Lawyer: Trustee Child to sue if Clark County School Board OKs settlement
Embattled Trustee Kevin Child will sue the Clark County School Board if it approves a settlement of a workplace harassment complaint against him, his attorney said Tuesday.
Craig Mueller, a local attorney representing Child and a Republican candidate for attorney general, said there is no evidence to support the claims in the complaint lodged by Kim Wooden, the deputy superintendent.
“This is the politics of the sleeziest sorts,” Mueller said in an interview with the Review-Journal. “I don’t see that Kevin Child has done anything wrong other than ask for an audit of the school district.”
School district officials are asking the School Board to approve the settlement at its next meeting on Thursday. If that happens, Mueller said Child will sue the district for slander and defamation.
Wooden’s attorney, Anthony Golden, said the complaint is not political and that Wooden has “very serious and legitimate claims.”
“My client’s not interested in litigating the merits of this in the public arena,” he said. “After many months of negotiations, we were able to reach at tentative resolution with the district and we’re looking forward to the board approving it on Thursday.”
The Clark County School District declined to comment on the case.
Details of the allegation and the proposed settlement terms are still unclear, but Wooden’s complaint alleges inappropriate behavior by the first-term trustee.
Mueller, who was hired by the district several weeks ago to represent Child, said he was still reviewing the documents when he learned that the settlement had been placed on the board’s agenda and that he would have advised the district against submitting it.
He said the district is rushing the case in an effort to foil Child’s bid for re-election.
“The whole thing reeks to high heaven,” he said. “What’s the rush? The rush is it’s election season.”
The settlement is the latest issue to surface regarding Child’s actions as a trustee. He has been banned twice from visiting schools without permission by Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky.
The second time, the ban included school campuses and other district properties. In November, Skorkowsky said “an outside government agency has received a complaint on Child’s behavior.” Skorkowsky did not identify the agency or say who filed the complaint at that time.
Child, who could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, maintains all allegations against him are unsubstantiated. Last week he told the Review-Journal he thought the allegations were sexist in nature because he’s the only male on the school board and because he asks tough financial questions of district officials.
Child began calling for a forensic audit of the district in February, after complaints of inappropriate behavior had surfaced.
Contact Meghin Delaney at 702-383-0281 or mdelaney@reviewjournal.com. Follow @MeghinDelaney on Twitter.