A former Centennial teacher Michelle Maupin sued the current Howard County School System, along with Principal Scott Pfeifer, former Principal Linda Mitic, English teacher Margaret Polek, Superintendent Sydney Cousin, and Board of Education chairwoman Courtney Watson, claiming she was the victim of racial discrimination during the time she taught at the school. Maupin claimed in her suit, filed on May 13, 2005, that Pfeifer, Mitic, Polek, Cousin, and Watson are all guilty of civil rights violations and negligence. This summer, more than two years after the case was filed, a verdict was finally reached.the jury awarded Maupin $192,000 in compensatory damages and $45,000 in punitive damages. An appeal of this verdict is currently in progress.

Michelle Maupin began teaching at Centennial in August 2003. When Maupin was hired she was the only black teacher of the 100 teachers employed by Centennial. Maupin has stated in testimony that the racial harassment began shortly she began teaching at Centennial. Maupin also stated that in a meeting she had with Linda Mitic, two months after she was hired, Mitic told her “Blacks are not warm and compassionate people.” Mitic retorted that the comment “absolutely never happened.” Several parents filed complaints to Mitic about Maupin’s teaching style during her time at Centennial.

Maupin shared a classroom with Polek and stated that Polek disrupted her class by slamming file doors and jingling her keys. Maupin’s suit also mentions an occasion when Maupin found a newspaper article with a picture of an “ape-like creature” placed on her desk. Maupin claims that Polek left this picture there as a reference to Maupin’s race. Polek has vehemently denied that the picture was any type of racist attack.

Mr. Pfeifer, Centennial’s current principal, was not employed at Centennial when the original allegations began. Mitic retired as principal January 1, 2004, and Pfeifer became principal in the fall of 2005. Maupin was still a teacher at Centennial at the time Pfeifer was hired. Maupin testified that Pfeifer denied her request for security accommodations after she received threatening phone calls. Maupin also stated that some of the phone calls came from people who identified themselves as Ku Klux Klan members. Mr. Pfeifer commented that he tried to reach out “to all, everyone in the Centennial community” after he became principal “… and that includes Miss Maupin.”

After Maupin filed these charges, two petitions were posted online. The first petition called for Maupin to end her lawsuit and the second one called for her to quit her job. Some Centennial students and community members may have signed this petition, but because of the lack of security on this website it is impossible to know for sure. Anybody can sign the petitions using a pseudonym or claiming that they are somebody else. Maupin claimed that the backlash from the students and community that she received after filing her suit was “orchestrated, condoned or tacitly approved” by school officials, including Board of Education chairwoman Courtney Watson. However, Watson has said she “can’t imagine why [she is] being sued as an individual.” Watson claims to have received two e-mails from Maupin describing her situation at Centennial, and in both scenarios Watson referred Maupin to Howard County’s superintendent Sydney Cousin. Watson has stated that such matters are the superintendent’s legal responsibility.

Maupin filed her 22 page lawsuit in May 2005 in the Howard County Circuit Court, after willingly dismissing a related suit that she filed in a U.S District Court in Baltimore one month earlier. Maupin’s attorney Michael Coyle stated that Maupin had “a better chance of winning a case in which she sues a state agency [The Howard County Board of Education] for violating federal laws at a local level rather than in U.S District Court.”

The Howard County School System “flatly denied” the allegations in both a statement they issued on May 24, 2005 and in court and have continued to claim its innocence even after the verdict. No date has been set yet for the appeal.