Former St. Charles school employee sues over copyrighted program
A former middle school computer lab assistant is suing St. Charles District 303, arguing a computer attendance program she wrote and copyrighted was used numerous times without her permission, and when she objected, she was harassed to the point of resignation.
Audrey Shanton is seeking unspecified damages for constructive discharge, copyright infringement and breach of representation in the suit filed against the school district, district support personnel and the teachers union.
"They just said we don't believe you did it and even if you did it, it's our property," said Shanton's attorney, Tim Dwyer. "That was pretty much the nature if it. She had higher-ups and the superintendent saying she didn't do this and wasn't capable of it."
A message seeking comment from District 303 Superintendent Don Schlomann was not returned. A message left for Tony Malay, the IEA representative for the union's region that includes District 303, also was not returned.
According to the lawsuit, Shanton worked for the district from 2005 through April 2016. In 2005, she and her husband, Kenneth, a research scientist for a private company, wrote a spreadsheet-based program they copyrighted.
Audrey Shanton tested the program in 2007 and it worked so well she and her husband rewrote it in 2008 to track, monitor and assess attendance at Wredling Middle School, along with St. Charles East and North high schools, the lawsuit says.
The Shantons had an unwritten agreement with the district that no one was to update or change the program and it couldn't be shared without their permission, the suit says. But in spring 2015, administrators from the high schools used the program without permission and demanded to know how it worked, the lawsuit says. Audrey Shanton also learned that one administrator used a different attendance program that was basically a "reverse engineered" version of Shanton's, according to the suit.
Shanton told the district's technology director, John Reichling, who agreed no one should use the software until the copyright issues were sorted out, and if that didn't happen, the district would purchase it from the Shantons, the suit says. But he later changed his tune during a meeting with other district officials, saying it didn't matter that Kenneth Shanton didn't work for the school district and Reichling wanted to put the program on a shared Web page so anyone on the district staff could use it, according to the suit.
"Once plaintiff exercised her ownership rights to the intellectual property she had coproduced, District 303 deliberately made her employment with the district intolerable under any reasonable standard," read part of the suit.
Shanton also accuses the employees' union, the Illinois Education Association, of refusing to represent her at meetings.
The case is due in court June 14.