Reprieve for janitor in deep doo-doo

Trouble brewed quickly for New Prague school district custodian Jarrod Novotny on the spring morning when he phoned one of his bosses at 7:15 a.m. to warn that a teacher might be calling from Eagle View Elementary.

Novotny explained that he had picked up feces that he said a teacher's dog had left on the school lawn the day before, according to a recent ruling issued by a state arbitrator.

He put the dog feces in a vinyl glove and left it on her desk. Then, the ruling said, he quickly "realized there would likely be repercussions."

There were.

Administrators decided to dismiss Novotny and told him so within a few hours of the April 17 incident at the school, in Elko New Market. But Novotny appealed the proposed penalty, and last month arbitrator Janice Frankman said it was too harsh.

Instead, she said he should be suspended without pay for 15 days, a penalty that was applied retroactively to the end of April.

Novotny, 39, declined to comment on Friday.

The district disagrees with the decision, but will abide by it, Donna Friedmann, the district's director of human resources, said Friday. As required, Novotny had remained on paid leave during the appeal process, she said, but he has now returned to work.

Novotny told the supervisor he was annoyed because pets are not allowed on school grounds, according to Frankman's ruling. The teacher, Stephanie Torczon, had brought her dog to the school on a previous occasion, and it had peed on his shoe and the carpet, he said.

When administrators decided to fire Novotny, part of the discussion focused on how long it took him to remove the dog feces from the desk. When the supervisor he called told him to remove the glove, he did -- but not before Torczon got to school and found it on her desk.

Torczon could not be reached by phone on Friday.

At Novotny's arbitration hearing in June, the district offered evidence in the form of images from three surveillance cameras that showed his movements in the school the morning he picked up the feces.

On his way to a dumpster, he stopped by the school kitchen and set the glove on a desk near the kitchen entry for a few minutes.

At first, the principal and Torczon also expressed concern that the glove was made of latex, to which the teacher said she was allergic, but Novotny quickly said it was not.

In a letter explaining his dismissal, district officials said, "We have had numerous conversations regarding your inappropriate behavior within our school district in the past. ... This latest incident was completely out of line."

According to the arbitrator's ruling, past reports of Novotny's actions included giving an eighth-grade girl a flower, playing basketball with students when he should have been working and upsetting them with his teasing or joking.

Frankman noted in her decision that the district fired Novotny "without union representation or even discussion of the incident." Nothing, she wrote, indicated that he was unwilling or unable to respond to a milder punishment.

She also pointed out that Novotny also reported the mistake himself and tried to fix it. Had he not done those things, she wrote, her opinion might have been different.

Sarah Lemagie • 952-882-9016