Teacher, East Allen Schools settle dispute over column

A settlement was reached with high school teacher and newspaper adviser Amy Sorrell on Friday after months of debate over an opinion column. Sorrell was threatened with termination over the situation that began Jan. 19 over the column, written by one of her students, advocating tolerance of homosexuality.\nEast Allen County Schools administrators decided to allow Sorrell, 30, to continue teaching in the district.\nAccording to the settlement, Sorrell will be transferred from Woodlan Junior-Senior High School in Woodburn, Ind., to eritage Junior-Senior High SchoolH in Monroeville, Ind., another school in the district. The agreement guarantees Sorrell an English teaching position for at least three years, but she was not granted a position teaching journalism.\nThe settlement also requires Sorrell to issue a written statement of apology that must say, “None of the action that I have taken or comments that I have made ... were intended to suggest that the administrators of Woodlan Junior-Senior High School have been motivated by intolerance towards homosexuality. To the extent that any other person has interpreted my comments or actions as so suggesting. I apologize.”\nSorrell has been accused of placing Principal Ewin Yoder and East Allen County Schools in a false light.\n“Dr. Yoder and EACS would never promote intolerance, and, in fact, at no time did he do so in this matter,” Assistant Superintendent Andy Melin said in a statement. “Dr. Yoder and EACS have been judged as intolerant without justification and that is unfair and regrettable.”\nAlthough Melin claimed East Allen County Schools would “never promote intolerance,” the school district in 1995 passed a resolution supporting family values and denouncing homosexuality.\n“The EACS resolution was intended to condemn homosexual behavior but not meant to condemn any students,” former school board member Mick Lomont was quoted as saying in a Dec. 20, 1995, article in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.\nWoodlan sophomore Megan Chase wrote the column advocating tolerance of homosexuality.\n“There is also the religious aspect of the argument, where people say that if someone is homosexual, they are automatically sent to Hell,” Chase wrote in the Jan. 19 opinion column. “To me, that seems extremely unfair. So what are homosexual Christians supposed to do?”\nIn an e-mail from East Allen County Schools board member Bill Hartman to Assistant Superintendent Melin and Superintendent Kay Novotny, Hartman wrote, “Be sure you’re seeing what Amy is sending out to gay/les’ websites.”\nAttached to the e-mail were conversations from Sorrell to Nancy and Stacie Daniels, a couple known as “Hersband and Wife, the whimsical lesbian advice columnists,” thanking them for their support.\nMultiple attempts have been made to silence the issue. Stephen Terry, president of the school board and a local reverend, declined Chase’s request at a Feb. 20 board meeting to be put on the agenda of the next meeting, Sorrell said in an April 7 interview.\nNovotny released a statement Friday saying, “East Allen County Schools senior administrators have accepted Mrs. Sorrell’s apology and assume that her statement of apology was sincere and heartfelt and not some shallow, insincere statement made, with her fingers crossed behind her back, in order to save her job.”\nNovotny also said in the statement that East Allen County Schools has given Sorrell a second chance to prove herself, “despite her relative youth and obvious inexperience.”\n“I do not agree with the reprimands that have been issued against me,” Sorrell said in a statement Thursday. “However, due to my personal financial circumstances, I am not in a position to contest the disciplinary action contained in the written settlement agreement between myself and the school administration.”