An islander and ferry dock worker is suing Vashon’s school district and its superintendent, alleging that she was retaliated against for comments that she made online about commuter students.

According to court documents obtained by The Beachcomber last week, islander Kimm Shride has filed the suit with attorney Joe Schaefer. It was filed in U.S. District Court on Oct. 27 and names Vashon Island School District (VISD) Superintendent Michael Soltman and the district as defendants.

“Defendants … (acting) under the color of state law, took actions against Plaintiff Kimm Shride that were motivated by her First Amendment protected speech,” court documents state.

The suit is the second to be filed against the district this year. The first, unrelated suit was filed by islander Kelly Wright in April and alleges discrimination and harassment at island schools. The Beachcomber became aware of Shride’s suit after an envelope containing the complaints from Schride’s and Wright’s lawsuits was mailed to Sound Publishing’s corporate office — The Beachcomber’s parent company — in Everett last week. The envelope had no return address and no way to identify the sender.

On Friday, Schaefer said that he had no knowledge of the complaint’s mailing.

As of Friday, Soltman had not yet been served. His attorney, Seattle-based Jeff Ganson, said last Thursday he is “not authorized to speak publicly for the district or Superintendent Soltman on this matter.”

“We will answer the complaint in due course,” he said in an email.

The court complaint alleges that Soltman retaliated against Shride after she posted a photo last June on a community Facebook page. According to emails sent to Soltman on June 11, 2015, containing screenshots of the Facebook post, the photo Shride posted is of a VISD advertisement on the side of a metro bus promoting off-island student enrollment at Chautauqua Elementary School. Shride captioned the photo with an explanation about how “she feels angry about” the advertisement and thinks “Enough is enough.”

Further down in the comment thread following the initial post, Shride mentioned how commuting students give ferry workers problems on the dock.

“You were always one of the kids that never gave us a problem on the dock. But some of them Grrrr,” Shride writes in response to a former off-island student who joined the conversation.

Shride also stated that she had “a family member graduate (from the school) every year since the beginning of time.”

“It was important for me to have my daughter graduate from OUR high school,” she wrote.

The district currently has 271 students coming from off-island, and the topic has been hotly debated by islanders for many years. Soltman said VISD has been accepting off-island students for the past decade and numbers have been increasing in recent years, especially since the height of the recession in 2009 when the district stepped up efforts in an attempt to bring in more money. Currently, each off-island student generates $6,293 is state funds — $1.7 million of the district’s $20 million budget in total, according to Soltman.

However, many islanders feel students from off-island should not attend VISD schools since their parents don’t pay taxes to support the island’s education system, but pay to support schools in their own district instead.

After he became aware of Shride’s post, Soltman contacted Washington State Ferries (WSF) — where Shride has been employed for many years — and made a formal complaint about her “abusive and unprofessional conduct” when dealing with commuting students. He attached the screenshots from Facebook, his emails show.

“Find out the BEST contact we can get to make a complaint to about Kimm. I have had it with this,” Soltman wrote in an email to his secretary, Donna Donnelley on June 12, 2015.

His emails also indicate that he had been in contact with several of Vashon’s terminal supervisors over the past three years about Shride’s behavior. Emails from Soltman to WSF indicate that Soltman believed Shride was “antagonistic, rude and unprofessional” and “is prone to yell, shriek and demean” commuting students. He says that the June Facebook post is Shride’s most recent show of disdain for commuting students.

“I have been just astounded by her behavior and cannot understand why the terminal supervisor does not intervene despite my direct appeal to him last September (2014),” Soltman wrote in his email complaint to WSF. “I urge you to take some action that intervenes in Ms. Shride’s continuing assault on our students.”

Soltman also asked parents of commuting students to provide WSF with examples of Shride’s behavior, to which roughly six replied. It is not clear how many parents complained to WSF directly without responding to Soltman.

In late June, he then sent an email to First Student, where Shride is employed as a substitute school bus driver, and asked her to be removed from all Vashon bus routes. She was removed, but reinstated once the company’s union and Shride’s attorney became involved.

The complaint continues to say that these actions caused Shride financial and emotional harm.

Shride’s attorney, Schaefer, said that, since it was summer, Shride was off Vashon bus routes for a few days in the summer and a few days at the beginning of the new school year. However, he said the case is not about the money lost by that action, but about the principle that Soltman was overstepping his boundaries regarding Shride’s freedom of speech.

“There are huge First Amendment privileges at work here,” Schaefer said. “Regardless of if her view (on off-island students) is correct or not, which in this case there isn’t really a right or wrong, it’s just an opinion, she has the right to speak, and he (Soltman) used his district’s contract power to remove her from bus routes.”

Schaefer said that, as a government official with the power to control the school district’s contracts, Soltman’s actions were an abuse of his power.

“Mr. Soltman’s actions, all taken on behalf of the Vashon Island School District, caused Ms. Shride lasting emotional and reputational harm in a small and interconnected community,” the court complaint indicates.

WSF conducted an independent investigation into Shride’s behavior and “found no misconduct,” clearing her of all wrongdoing. According to court documents, WSF found the parents’ complaints were related to a different dock worker, but made “against Ms. Shride as encouraged by Mr. Soltman.”

Soltman disagreed with that finding and said last Thursday that he was not trying to retaliate against Shride, but was trying to take care of the students of the district.

“I have the duty to take care of these kids,” he said. “That extends to their transportation between school and their homes, and that’s what it comes down to.”

The complaint indicates Shride is suing for compensatory and general damages such as lost back pay; general damages such as emotional injury, harm and distress; a declaration that Soltman and VISD violated her Constitutional right to be free from retaliation or adverse action due to protected speech and attorney’s fees, among other damages. Schaefer said Monday there’s no set amount of money being asked for. He also said he approached VISD about settling the case out of court and was told the district was not interested in settling.