Gama wins lawsuit?
By Gregg Wendorf
Advance News Journal
Was it ever any doubt that charter school IDEA’s former CEO and co-founder JoAnn Gama would win a settlement with her former employer when she filed a lawsuit in November 2022, claiming discrimination?
Nope.
According to a story written last week by Matt Wilson and published in the Progress-Times, the two parties – Gama and IDEA – reached a settlement last month.
A look at the docket can be seen if you have a Pacer.gov account.
Only thing left is for the two parties to file appropriate docs with the federal court by next month.
After that, The Advance News Journal will file a public information request, asking for the settlement amount. In many cases, settlements such as this include a non-disclosure agreement, which has been repeatedly struck down by the office of the Texas AG, since it includes the expenditure of public dollars.
Still, in some cases, it doesn’t prevent either the defendant or the plaintiff, or both, from trying to keep the settlement amount private.
So, we shall see.
Rather than re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, re-writing this story from scratch, this week instead, The Advance decided to re-publish an opinion column published in this newspaper November 2022, written by GW. Call it prescient:
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So I’m on the fed’s website, Pacer.gov, looking at the lawsuit filed this month (November 2022) by IDEA’s former CEO and co-founder JoAnn Gama, and I have to think, she does indeed have a legitimate case. If I were IDEA, I’d want to settle with her as opposed to taking the case to trial.
The biggest weapon in her legal arsenal is her employment contract and her allegation that when the huge charter operator fired her in May 2021, they didn’t abide by its stipulations.
I often wonder, if Gama’s allegations are true, as laid out in the lawsuit, why do people, organizations break legit contractual obligations? Are they getting actual legal advice from an attorney who hasn’t been disbarred? If so, what attorney in his or her right mind would say, “Sure, it’s okay if you break the contract. Just dump her.”
If they do break the contract, the board must know future litigation will most likely follow, which may just be part of the legal game plan, more hours billed, who knows?
I’ve been writing about IDEA Public Schools for so long, I think I should own part of it. I never even got to ride on one of its charter jets, never got to attend a Spurs game, courtesy of their luxury-seat season tickets, never got a ride in one of the school’s Mercedes SUVs, never got a ride in the Tesla that IDEA bought for its former Superintendent/ CEO Tom Torkelson, who co-founded what has become one of the nation’s largest charter schools circa 2000 in Donna.
Never even got to play golf at the country club for which he got a free membership, part of his perks when he was still superintendent making just a little shy of a million bucks per year.
High-Flying Days/Lawsuit
Things were flying high at IDEA until more in the media caught on to the high-spending ways at the charter. The Washington Post wrote a story about it, calling part of its operations a scandal. The Houston Chronicle wrote a story about IDEA’s plans to charter a jet for $15 million (over a five- or six-year period), as did the San Antonio Express-News, and before you knew it, Torkelson was stepping down from IDEA because the negative publicity was proving to be a turn-off to the rich people, nonprofits helping fund it.
As a pat on the back for a job well done, IDEA paid Tom T. approximately a million dollars severance to walk away in 2020 completely unscathed. (He’s now up in Weslaco, 2024, according to his Linkedin profile, working as CEO at CTS.)
After he left the charter, IDEA’s board gave the supe/CEO job to Gama, but then approximately a year later (May 2021), the board unceremoniously dumped her, saying she was misusing IDEA’s funds and resources, and with nary a thank you, the board called security to escort her from her administrative office, which is the white-collar equivalent of the perp walk.
In her lawsuit, Gama says that action alone humiliated her and harmed her professional reputation. She also claims that her use of the so-called resources had already been examined by an internal review process and had passed muster.
Gama also doesn’t have a whole lot of nice things to say about her co-founder Tom Torkelson. She claims that in April 2020, she spoke to IDEA’s board and told its members that she had concerns about how the district was spending money willy-nilly, leading directly back to Tom T. As a consequence, she and other top administrators at IDEA had given him a vote of no-confidence, which began his downward spiral, leading to his exorbitant severance.
In her lawsuit, Gama says that she was paid a good deal less than Torkelson for the same amount of work he did after assuming the role of CEO, plus the benefits package wasn’t nearly as rich as the one he had enjoyed (million-dollar life insurance policy, etc.)
According to Gama’s lawsuit, Tom T. paid her back by sending anonymous emails to IDEA, citing financial misuse.
Call the suit a tangled mess, yet to be unraveled by IDEA’s high-priced attorneys, while Gama’s attorney will no doubt work on contingency.
As a consequence, she is suing for punitive damages (ouch), attorney’s fees, compensatory damages (more ouch), and mental and emotional pain.
Discrimination Allegation
She’s also claiming discrimination because she’s female and Hispanic, while Torkelson is a white guy (personal pronoun: he) with a lot of money, courtesy of a public school.
Looking at the numbers, it’s hard to argue the fact that her compensation and benefits package was indeed far less than Torkelson’s. Plus, he walked away with close to a million dollars severance, while she got the boot with the back door shut behind her. No hi and bye.
According to Gama’s lawsuit attached to her docket at Pacer.gov, IDEA may have a serious problem on its hands: “Gama asserts that she was paid significantly less than Mr. Torkelson for the same work, because as a Hispanic female, she was expendable and could be used as a scapegoat for the Board’s failure to oversee the use of School resources by its white male CEO and white male CFO (another Anglo and friend of Tom’s who commuted from California to Texas). Gama denies that IDEA had cause to terminate her employment but also asserts that because of her race and sex, she was not given the option to resign nor offered a severance, as her predecessor, Mr. Torkelson, was given.”
Her contract also stipulated that if IDEA were to dismiss her, here were the required steps to follow. Give her a chance to address board concerns, etc. In her lawsuit, she states that she was never given that opportunity, nor was she told that the board was discussing her termination behind closed doors.
If I were a betting man, I’d bet a settlement will prove to be the case in this case.