Jury awards $1.25 million to Pine Plains family in school racial harassment suit

PINE PLAINS — A federal court jury decided last week that the Pine Plains Central School District must pay $1.25 million to a local family that claimed their son endured years of racial harassment while enrolled at Stissing Mountain Middle/Senior High School.

The White Plains jury announced its verdict last Friday afternoon, March 12, in favor of Henry and Cathleen Zeno, whose son, Anthony, now 21, was at the center of the suit.

“The family was delighted,� said the plaintiff’s attorney, Stephen Bergstein. “The jury believed their son, and the family felt vindicated. The verdict speaks for itself.�

Bergstein confirmed that the jury found the district had not acted quickly enough to address complaints made by Anthony Zeno that he was being racially harassed by students during the more than three years that he attended Stissing Mountain, from January 2005 to June 2008.

The Zenos moved to the town of Pine Plains in 2005 from Long Island, Bergstein said. Anthony’s father is Latino and his mother is white, the attorney explained, and the student was taunted with racial epithets and racially motivated threats, the attorney said.

The district’s Board of Education released a statement on March 13 saying it was “stunned� by the verdict and maintained that the board, administration, faculty and staff in the district “have always given the physical and emotional safety of students the highest priority. There is zero tolerance for racial, or any other form of bullying or harassment, in [the Pine Plains] school community.�

Bergstein countered that while the school did eventually respond to the complaints, it was too late to adequately address the situation.

The jury “saw the pattern we saw, that this kid was undergoing a lot of racial harassment,� he explained. “They thought that if the school responded more quickly that the racial bullying could have stopped.�

A call from this newspaper to district Superintendent Linda Kaumeyer’s office did not patch through to the superintendent, but rather directed one’s attention to the below statement. Kaumeyer herself would not comment.

“The jury in the Zeno v. Pine Plains CSD case found our immediate discipline of students and our sustained cooperation with Dutchess County law enforcement, our student and community training and awareness program (including those of McGrath Systems and Mr. James Childs of JaRa Consulting), our student assembly programs addressing issues of diversity awareness, our conflict resolution and mediation efforts, our character education programs specifically targeting racial issues, our Students and Teachers Opposed to Prejudice (STOP) programs, and our daily, individual work with students, to be insufficient,� the board stated.

It is not clear whether the district will adjust its methods of combating racism and all forms of harassment. However, the board’s statement does say it will continue the programs it had in place and would “continue to utilize professional advice and assistance on the best ways to combat racism and all forms of harassment� in the school district. Towne, Ryan & Partners, the law firm representing the school district, did not respond to requests for a comment on the verdict.

Bergstein said he felt the jury’s decision would “certainly affect� how Pine Plains deals with similar issues in the future.

“It reminds everybody that you need to take this seriously and act quickly,� he said. “I’m sure Pine Plains gets that message, and I think other districts will take a look at their procedures as well.�

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