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A state court has reinstated and arbitrator's decision that barred the firing of a teacher who had sex with a student right after she graduated, lied about the relationship, and downloaded "inappropriate" emails.

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A county judge went too far when he found that a midstate school district could fire a teacher and former girls' basketball coach who had sex with an 18-year-old student on the night she graduated, a Commonwealth Court panel ruled Friday.



Instead, the state court reinstated an arbitrator's decision that allowed Cornwall-Lebanon School District to do no more than suspend teacher/coach Luke Scipioni for a year without pay.



The Commonwealth Court opinion by Senior Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter overturns a ruling by Lebanon County President Judge John C. Tywalk, who had granted a request by the school district to void the arbitrator's ruling on Scipioni's fate.



Tywalk found that the sex with the student issue was just one in a series of violations that called for Scipioni's firing. Also, according to court filings, Scipioni lied to a principal and the superintendent about his relationship with the student, illegally downloaded music to district computers and preserved "inappropriate and offensive," but not pornographic, emails on his work computer.



Scipioni's involvement with the student began in 2004 when she came to him and other district officials with an allegation that she was the victim of sexual abuse, Leadbetter noted. They reported the teen's allegations to police and a criminal case ensued.



"Significant contact" between Scipione and the girl ensued and "their relationship culminated in a sexual relationship on graduation night in 2004," the state judge wrote. That relationship ended that same summer, but rumors about it percolated through the school district for years, Leadbetter noted.



She noted that Scipioni lied when the principal and the superintendent asked him about the relationship in 2010 and 2012. Two years later, when Scipioni was in the midst of a divorce, district officials received an anonymous phone call about the 2004 relationship. That prompted an investigation that led district officials to fire Scipioni.



The arbitrator's ruling was issued after the Cornwall-Lebanon Education Association filed a grievance contesting the termination. Tywalk became involved when the district appealed the arbitrator's ruling, which provided for Scipioni's possible reinstatement with a career-long probation provision.



In concluding that Scipioni's firing was warranted, Tywalk wrote that "it is unreasonable to expect the district to subject its students to a teacher who has lied outright to both his principal and his superintendent and who has taken advantage of a district student."



Yet Leadbetter's court sided with the arbitrator's finding that Scipioni "did not have culpability" for his relationship with the student because there is no evidence they had sex before she turned 18 and had graduated.



Leadbetter cited the arbitrator's conclusion that in lying about the relationship years later, Scipioni did not want to "reopen old wounds...None of the actors here deserved to suffer having the zombies of their past roam mercilessly through their present." The arbitrator did conclude, however, that Scipioni deserved a penalty less than firing for his failure to be honest.



As for the inappropriate emails, the arbitrator concluded that while they were "crude, vulgar and...more typical of adolescents and adult professionals," only four of them had "content that would reasonably trouble the district." Those emails included a racist statement asking "Why does poor people have to be poor?," and three portraying young, scantily-clad females who could be of school age. Such emails on their own would not justify a teacher's firing, the arbitrator found.



Leadbetter concluded that Tywalk had "improperly acted as a super arbitrator" in overturning the arbitration decision. Even though he didn't support Scipioni's firing, "the arbitrator rendered an award with serious consequences for a tenured teacher," she wrote.



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