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THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
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Plaintiff Blues
Judith Pearson
Lake Vermillion Publishing
97809795689
$18.95, www.plaintiffblues.com
June 8, 2008
Civil rights movements are always a slow moving progress, with major clashes still happening
well past the 1960s, the height of the movement. "Plaintiff Blues: Job Discrimination
and the Chilling Effect of Retaliation" is the story of a woman's application to become principal -
only to be quickly rejected because of her sex. She took it to court on discrimination and that's
what the book focuses on - when to file a civil suit, the potential backlash, common sense, and
much more. "Plaintiff Blues: Job Discrimination and the Chilling Effect of Retaliation" is
highly recommended for community library social issues collections.
(I'm very pleased to announce that the June 2008 issue of our online book review magazine
"Small Press Bookwatch" features "Plaintiff Blues". This review also appears in
the Cengage Learning, Gale interactive CD-ROM series "Book Review Index" (published four
times yearly for academic, corporate, and public library systems); as well as such book
review databases as Lexus-Nexus and Goliath; and will be archived on the Midwest Book
Review website at www.midwestbookreview.com
for five years. - James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief)
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International Falls Daily Journal
July 1, 2008
by LAUREL BEAGER, Editor
Langan featured in book
"Plaintiff Blues" details woman's story of discrimination and retailiation.
A book written by an Iron Range resident that features a local school superintendent has recently won several awards.
"Plaintiff Blues: Job Discrimination and the Chilling Effect of Retaliation" written by Judith Pearson of Lake Vermilion, has won national awards in three categories from the 2008 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Earlier this year, Plaintiff Blues won national recognition in the Memoir category from the 2008 Eric Hoffer Awards for Books, recognizing freethinking writers and independent books of exceptional merit.
Pearson's story describes the job discrimination she says she encountered in two northeastern Minnesota school districts. The lawsuit she won against the St. Louis County School District was followed by devastating retaliation. Pearson's 17-year story starts in 1986 when she applied for the Cook high school principal position and was told, "Hell will freeze over before we hire a woman principal at the Cook High School," and "The rumor is that you are sleeping with the superintendent!" She sued and won.
Pearson's book gives readers the story behind the newspaper headlines, including the personal and professional costs she paid for exercising her civil rights.
The book, published in 2007, features among other people Falls School District Don Langan, who Pearson says retaliated against her and others for budget decisions and filing grievances by transferring them to other jobs.
Langan told The Journal that he had not read the book.
"Claims of retaliation or discrimination, whatever, the author of the book took all of those claims to every administrative remedy including court and failed to prevail on any of them," Langan said. "That's why the title, Plaintiff Blues. The plaintiff is blue because she could not and did not prevail."
The author of the 378-page book coins the phrase "Langanese," which she describes as his use and manipulation of language as a control tactic.
"I thought at first he was just trying to impress everyone with his vocabulary. I later concluded there as a more sinister motive. Control," she writes in the book.
Meanwhile, the book details a search for a superintendent for School District 2142, which results in Langan's hiring. The process was described by The Duluth News Tribune as "prolonged and somewhat bizarre," according to Pearson. Langan's candidacy for the position was announced after other candidates had been named finalists. Pearson also claims the process violated the state's Open Meeting Law by conducting board meetings and calling them study sessions.
Pearson will sign copies of her books at the Great Virginia Get-Together, July 1-6 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m., in the North Room of the Miners' Memorial Building and at Woodward's Bookstore in the Thunderbird Mall, July 3, 2-4 p.m. Books are available at Woodward's, and the Mineview Visitors' Center, just south of Virginia.
Published book reviews and additional readers comments can be viewed at www.plaintiffblues.com. Books are also available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com.
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June 30, 2008
by Janna Goerdt
Former principal's book recounts gender discrimination battle
COOK - Judy Pearson was sleeping with the St. Louis County schools superintendent ‹ of course she was. Why else would she be considered as a candidate for the Cook School principal position in 1986?
That was the rumor that sparked a lengthy gender discrimination lawsuit against the school district and some members of the Cook community.
Pearson, a gravel-voiced woman who lives on Lake Vermilion and loves to fish and shoot clay pigeons with her husband, recently wrote a book about her experiences with gender discrimination in 1986. In it, she also describes what she considers retaliation for raising questions about the district's superintendent hiring process in 1997.
Much has changed for women wanting to work as principals and superintendents in the years since she began, Pearson said. Discrimination is "not as blatant," she said. "People are getting more and more educated. But that's driven it underground; people get more sophisticated" about employing retaliation or discrimination.
"Plaintiff Blues" is a blow-by-blow account of Pearson's career. It begins with her 1979 job in Buhl as the first female high school principal on the Iron Range, where the local principals' organization half-heartedly tried to keep her from attending their meetings before warming up to a woman in the job. It ends with her retirement from the St. Louis County schools in 2001 after working as a principal in two of the district's schools, though not in Cook.
In between were decades of rage and sadness, some support, and some dismissal. Pearson filed her first lawsuit against the district in 1987, about a year before Lois Jenson signed on with a landmark class-action lawsuit over sexual harassment at an iron ore mine in Eveleth ‹ the case that inspired the 2005 film "North Country."
St. Louis County schools Assistant Superintendent Sidney Simonson says Pearson's allegations concerning the school district "are very, very false." He was with the district when Pearson filed her second lawsuit, though not her first.
"She's lashing out at all district personnel," Simonson said. "I sympathize with her, with her circumstances. She was not given opportunities she felt she should have, and she has taken it out on other people."
Yet Pearson said she made the right decisions in fighting discriminatory practices.
"I would do it again, without a doubt," Pearson said, looking back on the experience. "I probably couldn't live with myself if I didn't."
When Joann Knuth first walked into a gathering of Minnesota principals in the mid-1980s, she saw a sea of men and no other women. Knuth is executive director of the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals. Today's more welcoming climate is due in large part to people who mentored and encouraged women to enter school administration, Knuth said. Even now, smaller, rural areas are less accepting of women administrators than Twin Cities-area schools, she said.
"That mentality may still exist in places today," Knuth said. "But in large measure, we have seen excellence from women in administration and continuing numbers of women entering educational administration."
Knuth, who did her student teaching in Duluth, became the first woman to head the association representing 1,111 active principals. Today, about a third of those principals are women.
"Women bring an intuitive, nurturing aspect to the job," Knuth said. "The women I have worked with do not bring a competitive model to their leadership; they go into positions with a sense of cooperation, of collaboration."
Pearson joined the association in 1979 and was one of the first women to do so, Knuth said. She called Pearson one of those "pioneers of women in educational leadership."
A smaller proportion of women hold superintendent jobs in Minnesota schooldistricts.
"It's a traditionally male role," said Charlie Kyte, executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators. However, more women than men hold assistant superintendent or equivalent positions in the state.
"One of the challenges they run into is trying to manage a family and manage the time needed to be a superintendent," Kyte said. "You put in so much time, it's hard to be in that traditional Œmom' role."
Kyte also said parents in a few Minnesota communities "are still male-centric; they see themselves as being led by a male." If he knows of a female superintendent interested in applying at such a community, Kyte said, he tries to steer them elsewhere.
"Other women have paved the way for me," said Proctor Schools Superintendent Diane Raushenfels. The district had already had one female superintendent by the time Raushenfels took the position in 2002. She said it didn't seem remarkable to do so, though at least one district teacher was concerned that the district had a female superintendent and high school and middle school principals, she said.
"I have such a different way of operating," Raushenfels said. "I build a climate where risk and change [among district staff] are encouraged, where some of the men at my table are more interested in how to fight the system, how to beat the teachers at their own game."
As she stayed embroiled in her fight with the district, Pearson said she wondered many times why she couldn't just "suck it up and move on."
"I don't have an answer," Pearson said. "I wrestled with it Š but it always really pisses me off when I see something that's unfair."
Today, Pearson is still fielding calls seeking advice about gender discrimination and retaliation. She won't give much advice, except how to access equal employment opportunity commission forms and other information.
But she does tell callers this: Trust your own instincts.
"I always encourage them to do the right thing, because if no one says anything, nothing changes," Pearson said. "But people have to make their own decisions, because they have to live with the consequences."
A number of administrators named in Pearson's book are still with the St. Louis County schools, while the superintendent named in her retaliation lawsuit was abruptly terminated by the St. Louis County School Board in 2004.
And a new administrator is set to begin work at AlBrook School on Tuesday ‹ her name is Kristi Berlin.
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Background information about Pearson's lawsuits
"Hell will freeze over before we hire a woman principal for the Cook school," a Cook resident and member of the Cook Chamber of Commerce said, some days after Judy Pearson had interviewed for just that position.
The Cook resident confirmed later in court that he did, indeed, say that.
Pearson uses the quote several times in her book "Plaintiff Blues." She recounts how she was passed over for the principal position in favor of a man with less experience and a history of job-hopping.
"I could handle not getting a job because I wouldn't move to town, or lack of experience or a doctorate degree, even a poor interview," Pearson writes. "Those were all factors I could change. But like race, gender can't be changed. You are helpless and hopeless; there's nothing you can do. This is the fuel of rage."
By the time her tenure with the St. Louis County schools ended in 2001, Pearson had sued the district and some members of the Cook Chamber of Commerce for gender discrimination over the Cook school principal position in 1986; she also had sued the district for allegedly discriminating and retaliating against her in 1997 and 1999.
A Duluth jury decided the first case in Pearson's favor and awarded her $135,000 in damages. She reached a $10,000 settlement agreement with the editor of the weekly Cook News-Herald, who was part of a citizens group that interviewed Pearson for the Cook principal position.
Pearson later sued the district over a series of decisions in its 1997 superintendent search. Pearson was a finalist; the board selected a candidate who entered the field at the last minute. Pearson alleged that the superintendent, Dr. Donald Langan, retaliated against her ‹ including transferring her from Orr to Tower-Soudan ‹ for raising concerns about the hiring process.
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found there was reasonable cause to believe that Pearson had been discriminated against during the superintendent search, but a U.S. District Court judge in Duluth later dismissed Pearson's claim of retaliation.
According to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission statistics, only a small number of discrimination or retaliation claims come to a resolution. The commission dismisses about half of the claims that are filed for having "no reasonable cause."
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About the book
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"Plaintiff Blues" is Judy Pearson's 378-page account of winning a gender discrimination lawsuit and losing over alleged retaliation by St. Louis county school district administrators. Pearson recently won several national book awards, including an Eric Hoffer Book Award and several Next Generation Indie Book Awards. The self-published book is available for order at www.plaintiffblues.com
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June 23, 2007
by Marshall Helmberger
Pearson takes no prisoners in school expose!
Former St. Louis County School District Principal Judy Pearson has written a devastating critique of the hiring practices once used by the school district she served for nearly a decade, and the high personal cost to those who choose to fight when public officials are unjust.
Her self-published, 378-page broadside, titled "Plaintiff Blues: Job Discrimination and the Chilling Effect of Retaliation," is likely to cause more than a ripple across ISD 2142 as it provides an insider's account of a troubled period in the district's recent history. Pearson's recounting names and she drops more than a few bombshells, including allegations that past and present school board members and others may have lied under oath and that a district administrator once had his license suspended for nearly two years in the 1990s for repeated sexual improprieties.
But her fascinating story is worthwhile for far more than insider gossip. Pearson likens herself to Madame DeFarge, of Charles Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities," and perhaps the most troubling thread she knits is the one that reveals the damage that retaliation wrought, not only to herself, but to the governance of the school district.
For those who are unfamiliar with Pearson's story, she successfully sued the St. Louis County School Board in the late 1980s, after they hired a less qualified man to serve as the principal of the Cook School. Pearson, who was highly-regarded as a principal for the Mt. Iron-Buhl School District, had bought a home on the west end of Lake Vermilion in 1986 and she and her family had planned to move there the following year.
The job opening in Cook, for which she applied, had seemed like a perfect opportunity, but it would prove to be the beginning of a nearly decade-long series of legal battles that left scars district wide. While Pearson's eventual court victory forced the district to hire her as Orr Principal in 1992, she says her decision to apply for openings as both superintendent and assistant superintendent continued a pattern of discrimination and retaliation that severely undermined morale among principals and teachers throughout the district.
As Pearson writes, in its efforts to avoid promoting her, the school board made a number of questionable decisions, elevating unqualified or unfit individuals into key administrative positions, often in a last-minute and poorly considered manner.
Perhaps the worst such example was the hiring of Dr. Don Langan, who had initially rejected an offer from the district to take over from the retiring Dan Mobilia. Langan appeared qualified on paper, but his almost maniacal need for control and his penchant for ruthless retaliation had left a troubled trail of lawsuits and disenchantment at other districts where he had served. But the school board failed to properly investigate Langan's history and they turned to him in near desperation weeks later when they learned at the last minute that the individual they had wanted to promote to the job - a man with fewer qualifications than Pearson - had lost his license for two years for sexual improprieties.
Pearson recounts how the district's decision to hire Langan over her led to a never-ending cavalcade of schemes and intrigue, including blatant favoritism towards his friends and allies, that left the district in disarray and eventually led to his ouster by the school board. Pearson, who had challenged an early effort by Langan to slash school budgets at Orr, Tower, and Cotton, was the frequent target of Langan's scheming. At one point, she alleges, he even offered huge raises to the district's principals, but only if Pearson would sign a letter of resignation - an obvious attempt to isolate Pearson from her fellow principals. Langan also used retaliatory transfers to punish Pearson, and her transfer to Tower eventually led to another legal challenge. While the federal Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission found probable cause for her suit, it was eventually dismissed by a hostile judge.
What is perhaps most sad about the situation was that the school district likely missed an opportunity to hire an honest, capable, and innovative administrator in Pearson, who might have moved the district forward, rather than leaving it in disarray. It's interesting to note that even as the school board and Langan showed such disdain for Pearson, school staff, parents, and students routinely found her able, thoughtful, and fair.
In the end, Pearson's determination to challenge decisions she viewed as unjust proved costly, both financially and emotionally. Her story, in that regard, is remarkably similar to that of another iron Range woman - Lois Jensen - who experienced the grueling consequences of retaliation and isolation that frequently go hand-in-hand with legal challenges to workplace discrimination. As with Jensen's story, recounted in the best-selling book "Class Action" and the movie "North Country," Pearson's health suffered. She lost sleep, saw her blood pressure spike to dangerous levels and even suffered a heart attack. She also, like Jensen, was ultimately disappointed in the workings of the U.S. justice system.
Much of the history in Pearson's book appeared, at least in broad strokes, in reports in area newspapers, which she quotes from at length. While Pearson was the frequent target of editorial criticism from Cook News Herald Publisher Gary Albertson (who was named and ultimately paid damages to Pearson for his own involvement in the discrimination case against her) Pearson lobs a few volleys of her own - accusing him of being dishonest as well a lapdog for a school district that has helped finance his business for years through printing and publishing contracts.
At the same time, Pearson lauds the reporting of the Timberjay, which she said "courageously performed the highest ethical calling, to monitor and hold accountable those in public positions of authority and power."
Some individuals come under withering fire in Pearson's account. Few more so that Chet Larson, the former chair of the St. Louis County School Board, who fought for years to keep Pearson from the professional advancement she sought. Larson, she writes, repeatedly perjured himself, both in sworn depositions as well as in court testimony.
Her own attorney, Richard Williams, is described as arrogrant, angry, and incompetent. Williams wasn't Pearson's first choice, but was her fallback after her original lawyer backed out when her firm discovered a potential conflict of interest.
A few others get more more favorable treatment. Former superintendent Dan Mobilia, who took the helm of the district after the disputed Cook hiring, gets a mostly sympathetic portrayal, especially in comparison to his successor. And surprisingly, she even gives a nod to Cook resident Russ Pascuzzi, whose alleged quote, "Hell will freeze over before we'll hire a woman to be the principal at the Cook School," is played prominently in the book. But Pascuzzi, she said, was one of the only defendants in the case who actually testified truthfully- and he was quickly released from the suit.
"Plaintiff Blues" can be ordered at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, or at plaintiffblues.com.
To read other reviews posted on www.amazon.com, click HERE!
Read what readers have said about the book HERE!
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