BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
The Palo Alto Unified School District is headed for a jury trial in the case of a former special education assistant who said he was assigned to work with African-American students because he is African-American himself.
“In working with these students, (the assistant) determined that they were being mislabeled by (the district) with behavior problems in part due to their race,” Dedrick Warmack said in his lawsuit against the district, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court on April 7, 2021.
In response, attorney Mark Davis said the school district fired Warmack because of “legitimate, nondiscriminatory, non-retaliatory reasons, and done at all times in good faith.”
Warmack started working for the district in December 2018. He said his supervisor made racist comments to him “with regard to her disbelief that he had the proper credentials to perform his job duties, in part, because he is African-American.”
Warmack said he complained to his supervisors in January 2019 about African-American students being mistreated in the district.
“He was repeatedly admonished and harassed by his supervisors in an effort to prevent him from further voicing these concerns,” said Warmack’s lawsuit, filed by attorney Sean Novak.
Warmack said he was fired on March 18, 2019.
He made $9,993 in his time with the district, pay records from Transparent California show.
Warmack filed a complaint with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing in May 2019. The agency gave him the right to sue the school district in April 2020, which he did a year later.
Davis generally denied Warmack’s allegations and said the district isn’t liable for his claims in a response to the lawsuit on Sept. 3, 2021.
Judge Evette Pennypacker sent the case to mediation in April 2023 but the two sides didn’t reach a resolution. Attorneys interviewed Warmack under oath in January, court records show.
Attorneys are scheduled to discuss a settlement on Wednesday and then get assigned to a judge on Thursday.
The trial is scheduled to start in San Jose on Sept. 23 and should take five days to present evidence to a jury, Davis and Novak said.
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