Posted on 08/21/2003 8:30:02 AM PDT by schaketo
Blair Hornstine, whose court battle to be her high school's sole valedictorian ended up throwing her life in turmoil, settled her differences with the Moorestown School District yesterday to the tune of $60,000 - all but $15,000 to pay her lawyers.
She had originally sought $2.7 million.
In agreeing to the out-of-court settlement, the Moorestown Board of Education admitted no wrongdoing and said it accepted the agreement in part to limit its legal costs.
Both sides agreed they would not appeal a federal judge's ruling in May that blocked the school district's attempt to change its rules to name more than one valedictorian.
The board said it would pay $35,000 of the settlement and its insurer would pay the rest.
"It's time for the board and our community to move forward in the interests of all students," school board president Cyndy Wulfsberg said.
"The board continues to maintain that its actions, and the actions of its administrators, faculty and staff were appropriate and in the best interest of all students, including Ms. Hornstine," Wulfsberg said, adding that the board would not change the way it chooses its valedictorian - the student with the highest grade-point average.
Hornstine, described in court papers as suffering from a chronic-fatigue immune disorder, had alleged that the school district discriminated against her because of her disability, which entitled her to a specially designed education program.
Hornstine, 18, and her family have maintained silence since the case began, and yesterday was no different.
Family supporters did not respond to requests for comment. But others, such as Arjun Chandar, a classmate of Hornstine's, said they were only too happy to see the case pass into history.
"I'm just glad there's closure," he said. "The school took a lot of heat for something it shouldn't have. It was all unnecessary, in my mind."
But even before the settlement, he said, talk about the Hornstine case had dwindled considerably. "That chapter of our lives is over. We're all moving on to college," said Chandar, who will be a freshman at Williams College in Massachusetts. "Everybody has gone their separate ways."
Hornstine's plans, however, are not known.
She had been headed to Harvard University when her case attracted national attention. But the Ivy League school withdrew its offer last month after the Camden Courier-Post reported in early June that five articles Hornstine had written for the newspaper's teen section when she was 17 did not properly attribute information, including passages from U.S. Supreme Court decisions and presidential speeches.
Hornstine, in a written response, said she did not know news articles "require as strict citation scrutiny as most school assignments."
A Courier-Post reporter discovered the plagiarism while researching a story on Hornstine after she filed and won the federal civil-rights lawsuit against the school district.
She did not attend the June 19 graduation, leaving salutatorian Kenneth Mirkin to deliver the farewell address.
She achieved the highest GPA in her class and was on course to be valedictorian. But school officials said the special-education student had an unfair academic advantage over her peers because of a schedule approved by the district that allowed her to skip gym and take other classes, such as heavily weighted honors and advanced-placement courses, at home. The district's superintendent, Paul Kadri, said he wanted to level the playing field by naming multiple valedictorians. "I think it's important for everyone to move on," Kadri said yesterday.
He said the district was planning changes to home instruction for special-education students to keep closer tabs on students.
Whether Hornstine needed home education emerged as an issue in the debate about the case. Some saw her as a champion of disabled rights while others labeled her a spoiled daughter of a state Superior Court judge. Many questioned her disability and thought that her father, state Superior Court Judge Louis F. Hornstine, had used the technicalities of special-education laws to ensure that his daughter was number one.
But U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson, in blocking the school from naming multiple valedictorians, said, "Whether or not Mr. Hornstine intended to manipulate the system is immaterial" because the board had approved her study plan. "The evidence in this case has shown that Ms. Hornstine earned her distinction as the top student in her class in spite of, not because of, her disability."
But the ruling did not placate everyone. The Hornstine home was vandalized. The family was the target of death threats. An online petition called for Harvard to rescind its offer of admission.
And in the end, a future that had seemed assured seemed to have unraveled.
Hornstine had been accepted not only at Harvard, but also at Princeton, Duke, Stanford and Cornell Universities. Officials at those schools said it was too late for any student who had turned down an acceptance to enroll in the freshman class.
Mirkin, said he hoped the ordeal was over. "I hope this settlement can now help her and that the whole controversy is now behind her, too," said Mirkin, who will enter Harvard in September. "Hopefully, she can move on with her life."
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