Good morning, class. In today's lesson we will discuss what constitutes justice in our schools today.

Case Study No. 1: After an Eagan school principal made a 6-year-old unclog a toilet the kid had stuffed with paper towels, the school board voted unanimously to fire the principal, Doug Steele. The board also sent him a letter that said, "The form of discipline you chose was degrading, humiliating and demonstrated a lack of interpersonal sensitivity."

Last week, an arbitrator argued that Steele acted in a "calm" manner in disciplining the child. The toilet contained only clean water, and Steele's record was generally positive. Steele should get a 15-day suspension instead of being fired, the arbitrator said. Steele will become a "principal at large," which sounds like a public school Gulag for the Seymour Skinners of the world. It's a good bet that his career has literally ended up in the toilet.

Case No. 2: New Prague school custodian Jarrod Novotny was fired for leaving something on a teacher's desk, and it wasn't an apple. Novotny did something many of us have probably considered in similar circumstances. After he saw a teacher's dog poop on the school lawn, he picked it up in a vinyl glove and left it on the teacher's desk as a not-so-subtle reminder that if you pack it in, you should pack it out. He soon regretted it, however, and called superiors to confess.

But school officials again acted swiftly and fired Novotny. And once again, an arbitrator this week decided the punishment was too harsh, and instead suspended him for 15 days. No doubt, someone tapped his personnel file and said, "This will be part of your permanent record."

Case No. 3: Back in April, the Minneapolis School District suspended Tim Cadotte, principal of Burroughs Community School, without pay for 10 days for "conduct unbecoming a principal, insubordination and inefficiency in the performance of duties as a principal."

The suspension came shortly after Cadotte had words with a school board member who recklessly accused the school and Cadotte of racism. Cadotte's attorney has said the exchange was unrelated to the punishment. So far, all we know is that Cadotte may have committed the sin of letting checks leave the building without two signatures. The horror.

Finally, Case No. 4: Last week we learned that Alex Merritt settled with the Anoka-Hennepin School District for $25,000 after two teachers teased him repeatedly because they thought he was gay. Merritt, who said he is not gay, reported that Diane Cleveland and Walter Filson joked that Merritt's "fence swings both ways," and that he enjoyed wearing women's clothes, among other things. To repeat, they were teachers who taunted him, not students.

Merritt said that kids made death threats against him, and he lost friends and changed schools because of the jokes from Cleveland and Filson.

Phil Duran, the legal director for OutFront Minnesota, a gay support organization, said complaints about mistreatment at schools is "almost never about staff, and certainly nothing as unambiguous as this. We just don't see cases like this," he said.

Their behavior was degrading, humiliating and demonstrated a lack of interpersonal sensitivity, to say the least. Surely the Anoka-Hennepin School District came down hard on the teachers, right?

Nope. Cleveland was suspended for two days, but she didn't complete the suspension and instead called in sick the rest of the week. We don't yet know about Filson's fate. The district has declined input from OutFront.

Since the story broke last week, this newspaper has gotten one letter defending the teachers, and more than 100 saying they should be fired or face stiffer sanctions. Frankly, it almost makes me mad enough to want to put something on the teachers' desks wrapped in a vinyl glove, or maybe make them scrub toilets.

When I read about this story, one of my first reactions was to call someone who not only understands good teaching, but who actually grew up gay and could talk about how painful such taunting could be. Then I remembered that Tim Cadotte is not allowed to talk to the news media because, four months later, he is still fighting his own punishment for sloppy paperwork.

So instead I'm going to make a suggestion to the Minneapolis School District: Rescind Cadotte's suspension and work a deal with Anoka.

Make Cadotte sit down for coffee with Cleveland and Filson and tell them how it felt to be discriminated against when he was a kid, and perhaps even what it feels to be discriminated against today, in the year 2009, even though you are a popular and successful school principal.

jon.tevlin@startribune.com • 612-673-1702