Cameroon teacher rehired after being sued for discrimination

A former Gilbert Public Schools teacher who sued the district for racial discrimination in a lawsuit that ended in a settlement this year has been reinstated at GPS.

Gladis Mopecha, who taught English at GPS from 2005 to 2010, accused the district and six GPS employees of racial bias in a 2012 lawsuit.

Mopecha is a Black woman from Cameroon. She resigned from the district in December 2009, effective May 2010, because her “race, country of origin and accent became a point of contention with the district,” according to the suit.

The case was settled in February, with both sides paying their own attorney fees. Mopecha had asked for compensatory and punitive damages and attorney’s fees.

According to the suit, Mopecha received satisfactory evaluations until 2008 when the immigration issue began heating up in Arizona.

The suit alleged that “an atmosphere of public resentment against immigrants inundated all (English-language learners) teachers in August 2009.”

After receiving an unfavorable evaluation, Mopecha was placed on a professional improvement plan that required videotaping lessons and testing, summary e-mails of meetings, weekly detailed summaries, attending Toastmasters meetings and studying mock ELL audits.

According to the suit, a district supervisor asked Mopecha to minimize her accent and Mopecha paid $1,000 for lessons but they were not effective.

The suit alleged that parents and colleagues treated Mopecha differently because of her race.

Some parents did not like Mopecha helping their children out of cars when they were being dropped off at school so Mopecha was removed from that assignment, according to the suit.

Mopecha resigned from the ELL department and applied for other positions at GPS but was not hired, according to the suit.

She also applied for teaching positions in other districts but was not hired because GPS had marked on her file that she was ineligible to be rehired, according to the suit.

Mopecha also was denied unemployment benefits.

An administrative law judge, during a hearing at the Arizona Department of Economic Security, found that the district had violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by engaging in “unlawful employment practices,” and had discriminated against her “and (was) harassing her on the basis of … national origin,” the suit says.

The judge also found that Mopecha’s daughter, who attended school in the district, had been bullied, according to the suit.

The GPS school board on July 8 voted, 3-2, to reinstate Mopecha. Board President Staci Burk and board members Daryl Colvin and Julie Smith voted in favor. Jill Humpherys and Lily Tram were opposed.

Mopecha could not immediately be reached for comment.

An item to reinstate Mopecha and another teacher, Sarah Green, was up for a vote in a March board meeting but the board ultimately voted to reinstate Green while tabling the vote on Mopecha.

Burk said the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating whether the board had discriminated against Mopecha when it voted in March to reinstate Green, who is White, but held off for months on a vote to possibly reinstate Mopecha.

Humpherys said she didn’t want to reinstate Mopecha because she had not completed her professional improvement plan.

Tram asked what position Mopecha would hold in the district, but that decision was not made at Tuesday’s meeting.