Flagler Schools Paid Former Indian Trails Middle School Teacher $40,000 to Settle Discrimination Lawsuit

The Flagler County school district paid JaWanda Dove $40,000 to settle a federal lawsuit Dove filed in 2020, alleging that as a Black teacher at Indian Trails Elementary, she had repeatedly been passed over for promotion by white applicants.

Dove transferred to Rymfire Elementary last year, where she was promoted to dean and where she remains, reporting to Principal Travis Lee. According to district records, she was earning $70,400 at the beginning of this year, but that was under her designation as a teacher. Dove had been seeking Dove is seeking $100,000 in back pay and benefits, and an appointment as assistant principal.




Dove signed the settlement agreement on Oct. 5, as did then-School Board Attorney Kristy Gavin, according to the settlement document. FlaglerLive requested the settlement document at the time and was denied it despite repeated requests until today, when the district released it.

The settlement means that it cannot be construed as an admission by the district of any wrongdoing, or that Dove had any cause of action. Dove has also agreed to give up on any further claims against the district regarding any matters of discrimination. Dove has also agreed not to help anyone who sues the district, unless she is directed to do so by subpoena.

In her original complaint, Dove had charged that the district in general and Paul Peacock, when he was principal at Indian Trails Middle School, passed her over for promotion on numerous occasions, that the district’s interviewing process was arbitrary, subjective and unlawful,  and that younger, white colleagues with less experience were promoted ahead of her. She had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Council before filing the lawsuit. (The district argued that the EEOC action “failed to denote that a ‘Continuing Action’ was complained of.”




The case neared settlement on more than one occasion, only for last-minute changes in direction. Blair Jackson, Dove’s former attorney in the dispute, last July took the extraordinary step of complaining to the court that “There have been several instances where (Dove) agreed to a resolution but then inexplicably withdrew her consent to whatever the agreement was.”

He filed an emergency motion to withdraw as her attorney, which was granted. Initial indications from her new attorney were that Dove would seek a trial. But the settlement followed in October. By then LaShakia Moore had been appointed interim superintendent, and would soon be appointed permanent superintendent, with several other administrative positions in the district occupied by Black employees since the Dove lawsuit had been filed.

Her principal, Travis Lee, had himself filed a federal lawsuit on similar discrimination grounds within weeks of the Dove lawsuit, and lost in 2022. By then, he’d been appointed principal at Rymfire, after three unsuccessful tries at Flagler Palm Coast High School, Belle Terre Elementary and Matanzas High School.




The court’s judgment at the time included a revealing line that informs its approach and sheds light on the Dove lawsuit: “This Court does not sit as a ‘super-personnel department,’ and will not second-guess the business judgment of the employer,” federal District Judge Brian Davis wrote in his order granting summary judgment in favor of the Flagler district. Nor does the court judge whether a district’s hiring decisions are “prudent or fair,” the judge went on. Rather, the court’s concern is whether the district’s decisions are motivated by discrimination.

The lawsuit was settled within weeks of the single-most discriminatory act recorded in Flagler schools in memory, when faculty at Bunnell Elementary herded Black fourth and fifth graders, to the exclusion of any other racial group, to the school cafeteria to be lectured, scared and insulted about being “a problem” due to their test scores. A Black faculty member led the assembly and drafted the slide presentation, with the principal’s endorsement, all apparently unaware–based on a superficial internal investigation the district conducted–of the condescension and gravity of the assemblies. The principal and the faculty member resigned.

The district had faced two other lawsuits in Circuit Court. One was filed by Randy Pires, who claimed that a district custodian was at fault for causing Pires’s motorcycle to crash. Pires sued for damages. The district argued he had no cause of action and won, when Circuit Judge Chris France last December granted the district’s motion for summary judgment in its favor. Pires was seeking more than $30,000 in damages. “Randy Pires shall take nothing by this action,” France ruled. (The attorney of record for the district was David Delaney, who was subsequently hired by the School Board to replace Gavin on an hourly basis.)

A lawsuit filed by Mirlouse Pierre last March is ongoing. Mirlouse was injured after sitting on a faulty bench at the Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club in July 2022. She is seeking damages in excess of $50,000. That case is also before France.