Six months after Trinity Valley School families learned about the arrest of a former piano teacher for indecency with a child, the Fort Worth private school is facing a new lawsuit in part related to how administrators and trustees handled that case internally.
Human resources director Carrie Skains filed suit against Trinity Valley Dec. 30 over alleged gender discrimination and a trustee report implying that Skains helped obscure the misconduct of Trent Muse, a teacher who was dismissed from the campus in April 2023. Muse was arrested and charged with indecency with a child in June 2024.
Trinity Valley School trustees sent a Dec. 18 letter to the school community detailing findings from a third-party investigation that paint a picture of how the school managed reports and communications surrounding Muse’s dismissal.
According to the letter obtained by the Fort Worth Report, the investigation by T&M USA found that former Head of School Blair Lowry, Skains and two other administrators allegedly advanced a misleading narrative about Muse’s termination, suggesting it was because of “personal reasons” and withholding information from parents and staff.
This alleged obfuscation is now part of Skains’ gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against Trinity Valley School, which serves about 1,000 students in pre-K through 12th grade.
The lawsuit, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, raises questions about the private school’s handling of internal disputes and employee treatment, Frank Hill, Skains’ attorney and managing director of Arlington law firm Hill Gilstrap, told the Report.
As a matter of practice, Trinity Valley does not comment on pending litigation, a school spokesperson said.
“TVS prides itself on a workplace culture rooted in respect and fairness,” the school told the Report in a statement.
Suit alleges ‘long pattern of gender bias discrimination’
Skains — who has worked for Trinity Valley since 2011, according to her LinkedIn profile — accuses Chief Financial Officer Adam Wojtelwicz and other administrators of creating a hostile work environment, claiming that Skains was subjected to excessive workloads that were not part of her job description and without additional pay during the 2023-24 school year.
Skains, according to the lawsuit, believes her increased responsibilities were motivated by gender bias, making the work environment more hostile for her and other female employees.
Skains’ complaints of gender discrimination began in February 2023, according to the complaint, before the incident involving Muse occurred and was brought to light. But the incident and leadership changes at Trinity Valley further complicated internal dynamics, according to the complaint.
Lowry, the head of school during the time in which many of Skains’ complaints originated, left her position in June 2024 — two weeks before Muse’s arrest.
Lowry’s departure was publicly attributed to her decision to pursue other professional opportunities, but private discussions suggested that gender played a role in her ousting, according to the complaint.
“Ms. Lowry also told Plaintiff that she had told the then current President of the Trinity Valley School Board of Directors and the incoming board president this same thing,” the complaint stated. “Ms. Lowry said that the incoming Board President agreed with her saying that she would not have been removed if she had been male.”
Following Lowry’s exit, Wojtelwicz, a central figure in the allegations of creating a hostile work environment, was appointed as the interim head of school for the 2023-24 school year. Wojtelwicz returned to his financial role after George N. King Jr. took over the interim role last year. The board announced Jan. 6 that Ben Courchesne will take over the permanent head of school position in July.
“At Trinity Valley, discrimination of women based on their sex is not limited to Mr. Wojtelwicz and is pervasive in the administration’s culture,” the complaint said.
Trustees say they were told ‘misleading narrative’ about teacher’s actions
The Report obtained a letter written by the school’s current trustees — excluding recused board members, who were not named — that was sent to about 6,000 parents, school members and staff on Dec. 18. The letter states that certain administrators, including Skains and Lowry, were involved in misleading communications that obscured the school community’s understanding of Muse’s departure.
“(They) were aware of the incident, kept the information largely to themselves in the days that followed because they were concerned that sharing it would be detrimental to Mr. Muse if the exposure of his penis to the child was indeed accidental,” the letter stated.
This characterization is not only damaging to Skains’ reputation but also defamatory, Hill said. According to the trustee letter, when Skains received the initial complaint about Muse during the 2022-23 school year, Child Protective Services was promptly informed, Hill said.
“CPS investigates and there’s nothing there,” Hill said. “So, those individuals did what any responsible administrator or employer would do and they reported it to the board president and to the attorney for the school.”
In the letter sent by Trinity Valley’s board, trustees told families that a third-party investigation determined that then-board chair Jenny Rosell was informed about the family’s report by Lowry, but was unable to determine the precise level of detail provided to Rosell about what the student reported.
Lowry fired Muse in April 2023, according to the letter sent to the Trinity Valley community.
“Ms. Lowry decided to fire Mr. Muse for failing to self-report this incident to school administrators and Ms. Lowry’s belief that, after such a lapse in judgment, he could not be trusted around students,” the letter said.
Roughly a year later, the school received a report with further, more incriminating information about Muse, according to the letter.
“However, in both individual and group communications with parents of Mr. Muse’s piano students in May 2024, Ms. Lowry provided a misleading narrative of what occurred in 2023 at the time of Mr. Muse’s firing by omitting the crucial fact that the student reported seeing Mr. Muse’s penis and by suggesting CPS told the school there was nothing more for the school to investigate or pursue,” the letter said.
The school learned at the end of May or early June 2023 that the CPS investigation was “completed” and that CPS would not be taking further action, according to the letter. The agency’s communication to the school did not support the suggestion that there was nothing more for the school to investigate or pursue, the letter said.
“It is clear from the findings that school leaders were disingenuous in their communications to parents, citing ‘personal reasons’ as the impetus for Mr. Muse’s departure,” the letter said.
Skains files additional charge, remains on staff
Since this letter was sent, Skains has expressed to Hill that it is a struggle for her to return to work, he said.
“Emotionally, because of this letter, it may be that she can’t even continue,” Hill said. “I mean, the letter has really devastated her.”
The case and the trustee letter “stigmatizing” an employee should prompt private schools across the state to take a deeper look at administrative practices, Hill told the Report.
For Trinity Valley, and many of its board members, the investigation’s findings were clear.
“We know that every leader within a school environment has a personal responsibility to act in the best interests of the students in their charge,” the trustees’ letter said. “In this endeavor, some members of our administrative leadership team fell meaningfully short of this duty.”
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.
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