ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — Action News Jax got a copy of the 250-page lawsuit the St. Johns County School District filed against a father of a Switzerland Point Middle School student.
The full court document contains hundreds of vulgar words and other expletives that weren’t censored or redacted in any way, but the lawsuit shown above is a shorter version more appropriate to share online.
The lawsuit says that, back in April, math teacher James Stoner found someone had written on his whiteboard to call one of his 7th-grade students the N-word.
In its lawsuit, the district said one of Stoner’s students accused Matthew Ross’ son of writing the message, but later found there wasn’t enough evidence to prove he was the one who did it.
The lawsuit said Ross’ son didn’t face any consequences, but Ross asked him to be removed from the class, which the school did.
The lawsuit later says Ross filed a bullying and harassment complaint against Stoner for how he handled the incident with his son.
Ross then created a website, FireJamesStoner.com, where the district said he posted more than 70 videos against Stoner, the assistant principal of Switzerland Point Middle School, and the St. Johns County School District as a whole.
The district, in its lawsuit, included some of the emails sent between Ross and the district, showing what it calls “vulgar name-calling” and other “demeaning, dehumanizing” commentary Ross made against the school board employees.
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“They’re trying to silence me not just based on what I’m saying, but how I’m saying it,” Ross told Action News Jax, in response to the lawsuit.
Ross claims that Stoner made up the incident involving his son in a move to try and get him out of the class. The district’s lawsuit includes some transcripts of the videos Ross posted to social media, talking about what happened. One of the transcripts includes Ross saying, “They accused my kid of writing his buddy is a n-word…and it was all a lie. It never happened.”
One of the emails included in the lawsuit from Ross to the district reads, in part, “How does it feel to know everyone hates you now that they are finding out how you treat our children? How’s it feel to be a child abuser being exposed to the world?”
The district said the messages have caused “psychological and emotional distress” to the employees involved. The lawsuit says, after the messages started coming in, Stoner “became afraid to leave his home” and “lost sleep…was anxious and distracted at school.”
The district is calling for a restraining order against Ross, but Ross tells Action News Jax he believes the lawsuit is a move to shut him up.
“To me, what they say my son did is way more offensive than anything that I’ve said, by far,” Ross said, “I’m not threatening, I’m not doing anything that’s criminal.”
Action News Jax reached out to the St. Johns County School District to respond to the lawsuit. We were told the district can’t share any comments or statements on pending lawsuits, but the school board is expected to approve the filing of the lawsuit in its meeting scheduled for this Thursday.
Ross tells Action News Jax he is not only intending to eventually run for school board, but he is planning on bringing his own legal action against the school district when this case concludes.
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