Thursday, December 21, 2006
The Cost of Being Wrong
In the settlement agreement U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper signed Tuesday, the board agreed to pay another $166,659 toward attorneys fees of the five parents who sued the district.
Linwood Gunn, an attorney with Brock Clay who represented the district in the case, said the $166,659 is about one third of the plaintiff's legal fees, which were close to $500,000.
The school district spent $14,243 more to have the stickers scraped off the books after Cooper ordered them removed in 2005. They paid students and teachers $10 an hour to get the job done and equipped them with sponges and solvents, said school system spokesman Jay Dillon.
"It was a big waste of money," said David Chastain, a Cobb school parent and chairman of the Libertarian Party of Cobb County. "There are a lot of other things we could have done with the money like buy more textbooks or fund more programs for students who don't speak English."
