After a day-long public hearing with a packed audience, the Gering Public School board voted to terminate the contract of high school principal Rocky Schneider on Thursday, Dec. 30.
The hearing, which lasted nearly 12 hours with a few breaks thrown in, took place after Schneider requested to be heard by the Gering school board. Superintendent Nicole Regan presented Schneider with a notice of proposed cancellation on Dec. 10 after being placed on administrative leave on Dec. 6.
Attorney Josh Shauer of Perry Law Firm in Lincoln, who was selected in agreement between the two attorney counsels, presided over the hearing.
The district, represented by Karen Haase and Jordan Johnson from KSB School Law in Scottsbluff, used the hearing to cite Schneider was “unethical, incompetent and unprofessional.” District officials offered five instances over the course of the 2021 fall semester to demonstrate these characteristics. Schneider’s attorney, Jeff Kirkpatrick of Governmental Law LLC in Lincoln, claimed the district’s tactics were “to throw enough stuff at the wall, and hope that something sticks.”
The first incident involved allegations of sexual misconduct by a high school teacher going around on social media at the beginning of August, which went unreported to Regan.
Schneider testified that while he did not know of the social media posts right away, he had heard from the teacher that he was having issues with an ex-girlfriend, who he said was making the allegations. The principal claimed he had no reason to believe the allegations were true.
Regan spoke with him that situations like these needed to be reported to her, she said, not only as the superintendent but as the district’s Title IX coordinator. Regan and HR coordinator Shawna Payne, testified that he was remorseful for not having done so.
“He was remorseful,” Payne said. “In this meeting when we discussed this, he was not dismissive; he was remorseful. His tone was entirely different.”
The second incident involved a student who suffered a severe football injury during practice, which also went unreported. Payne testified that Regan made it clear to her administrative staff during a retreat in July that she expected to be notified of significant issues.
The slide in the exhibit that was referred to as evidence even stated, “First graders like surprises. Your superintendent doesn’t.”
Regan testified that she became aware of the injury through parent communication, and that she would have expected the information to come from Schneider.
“You received this information from a parent. You did not receive a report from Mr. Schneider about this incident?,” Johnson asked Regan.
“No,” she said.
“Is this the type of incident you expected to be notified of?”
Regan answered, “Yes it’s a serious injury.”
Schneider maintained that when he discussed the injury with Regan, she never indicated that she had wanted to be notified sooner. He said that he had been in the information gathering process when she called.
A third incident spurred a different conversation on the number of fights and physical altercations taking place at the high school. On Sept. 30, Schneider testified, he helped break up a fight involving three different female students with the help of a para educator. Following the dispute, Regan testified that she wasn’t notified of the incident until she received a text from a parent who was “offended by an administrator putting hands on her daughter.”
Schneider later testified that it was a misunderstanding — clarifying that it was the para educator to whom the parent was referring. Schneider said he had a productive conversation with the parent that ended with a resolution of no further complaints from the parent and the parent actually thanking him.
Regan said that between this specific altercation and the rising number of fights in the high school, which was evident by district data presented at the hearing, she wanted to hold a meeting with high school administration to brainstorm ideas to remedy the situation. Both Regan and Schneider testified that he did not think the meeting was needed, but he still complied with having one.
The fact that he disagreed, however, is what Regan testified to as being disrespectful.
“In those meetings, he did not meaningfully engage in the discussion about how to address these issues?” Johnson asked Regan.
“Yes,” she said.
“Was his refusal to engage and participate in those discussions during that meeting disrespectful toward you?”
“Yes.”
The final two incidents involved potential Title IX issues between students, both of which happened toward the end of the semester, according to testimony
On Nov. 29, a student had been accused of sending inappropriate texts and a sexually explicit photo to another student. Regan testified that she was not notified about the incident until about a week later, and it wasn’t by Schneider.
“This information was presented to me by Dean (Crystal) Palser, when I actually called her about the Dec. 3 incident,” Regan testified. “She thought I was referring to an earlier incident that happened on Nov. 29. … She went through the incident, and then she reported that she asked Mr. Schneider, ‘Is this a Title IX issue?’ And he said no.”
Schneider later testified that he and his staff — vice principal Mario Chavez and dean of students Crystal Palser — decided that it wasn’t worthy of a Title IX report, and decided to take disciplinary actions without consulting Regan.
“When the harassment or discrimination on the basis of sex does not meet the definition of sexual harassment, the Title IX coordinator will direct the individual to the applicable sex discrimination process for the investigation,” Schneider read district policy after prompting from Haase.
Schneider said in testimony that he understood the policy differently.
“That was not my understanding,” he said. “I guess the way I would interpret that is that once it’s declared Title IX, that the Title IX coordinator makes that determination.”
Regan said that with all of these incidents as a track record of not taking her directives seriously, it built up to the tipping point that was the week of Dec. 6.
On that day, according to multiple witnesses, Regan had a meeting with Schneider and Payne to further discuss an incident which happened on Friday, Dec. 3.
The incident was a second potential Title IX issue between students, in which a female student was taken to CAPstone for a forensic interview about being sexually assaulted, according to testimony from School Resource Officer Robert Gleim. Gleim said that the forensic investigator found that the incident was more of an attempted assault, as no physical act of touching had been reported.
Schneider testified that he was unaware of the incident until Regan texted him that evening asking him about it.
“I got home about 6:35 on Friday night from the basketball game that I worked. I looked at my phone, and I had received a text message from Dr. Regan at 6:25 (p.m.), and the text said that there was a Title IX incident at the high school, and it wasn’t reported to me. And that’s the first I ever heard of there being a Title IX incident,” he said. “...Given the fact that she had sent it to both Crystal and me, I inferred from that, that Crystal was aware of it, so I immediately, as soon as I read that text, called Crystal and got information from her.”
Regan testified that not only did she believe it was incompetent that Schneider’s subordinates were not reporting important information to him, but also that “he failed in the urgency of the matter.”
Despite having the weekend to look into the issue, Regan testified that Schneider showed up to the 7:30 a.m. Dec. 6 meeting with no new information to report, whereas Palser had more details when she came in to meet with Regan later that morning.
Schneider testified that he followed law enforcement directives.
“Law enforcement pretty much said as much as they would. They were going to withhold that information until they completed their investigation on Monday morning, early in the morning,” Schneider said. “And that they would share information with us at that time and then they actually went further and asked that we not get involved in the investigation as to not mess with the integrity of the investigation.”
The Dec. 5 meeting was not constructive in the way she had hoped, Regan said, and she described Schneider’s behavior during the meeting to be “unprofessional, unethical and incompetent.” Payne and Director of Student Services Byron Olsen also testified similarly.
Based on Schneider’s conduct, along with the slew of other issues with communication between him and Regan, Regan said she decided to give him a formal reprimand on Wednesday, Dec. 8, while he was still on administrative leave.
In this meeting, all three district witnesses of Regan, Payne and Olsen, along with Schneider himself, testified that he said to the superintendent, “The job was hard enough with a competent and supportive superintendent,” “he respected Dr. Reagan’s position as superintendent … (but) he did not respect her,” and “that he could not be successful under her supervision and leadership.”
Schneider additionally testified that he wished he could have taken some of that back, but he felt he was still professional for most of the Dec. 6 and Dec. 8 meetings. The district witnesses disagreed, with Payne even testifying that Schneider did not “meet the district’s expectations in maintaining emotional control during his professional conversations with Dr. Regan.”
Schneider presented secret recordings taken during both meetings, which were provided to the school district for the first time at the hearing, as evidence that he was not as out of control as portrayed by witnesses.
The recordings, which were unknown to Regan at the time, as well as unknown to her counsel until brought up in the hearing, didn’t seem to be enough evidence for the school board however, voting 4-2 in favor of his termination effective immediately after deliberating for two hours. Members Tracy Wiese and Josh Lacy were the lone dissenters in the decision.
When providing the board’s written explanation for their decision, Schauer read a statement, “The evidence presented by Mr. Schneider at this hearing to the extent that it is inconsistent with the evidence of the school district is not as credible as that of the school district.”
Following the hearing, Schneider told the Star-Herald, “I felt like we presented a good case. I’m happy that the truth is out there and transparent. Obviously, I’m disappointed in the 4-2 decision. … I don’t know how you could go with the characterization of what those meetings were about, and actually listen to those recordings. That to me would have been just the opposite of that. And, you know, I think anybody that … were unbiased would agree.”
Schneider said he did not know what his plans would be moving forward as of Thursday night.
*Originally published in the Star-Herald on Dec. 31, 2021.
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