The Poudre School District in Fort Collins will pay a $16.2 million settlement to the families of 10 children who accused a former employee of abuse.
The payment, announced Wednesday, comes a year after Tyler Zanella, a former paraprofessional for the district, was sentenced to more than 12 years for assaulting disabled students on school buses.
“It is utterly incomprehensible how a school district could allow a convicted child abuser to have access to utterly helpless children in this situation,” said David Lane, an attorney representing the families, in a statement. “Ultimately, this governmental failure will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars and these innocent children have been severely damaged.”
Zanella was arrested in May 2023 after surveillance footage showed the paraprofessional hitting a disabled student on a school bus. He initially faced more than 160 charges of child abuse, harassment and assault, but pleaded guilty to assault on an at-risk person, harassment and child abuse.
The Poudre School District has spent almost $2 million to implement safety measures since Zanella’s arrest, including revising hiring practices; installing cameras in the district’s entire bus fleet; hiring a transportation manager for students with disabilities; and training staff on trauma-informed care, mandatory reporting and behavior management, school board president Kristen Draper said in a statement.
The district’s school board passed a resolution during a meeting Tuesday to approve the settlement. The bulk of the payment will be made by Poudre’s insurance company, but $6.2 million will come from the district directly, according to the resolution.
“While these incidents are a painful chapter in our history, they are also a catalyst for important and necessary improvements,” Draper said. “We are mindful that our next chapter must include increased efforts centered on healing, repairing the harm done and rebuilding trust.”
Zanella was hired in 2022 as a bus attendant to help with autistic elementary-aged children. The district knew Zanella pleaded guilty to child abuse in 2012, according to the families’ lawsuit, which was filed in 2023.
The lawsuit alleged videos showed Zanella ramming a child’s head into a school bus window and mocking the student. Footage also showed Zanella hitting other children on the bus, according to the lawsuit.
The children were between the ages of 6 and 11 years old at the time of the abuse.
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