SUIT VS. SCHOOL

Parents strike back at elite St. Bernard’s

The student body at an elite Manhattan private school is getting quite a lesson in civics — without cracking open a single book.

The parents of several children enrolled at St. Bernard’s School, an all-boys private institution where tuition is about $50,000 a year, are suing the executive committee of its Board of Trustees, demanding an ousted headmaster be reinstated.

In the lawsuit filed Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court, parents claim headmaster Stuart Johnson III, who has led the K-9 grammar school school since 1985, was removed by the school’s Board of Trustees “without cause or explanation.”

Attorneys for the parents claim that the executive committee wanted Johnson gone so they could get their hands on the school’s endowments, give their children preferential treatment in St. Bernard’s high school placement process and admit their children’s friends who would normally not qualify for the high-stakes school.

Johnson fought the executive committee on their allegedly shady dealings in the past, said attorney Jim Walden of Walden Macht & Haran, who filed the lawsuit for the families.

“St. Bernard’s parents are standing up in a unified and singular mission to support the healthy academic and social development of all children at their school,” Walden said in a statement. “Their wish is simply to restore the integrity of their community so that students and families can focus on learning in an environment that is fair and just to every child.”

The lawsuit claims that the executive committee forced Johnson to resign in May. If he hadn’t, they threatened to terminate him outright without a negotiated severance package, the suit said.

When Johnson ultimately agreed to leave, the committee ordered him to announce his own departure, then told other board members that the headmaster of more than three decades wanted to leave.

But some parents didn’t believe the executive committee.

“It quickly became clear that the ‘resignation’ was anything but voluntary, and, in fact, was a disguised form of constructive discharge,” the lawsuit states. “When the parents and faculty began to challenge the Board’s actions, the Board—rather than retract its rash and untenable position— engaged a costly crisis-management firm to double down on its decision.”

The executive committee spent upwards of $1 million of the school’s funds to hire attorneys and launch a public relations campaign to sway parents to their side, the lawsuit notes.

“Even worse, the Board sought to penalize parents and students for raising alarm and resisting the Board’s misconduct,” according to the lawsuit. “(In one case) the board considered disinviting a student back to the school due to the advocacy of the student’s parent in matters relating to those at issue here.”

The Board of Trustees has yet to respond to the lawsuit.