The Vermont Supreme Court on Oct. 2 upheld the 2022 firing of Steve Perrin, the former principal of Brattleboro Union High School, who the school board found had mistreated a female student from 2009 until she graduated in 2012 and told staff in 2020 not to report suspected child abuse to the state. The court affirmed a Superior Court ruling for the school district, rejecting his due-process and evidence-sufficiency challenges. The justices said Perrin had waived his claim of actual board bias by failing to seek recusal, and rejected his request for discovery into that claim.
According to the opinion, the board found that in 2009 Perrin, then an assistant principal, questioned the student alone behind closed doors about a sexual assault by two other students and threatened to tell police she had made a false report when she would not answer. The board found he then repeatedly called her to his office until she graduated. It also found that in March 2020, when staff learned students were taking sexual photos or videos in a school bathroom, Perrin told them not to report it to the Department for Children and Families. A counselor contacted the department anyway, and a report was made.
In an October 2022 letter to the board, Perrin disputed the student's account and denied directing staff not to make a report, the opinion says. The Windham Southeast School District board fired him in November 2022 and, after a hearing that lasted more than 20 hours, upheld its decision in February 2023. Perrin sued, and Superior Court Judge David A. Barra, sitting in Bennington, granted summary judgment to the district and the board in November 2025.
"The Board was obviously entitled to believe Jane Doe's testimony and so this alone resolves plaintiff's evidence-sufficiency challenge," Associate Justice Christina E. Nolan wrote for the court. The court also held that the staff's decision to make the report anyway did not lessen the seriousness of Perrin's instruction, and that his discouraging the report, together with his abuse of the student, gave the board "ample basis" to fire him.
Perrin's lawyer, Theodore C. Kramer, told The Commons, a Brattleboro weekly, that the ruling was "a bitter pill to swallow." He told the paper that the court gives school boards considerable deference when reviewing their findings. Windham Southeast School District Board Chair Deborah Stanford told The Commons she could not comment in detail and was "relieved to move beyond this issue."
Under the court's appellate rules, either side may ask the court to reargue the case within 14 days after judgment is entered.
Sources:
Vermont Judiciary, "Appealing to the Supreme Court" (V.R.A.P. 40 reargument deadline)