that she was “rated distinguished in demonstrating knowledge of students, demonstrating flexibility and responsiveness in instruction, creating an environment of respect and rapport, and communicating with families.”

To Finney, that letter was egregious.

“Nobody has ever apologized or explained that,” he said. “It’s really a question of, when these things come to light, what do we do to make sure they don’t happen again? And the answer here is, we didn’t do anything.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include a statement from Kings Local Schools that was issued Friday, July 1.