GUILDERLAND — The parents of a Guilderland student who graduated in June have filed a suit against the school district because her teacher, they say, hit her three years earlier.

Her teacher for Advanced Placement, or college level, European history, Jon Kauffmann, said in a 2019 email to the girl’s mother, “I was referring to a joke from the show NCIS, and meant no harm when I tapped the back of her head. I am devastated that she felt uncomfortable.”

The email is one of many included in papers that were filed Aug. 11 in Albany County Court. The Guilderland Central School District, which is being sued along with Kauffmann, has 20 days to respond.

The district’s superintendent issued a statement on Tuesday, saying its policy on corporal punishment was not violated and that some of the suit’s claims are unsubstantiated.

The suit was filed by Laura and Robert Rohauer, parents of Riley, who will turn 18 on Sept. 29, which is when the statute of limitations runs out.

An affidavit from Laura Rohauer states, “Riley would not allow us to formally press charges as she was afraid of retribution.”

Laura Rohauer declined commenting for this story but did say that Riley has just started her freshman year as a student at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Kauffmann did not respond to an email from The Enterprise, seeking his side of the story.

By all accounts, the in-class incident occurred on Nov. 12, 2019 during Kauffmann’s history class soon after Riley had turned 15.

The Rohauers’ account, in court papers, states of Kauffmann, “He came up behind her and hit her with an open hand in the back of the head, with such a force, that it caused her to lunge forward and dislocate her eye glasses from her face.”

Court papers say that Riley had twice previously suffered concussions — in February 2018 and again in August 2019 — and the Rohauers claim that the strike exacerbated Riley’s concussive syndrome.

She then suffered “sensitivity to light, sensitivity to sound, migraine headaches, fear and anxiety,” court papers say.

The Rohauers’ lawyer, Peter J. Scagnelli, states in court papers that the Guilderland High School principal, Michael Piscitelli, interviewed six students who were in the classroom when the incident occurred and that they “corroborated Riley’s version of events, (i.e. it was not an accidental slap, it was a deliberate act).”

Scagnelli also states that Riley “was fearful of bringing a lawsuit while she was earning her high school diploma.”

Laura Rohauer, in her affidavit, says they are claiming negligence against the school district “in vetting, retention and supervision of Mr. Kauffman” and “battery by Mr. Kauffman of my daughter, negligent infliction of emotional distress and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

At the Rohauers’ request, Riley had been moved to the back of the classroom to ease her anxiety, court papers say.

On Nov. 15, 2019, three days after the incident, Laura Rohauer wrote in an email to an assistant principal that she would like her daughter not to be in Kauffmann’s class any more. “But she feels adamant that it will reflect poorly on her college application if she is not in AP Euro, and that he is the only AP Euro teacher.”

A school administrator responded that there were no other teachers for that class.

Laura Rohauer wrote of Riley, “She was adamant that he [Kauffmann] would not apologize to her about his version of the event, which she has said is a lie, and I support her in that decision.”

She went on to say that her daughter had decided in the fourth grade that she wanted to be a lawyer. As a fourth-grader at Altamont Elementary School, Riley wrote a letter to the Enterprise editor, making the case for nicotine to be illegal.

“Some people say it is their right to smoke, but it is endangering other people’s lives,” Riley Rohauer wrote in fourth grade. “The secondhand smoke other people breathe in is giving them problems like cancer and other issues like asthma or heart disease.”

Laura Rohauer’s email continued, “Riley’s desire to succeed is so impressive to me because I was never like that …. Unfortunately for Riley, she was not born brilliant, and we are not wealthy. So she knows for a fact that to achieve this goal she must have excellent grades as well as a full life wrapped around them.”

She went on to detail her daughter’s schedule of working three days a week, volunteering, studying hours every night, and insisting her “homework is perfect.” She included in the email a picture of her daughter doing schoolwork at her computer on a day she was home because of concussion symptoms although her pediatrician had recommended rest “both mentally and physically” for a week.

A month after the incident, on Dec. 11, 2019, Laura Rohauer wrote in a lengthy email to a sympathetic English teacher about how, in middle school, Riley had befriended a group of deaf girls and quickly learned sign language, serving as their interpreter.

Her mother said Riley was now being bullied by a girl in gym class for communicating through sign language to a close friend who is deaf. “The combination of being hit by a teacher, AND being bullied by this girl, are mammoth for Riley,” wrote her mother.

The email includes this description of the Nov. 12 incident, “It was first block, he [Kauffmann] was lecturing, and while she was taking notes her pencil went off her paper and drew on her desk. She thought it looked like a half of a heart, so she drew the other side of it, and then erased it. While erasing it he came behind her, hit her on the back of her head and said, ‘let this be a lesson to you all, don’t write on my desks.’ 

“She was humiliated, scared and in pain,” her mother wrote.

The email also says Riley would not allow her parents to press charges. “Instead we filled a report with the police, and we were told her teacher would be brought in and spoken to regarding his actions,” her mother wrote. “This is all she could emotionally handle.”

The court papers include a complaint report from the Guilderland Police, dated Nov. 25, 2019, listing Jon A. Kauffman as the suspect and the offense as second-degree harassment with physical contact.

Laura Rohauers’s email to the English teacher says, “As you know, her grades are everything, and she must work so hard to achieve what she wants. Not being born brilliant, and having two concussions have proven to be a challenge but her grit and determination drive her.”

Corporal punishment?

The Enterprise asked the Rohauers’ lawyer, Scagnelli, what they hoped to get from the suit. “As in any lawsuit,” Scagnelli said, “one hopes to, among other things, seek to have some recognition for the wrong done to them.”

He noted that, with a civil lawsuit, usually monetary compensation is involved. “Right now, I have not put a dollar figure on it,” Scagnelli said, adding he would be willing to discuss the amount with the district’s insurance company.

“They are less concerned about the money than they are the recognition,” he said of the Rohauers.

Scagnelli added that, at 63, he remembers when he was a student in parochial schools in New York City “where the nuns would routinely mete out corporal punishment for the slightest perceived transgression … I didn’t like it then. We’ve certainly come a long way in 50 years; I would hope the school district had in place a no-corporal-punishment policy.”

Guilderland’s code of conduct does prohibit corporal punishment, defined as “any act of physical force upon a student for the purpose of punishing that student.”

However, it says that “reasonable physical force” can be used to “protect oneself, another student, teacher or any person from physical injury”; to protect property; or to “restrain or remove a student whose behavior interferes with the orderly exercise and performance of school district functions, powers and duties, if that student has refused to refrain from further disruptive acts.”

The district is to file all complaints about the use of corporal punishment with the state’s commissioner of education in accordance with commissioner’s regulations, the code says.

Superintendent Marie Wiles told The Enterprise on Friday that she had just received the court paperwork the day before and could not comment on a case in litigation involving student information.

“It’s very much under review …” she said, noting the incident was three years ago. “Our insurance carrier hasn’t even reached out to us to talk about it. So there will be much more work to do on our end.”

Wiles did say that, in her 12 years as Guilderland’s superintendent, the district had not had an incident of corporal punishment.

Speaking only in general terms, and not about the Rohauer case, Wiles said that, if there were an incident of corporal punishment, the district “would certainly investigate” and make the required report “depending on the outcome of the investigation.”

Wiles concluded on Friday, “We’re very consistent in doing all the things we’re supposed to do but what makes this more difficult is that now we have open litigation.”

On Tuesday evening, Aug. 23, Wiles sent an email to “GCSD Families,” referencing media reporting on the suit and saying, “The incident was reported to the district when it occurred. At the time, the district thoroughly investigated the allegation against the staff member and determined that the action did not violate the District’s Corporal Punishment policy and that certain aspects of the complaint were … unsubstantiated. The matter was fully and appropriately addressed at the time by the district.”

The email concluded, “I would like to take this opportunity to reinforce that the Guilderland Central School District is fully committed to providing all of our students, faculty and staff with a safe, comfortable and secure learning environment. We take that responsibility very seriously. I recognize that this recent news may raise questions from GCSD families, however since the issue involves both legal and personnel matters, we are unable to comment further at this time.”