Wiltz made the decision to leave in late January, having accepted a job as an assistant high school principal and athletic director in Emporia. Wiltz left his position at the end of the school year, and the board accepted Gadino’s resignation at its July 14 meeting. “It made me really happy that the truth got out there,” Dieker said, “because Wiltz and the bus driver hadn’t been very truthful about the whole thing, and it was kind of messing up everything.” In May, an attorney for the Kansas Association of School Boards concluded in an investigative report that Wiltz and Gadino punished Dieker because of their disdain for her sexual orientation, a violation of federal Title IX protections against discrimination on the basis of sex. Three teachers, a social worker, volleyball coach and cook resigned in the weeks that followed, and the school board fired a library aide who spoke to a reporter and distributed rainbow pins for teachers to wear at school. The bus driver’s reaction and inaccurate account, principal Corey Wiltz’s decision to suspend Dieker and the girl’s determination to stand up for herself would divide supportive students and faculty from those within the school who harbored anti-LGBTQ hatred of Dieker. 27 bus ride home from North Lyon County Elementary School wrote in her report that boys and girls could be heard saying “gay-assed motherf***er,” “jerk me off, daddy,” “touch my d***,” “f***ing n*****,” “what the f***,” “kill you,” “stop putting your f***ing camera in my face” and “wants to have sex,” all within earshot of kids as young as kindergartners.īut when 8th-grader Izzy Dieker told her friend, “I’m a lesbian,” Gadino stopped the bus and confronted the 14-year-old about her use of inappropriate language. TOPEKA - Kristi Gadino didn’t appear to be bothered by the “shockingly profane” language used by middle school students on her bus.Īn investigator who reviewed video of a Jan.
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