On the eve of what was expected to be a long and gut-wrenching trial, a small school district in Santa Barbara County has settled a sexual abuse lawsuit for $7.5 million with two brothers, now 65 and 68 years old, who claimed a long-dead principal molested them in the 1970s.  

The brothers had sought $35 million for the harm they said they suffered, an attorney for the youngest brother said.

The settlement equals about 40% of the 350-student district’s 2025-26 budget, although the district did not disclose the terms and timetable for the payment. The district’s superintendent acknowledged in a statement that there would be an impact on the budget. 

Board members of the Montecito Union School District announced the settlement over the weekend. The trial was scheduled to start Monday.

The case was brought under a 2019 state law, Assembly Bill 218, that removed a statute of limitations for filing claims that employees of public agencies, including school districts and city and county governments, sexually abused children placed in their care.

Estimates suggest settlements and jury awards could cost California school districts as much as $3 billion by one projection, and possibly a lot more. Los Angeles County alone has agreed to pay $4 billion to settle abuse claims with more pending, mostly involving plaintiffs who were once in foster care.

With many larger lawsuits with multiple victims yet to be settled or go to trial, the financial impacts are hard to predict. Small districts are worried that multimillion-dollar verdicts could devastate budgets, if not lead to insolvency. Insurance costs, meanwhile, , according to a survey of districts.

In the Montecito case, the brothers were seeking $35 million in damages combined, John Richards, a lawyer representing one of them, said outside of court Monday.

Montecito is not alone in facing decades-old accusations. The San Francisco Unified School District is embroiled in an ongoing suit involving a teacher who allegedly molested a student in the mid-1960s, records show.

School boards association helps with legal fees

The Montecito case drew the attention of the California School Boards Association, which gave the district a $50,000 grant to help with legal costs, said spokesman Troy Flint.

Flint said Montecito Union Superintendent Anthony Ranii has “been a staunch advocate for AB 218 reform because he understands how this well-intentioned law carries such significant unintended consequences that compromise the educational experience of current and future students.”

Montecito Union “is just one example of what potentially awaits school districts and county offices of education statewide,” Flint added.

The settlement came just weeks after state Assembly members let a measure that would have restored a statute of limitations to such cases, Senate Bill 577,����in the final days of the legislative session. Its sponsor, Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, said he would bring it back next year.

At a brief hearing Monday, Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Thomas P. Anderle called the Montecito matter “a case of real consequence.” He had scheduled 17 days for trial, court records show. The district’s lawyers did not attend the hearing.

The brothers’ lawsuit was filed in 2022 and alleged that Montecito Union’s former superintendent and principal, Stanford Kerr, molested them in the early 1970s, including raping one of them. Kerr died in 2013 at 89. He never faced criminal charges.

A third plaintiff who also claimed Kerr abused him settled earlier with the district for $1 million. He had described a full range of abuse covering many types of conduct, which included rape, court filings state.

Just recompense for years of suffering

The brothers, identified in court documents as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2, pushed forward, Richards said, hoping to be compensated for years of agony. The younger of the two, Richards said, has suffered a lifetime of substance abuse, which is blamed on Kerr’s assaults. 

“The money is nice,” Richards said, but the younger brother also seeks “social acknowledgment that what happened to (him) was terrible. He has a long way to go,” in recovering.

The district admitted no liability in making the settlement.

Montecito Union has no insurance coverage going back to the period the brothers said the abuse occurred — 1972 to 1978, Ranii said in a statement.

“We were prepared to mount a vigorous defense,” he said. But the possibility of a jury awarding far more than the district could afford pushed the idea of a settlement after years of pretrial maneuvering.

The superintendent’s statement did not directly address the brothers’ claims. It also did not mention Kerr.

“We are deeply mindful of the enduring pain caused by sexual abuse and feel for any person who has experienced such abuse,” Ranii said in the statement.

A large award in the event of a trial would have “diminished our ability to serve students now and well into the future,” Ranii said. “Continued litigation created exceptional financial vulnerability. Settling now allows us to stabilize operations and remain focused on today’s students.”

Montecito is an unincorporated oceanfront community just south of Santa Barbara in the shadows of the Santa Ynez Mountains. Its residents include Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The district is one of the state’s richest, with more than $40,000 per student in funding due to tax receipts from high-value properties. 

The district will manage the costs through a hiring freeze, staff reductions “when natural attrition occurs,” and redirecting “funds previously designated for capital repair,” Ranii said. The settlement allows the district to avoid layoffs, he said.

The brothers’ case was built around the testimony they would have given about Kerr’s abuses, Richards said. There was no physical evidence. At one point, a district employee went to the brothers’ home and forced their parents to sign a document requiring them to make sure the boys came right home after school and avoided Kerr, according to court filings.

Richards said the district did not produce such a document in discovery. It had no records that the boys ever attended the school, he said, although their photos appear in yearbooks. The district also had no records that Kerr ever faced accusations of abuse or sexual misconduct.

Two school board members from Kerr’s time as superintendent said in depositions taken for the brothers’ suit that they would have taken action had they known he was abusing students, Richards said. But with the case settled, the elderly former members won’t be called to testify.

All that remains is a final hearing that the judge scheduled for Nov. 19 to make sure the payment has been received “and that the check’s been cashed,” he said.

Editor-at-Large John Festerwald contributed to this story.

This story was originally by EdSource.����for their daily newsletter.

The additional lawsuits bring the total filed in recent days to 45, .

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The nine districts facing litigation Monday are primarily located throughout the St. Louis metro, and include the districts of Bayless, Jennings, Lexington, Kirkwood, Ritenour, Hancock Place, Meramec Valley, University City and the Special School District of St. Louis County, which is the largest district in the state that serves students with special needs.

Chris Nuelle, a spokesman for Schmitt, said the nine districts were sued Monday because “there simply wasn’t enough time in the day on Friday to file all of these lawsuits.”

“We filed lawsuits against school districts that we identified as having a mask mandate,” Nuelle said, “and if we learn of others we will consider further legal action.”

The lawsuits allege that, “school districts do not have the authority to impose, at their whim, public health orders for their schoolchildren,” and that state lawmakers did not grant schools the authority to hinge in-person attendance on wearing a mask.

However, school districts that previously faced cease-and-desist letters from Schmitt that allow school boards to issue regulations and more explicitly give schools the authority to remove students from the classroom who may transmit a contagious disease.

The Francis Howell School District in St. Charles County, which was sued by Schmitt last week, issued a statement Friday and arguing locally elected school board members are tasked with making decision for the district’s students — not the attorney general.

“The lawsuit filed by Schmitt is a waste of taxpayer money — on both sides,” the statement read. “The claims are tenuous at best and this unnecessary lawsuit represents another attack on public education in Missouri. This latest action by AG Schmitt is disheartening, unfounded and frankly, shameful.”

Lawsuits previously filed by Schmitt targeting mask mandates have cost local governments hundreds of thousands of dollars, .

Schmitt had previously sued Columbia Public Schools over its masking requirements, and attempted to have the case apply to all districts with mask mandates. A , and the case was dismissed when Columbia allowed its mask mandate to expire. 

Schmitt sued Columbia again last week after it reinstated its mask requirement.

Schmitt’s lawsuits come at a time when this month in an effort to curb COVID-19 cases in the classroom, The Kansas City Star reported. Districts have also been pressured to drop mitigation measures .

Meanwhile, hospitals continue to grapple with record COVID cases. A to assist BJC-Christian Hospital, and nurses who don’t usually care for patients .

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

“We think that schools are the best place to reach the most children to talk about personal body safety,” said Altschiller, a Stratham Democrat. “And that is their right. They have the right to be safe.”��

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This year, Altschiller and a group of Democratic lawmakers say it’s time for public school classrooms to take it on: sexual assault education and prevention. House Democrats are advancing a bill that would require consent to be taught in New Hampshire public schools as part of a school’s health education curriculum.��

“The precedent for preventing harm and promoting well-being through education is clearly established,” said Rep. Amanda Elizabeth Toll, the Keene Democrat spearheading the bill.��

would require that schools include “age-appropriate instruction on the meaning of consent, respect for personal boundaries, and sexual violence prevention” in the basic curriculum for all students.��

At a hearing Tuesday, supporters of the bill said that the instruction would be valuable to head off incidents of violence and violation of personal space — both in adolescence and later in life.��

“We see the importance of smoking prevention education because of the damaging health effects: it’s important enough to be part of health curriculums,” said Emily Murphy, a prevention program specialist at HAVEN New Hampshire, a violence prevention center.��“The negative health impacts of child sexual abuse and other forms of sexual violence are staggering.”

Alberto Soto, currently the director of counseling at Middlebury College in Vermont, said he had treated young adults on both sides of the equation: those who have caused harm and those who have experienced it. The trauma caused by a violation of consent can follow students for years, Soto said.

“The only way that we can help prevent harm is through education and through preventative measures,” Soto said.��

For Renee Monteil, consent lessons were already built into her parenting approach for her two young daughters. When one toddler would bite another, Monteil would teach them not to, framing it around consent. But when it comes to sexual health, Montiel said, the lessons are some that all students should receive.��

“Teaching consent is teaching life skills,” Monteil, of Keene, told lawmakers. “Teaching consent is also about giving all of our children the tools they need to navigate society safely. With confidence.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education����to delay its vaccine mandate for students 12 and up until next fall. The district was facing the possibility of transferring 34,000 unvaccinated students into an already understaffed remote learning program called City of Angels.��

Leaders of the district’s administrators union were concerned about the potential loss of staff if schools lost more students.

Los Angeles Unified students 12 and over may have until next fall to comply with the district’s vaccine mandate — roughly nine months after the original Jan. 10 deadline, officials announced Friday.

The first large school system in the nation to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for students, the district is facing roughly 34,000 students who will not be fully vaccinated by the original deadline as well as concerns from parents and administrators over the surge in enrollment in the district’s remote learning program.

The plan would push thousands more unvaccinated students into an independent study program, which is already struggling to meet at a time when the district, like many others, has major . Under the contract with the union, teachers only provide remote instruction when students are in quarantine. But teachers still have flexibility in how much they interact with students learning at home.

Board members will discuss delaying the deadline at their meeting on Tuesday, when they also plan to ratify the contract of Miami-Dade superintendent Alberto Carvalho to lead the district’s schools.

Pushing back the deadline will “hopefully lessen the stress on administrators in terms of the possible number of students they may lose,” said Nery Paiz, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. 

When the nation’s second-largest school district announced its mandate three months ago, jumping out in front of vaccine requirement, some predicted it would spark a ripple effect in other districts across the country.  

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lowering the age for booster shots to 16, the Biden administration and state leaders continue to strongly encourage families to get their children vaccinated. are now considering whether to add COVID-19 vaccines to the list of immunizations needed for school, and many parents and educators say more mandates are inevitable. But at the local level, officials are still up against vaccine resistance — and sometimes refusal — among parents.

On Friday morning, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Los Angeles Unified should “fine tune” its policy to keep students in the classroom. Unvaccinated students in are facing a similar deadline.

Parent advocates suggest the Los Angeles district might have moved too quickly without a back-up plan.

“We hope the district anticipated a level of vaccine hesitancy and has drafted plans to protect every child’s right to receive a high-quality education,” Katie Braude, CEO of Los Angeles parent advocacy group Speak UP, said in a statement. She added that the organization is concerned about the virtual program’s “ability to expand this quickly to meet the needs of 34,000 more students and the domino effect of teacher displacement on kids remaining in the classroom.”

October from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that vaccination rates among 12- to 17-year-olds have slowed down, with half of parents saying their child is vaccinated or will be soon. The survey was conducted before the vaccine for 5- to 11-year olds became available , but at the time, less than a third planned to jump at the chance and another third said they would wait to see how it was working. The remaining parents said they definitely would not be getting their children vaccinated.

‘Outside the scope’

Interim Superintendent Megan Reilly said the district “applauds” the more than 85 percent of students who are in compliance with the mandate. “This is a major milestone, and there’s still more time to get vaccinated,” she said in . 

The L.A. board’s decision could set up a confrontation with the district’s powerful teachers union. United Teachers Los Angeles “made the demand [for the mandate] at the bargaining table,” according to its statement in support. 

But the district didn’t meet their demand. The contract ratified in early October only requires the district to “make every effort” to test unvaccinated students and staff weekly for COVID-19. According to the district’s statement only unvaccinated students would have to continue weekly testing after January.

Student vaccine mandates are “outside the scope of bargaining negotiations and teachers unions know this,” said Bradley Marianno, an assistant education professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. But with 500 Los Angeles Unified for not complying with the employee vaccine mandate, UTLA would likely want the district to “hold firm” on its deadline for students, he said.

A union spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Leslie Finger, an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, said unions have had to perform a delicate balancing act to satisfy their large and diverse memberships.

When it comes to adults, “the unions have had to appease both the pro- and anti-vaccine membership, which I think has led the national unions to come out with somewhat tepid endorsements of vaccine mandates,” she said. “For students, however, I think unions can be more firmly pro-vaccine mandate because the policy doesn’t require anything of members who oppose getting vaccines themselves.”

Some opponents of student vaccine mandates have launched legal challenges, that shots for younger students still don’t have full U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for ages 16 and up received full authorization in August. 

But on Wednesday, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge said he is leaning toward denying from parent groups to halt the district’s mandate. And in against San Diego Unified, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals last week allowed the requirement to stand. The plaintiffs are asking for religious exemptions. 

Let Them Choose, an initiative of anti-mask mandate group Let Them Breathe, has also filed against San Diego. A hearing is set Dec. 20 in San Diego Superior Court. And the organization plans to file a lawsuit against a Los Angeles that issued its own vaccine mandate, said Sharon McKeeman, the organization’s founder. 

“No family should be coerced into making personal medical decisions, and no student should feel enticed or pressured into getting vaccinated without parental consent,” she said. “The district has created a huge logistical and legal issue for itself by unnecessarily trampling on students’ rights.”

‘Relentless family engagement’

Mike Magee, CEO of Chiefs for Change, said he didn’t think the challenges Los Angeles is facing would discourage other superintendents in the network from “pursuing every possible avenue to full community vaccination.”

“Whether districts require the vaccine or not, high vaccination rates will depend on a relentless family engagement effort along with simplicity of access to the shot,” he said.

Alma Farias of Los Angeles, who has custody of her niece Cindy, an 11th grader, said she is among those who had initial reservations about the vaccine. But her concerns were outweighed by the prospect of Cindy getting sick after returning to in-person learning last spring.

She said she can sympathize with parents who are holding out. 

“There are a lot of things probably going through their minds right now,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter. “Parents are still processing all the information that is out there, and they’re still processing everything that is going on with this pandemic.” 

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is among those who would like to see vaccine mandates for students and said he’s talked to the Chicago Teachers Union about it. But he said he’s not quite ready to issue a mandate for students because Chicago health officials advise waiting. 

Once the FDA grants full approval of the vaccine for younger students, that will “help our medical professionals feel more comfortable,” he said.

But he also thinks the federal government should take the lead on student vaccination mandates. Leaving it up to states, he said, means variants like Omicron are likely to spread, as long as families travel to places where a smaller percentage of the population is vaccinated.

The district has been under pressure from its teachers union  to implement “ across our schools” and to meet vaccination targets for students. But Martinez said access to the vaccine is not the problem: Regional clinics across the city offer the vaccine and 23 schools have on-site vaccination centers. 

“We’ve never had a day where we didn’t have enough supply,” he said.

According to city data, two thirds of children 5 and up are vaccinated, but among 5- to 11-year-olds, less than 10 percent of Black children and about 12 percent of Latino children are vaccinated. 

“Parents are either hesitant or there’s no urgency,” he said. “We still have to figure out what information our parents need.”