Tennessee substitute teacher with CP settles case involving his scooter

From WATE-TV:

KNOXVILLE -- A substitute teacher got his job back, $10,000 and an apology from the Knox County School system.

Whenever he's called to substitute teach, whatever the weather, Steve Massengill (pictured) rides his scooter nearly two miles to Northwest Middle School.

"When I'm in the hallway, students give me a high five or say 'Hey Mr. M, how you doing?'" he says.

With each new class of students, Massengill always explains he has Cerebral Palsy, a type of brain damage.

"I tell them the part that controls my movement and my speech is damaged. I also tell them the part of my brain that I use to think with and learn with is fine," Massengill says.

Everything was fine until one day when Massengill was in the hallway, sitting on his scooter.

"The base had an exposed, sharp edge, plastic. And when a student backed up into the scooter, she cut her heel," he says.

Massengill had started subbing regularly at Northwest in 2003. But after the scooter accident last fall, the calls for work from the school stopped.

"I felt betrayed. I felt very unappreciated," Massengill says.

He told the school he had taped up the sharp edge on his scooter, but nothing changed.

"I just felt like it was not right and that I needed to take legal action," he says.

The case was recently settled out of court.

"I have no hard feelings against Knox County Schools or Northwest. Obviously, I hate that all this happened, but I'm hoping that everyone involved learned something from this," Massengill says.

No one from Knox County Schools was available Thursday to comment on the settlement.