Disabled teacher battles district

HAZLETON -- Doug Silver has quit his teaching job in the Hazleton Area School District but not his fight to prove he was discriminated against because he has multiple sclerosis.

"I feel terrible about resigning and sad too, but I also felt it was in my best interest healthwise," Silver said last week. "The administration chose to focus on the negatives and finding fault with me rather than trying to help me and focusing on my positives."

Diagnosed with the disease a decade ago, Silver, 47, was a special education teacher in the district since 1992. Before that, he taught for many years at White Haven Center.

His troubles started when he was assigned to teach an English class in the 1996-97 school year because the class he had been teaching was eliminated while he was on a medical leave.

Silver was worried about the assignment because the English class was 82 minutes long and included 10 to 18 high school students with behavioral or emotional problems.

He asked to teach a disabled class at Heights-Terrace Elementary instead. His reasons: the classroom already had a handicap-accessible bathroom, an aide who handled physical duties like lifting children and only five to 10 students with physical disabilities.

The district refused and assigned the class to Tricia Chipeleski, a recent college graduate who was engaged to the son of a School Board member.

The district then tried to fire Silver for inadequately teaching the English class.

He worked only 12 days at the beginning of this school year because he was under constant surveillance by administrators, including Superintendent Geraldine Shepperson.

Administrators took detailed notes and sat in his room for long periods every day, even though classes had barely begun and teachers typically get reviewed towards the end of the year, Silver said.

Silver said he knew he wouldn't be given an equal opportunity to teach, no matter what the position. He went on unpaid leave, having used up all his sick days.

A hearing was scheduled in March, but two weeks ago he submitted his resignation, figuring the board would have gone along with Shepperson's recommendation to fire him.

A resident of the Hazleton Nursing and Geriatric Center, Silver says he earned top reviews from district administrators when he taught the special education class.

Because of his illness, which attacks the central nervous system, interfering with the way the brain transmits messages to the body, Silver must use a wheelchair. He sometimes forgets things he saw or read earlier in the day and he needs frequent breaks. But he wanted to continue teaching because he believed he had a lot to offer students with disabilities, including serving as a role model.

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission has not issued a ruling on Silver's discrimination complaint, filed in 1996, in which he said the district failed to assign him a job that he physically is able to do and instead gave the job to an inexperienced teacher with political connections.

Attorneys have said the case will test state and federal laws that require employers to make reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities.

The federal Americans with Disabilities Act and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act say an employee cannot be treated in a discriminatory way as long as the employee is performing the essential duties of a job with reasonable accommodations

The district and lawyers who represent the district continue to decline comment on Silver's case.

The district's response to the complaint, provided by the Silvers, says the district did not violate any laws and provided a reasonable accommodation for Silver's disability. It also says Silver is not entitled to the accommodation of his choice and stressed Silver now lives at the Hazleton Nursing and Geriatric Center.

Carol Silver said her husband moved in to the center in the spring of 1996 because he needed extensive physical therapy, and she had a difficult time driving him from place to place because of her own disability.

Silver loved teaching, believed in public education and always wanted to work at Hazleton Area, said Carol Silver.

"When he was offered a job in the district, his dream had come true, and now that job has been destroyed," she said. "It broke his heart to resign."