A school superintendent accused last month of bullying a classmate decades earlier in Texas now wants to meet with the man who said the torment prompted him to nearly commit suicide.

Katy Independent School District Superintendent Lance Hindt said Monday that he wants to meet with his former classmate, Greg Barrett, after the man confronted him at a public school board meeting and said Hindt was among a group of students who physically attacked him in a bathroom at West Memorial Junior High in Katy more than 35 years ago, the Houston Chronicle reports.

“I just hope at some point we can sit down — and not in a big, public forum,” Hindt said before a board of trustees meeting where roughly 150 people gathered in support of the embattled superintendent.

Barrett, whose legal name is Grey Gay, said his original surname was one of the primary reasons he was bullied at the school.

“I was bullied, unbelievably bullied,” Barrett, who graduated from Katy Independent School District in 1983, said last month during a dramatic public school board meeting. “I started out and I had teachers that bullied me, I had kids that bullied me, even the coaches — I had nobody to turn to.”

Barrett claimed Hindt shoved his head into a urinal during one incident, causing his lip to bleed. After being sent home by school officials, Barrett said, he got a handgun from his father’s drawer and “put it in my mouth.” Barrett then threw his hands up in disgust and walked away from the podium.

Hindt was reportedly heard laughing off Barrett’s comments as he walked away. Hindt acknowledged attending the school with Barrett in 1978 but denied the allegations. He has also admitted doing “dumb things” as a “young and dumb” student, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Another classmate of Hindt’s at the time — who now serves as a judge in Alabama — later accused the superintendent of being a “vicious bully” while at Taylor High School with Hindt in 1982.

“He was a thug,” Circuit Judge David Carpenter of Alabama’s 10th District told KRIV. “He was a wealthy thug, but he was a thug.”

Carpenter accused Hindt of bullying his teammates on the high school’s football team, claiming he threw “25-pound weight plates” during one episode. Hindt declined to comment on Carpenter’s claims, according to the station.

But Hindt said he now hopes to “piece together a timeline” regarding the alleged incident with Barrett.

“I was only in the building with this individual for less than four months,” Hindt said. “I was a brand new kid.”

A teacher in the district who organized Monday’s rally ahead of the trustees meeting said Hindt has endured “false accusations” and needed a show of support.

“It hurts when people continue to blame you for things that are not true,” first-grade teacher Debbie Ellis told the Chronicle. “We want to build a circle around him so he can see how much people care for him.”

George Espinoza, a member of the district’s communications team, said Hindt has bettered himself since his days as a junior high student, regardless of exactly what happened inside that bathroom nearly four decades earlier.

“Everybody deserves a chance to become better,” Espinoza told the newspaper. “It’s better to have learned early like he did than not at all.”