A western Michigan school district will shell out $45,000 to a former English teacher who had been fired after school officials learned that she had worked as a local stripper during a 2006 medical leave of absence.
West Ottawa Public Schools has agreed to pay the teacher, Susan Brennan, $37,000, reports WOOD-TV. Her attorney will get the remaining $8,000.
The Grand Rapids NBC affiliate obtained the dollar amounts and other information concerning the May settlement by filing a Freedom of Information Act request.
Brennan had reached an arrangement with school officials to avoid retaliation for her brief fling in the live adult-entertainment industry.
However, in a lawsuit filed in 2012, Brennan alleged that school officials started giving her negative reviews despite that agreement.
Brennan was fired in 2010 according to The Holland Sentinel. The West Ottawa school district charged her with nearly a dozen infractions including dishonest grading and failure to use appropriate grading processes and lesson plans.
The teacher and ex-stripper created a webpage to respond to the district’s charges.
“Please consider my responses to these charges carefully before you vote to end the career of a dedicated, sincere teacher,” Brennan wrote on her webpage. “I moved to the West Ottawa district three years ago, my three children go to school here, I bought a house here — I have invested everything I have in my life here.”
“I take full responsibility for my actions regarding this matter. It was the single most disastrous, most humiliating, and most damaging mistake of my life,” she also wrote.
Brennan had plied her stripping talents at a Grand Rapids club called Sensations, according to MLive.com. Her stage name was “Adia.” She wore a wig.
Tom Martin, the school district superintendent, said the settlement was financially prudent.
“What we did do was we settled to avoid an expensive, lengthy trial and bring closure to something that had been going on for a long, long time,” he told The Sentinel. “If we didn’t settle, then we would go through a trial that would be very costly.”
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