A Butler school remains the sole defendant in a federal discrimination lawsuit after the case was sent to mediation in February.

A person identified as Gail S. sued Butler Wesleyan Academy on Protzman Road in September over claims that her two children were harassed and discriminated against because of their mixed-race ancestry during the school years of 2017-18 and 2018-19.

After going into mediation on Feb. 1, most of the parties were able to come to an out-of-court agreement.

According to Butler Eagle reports in early August, the school announced that it would not open for the 2020-21 school year, but that it hoped to open the following year. Multiple attempts to contact the school were unsuccessful. Lawyers for both sides didn't respond to requests for comment.

The defendants who were dismissed are Paul Fish, Teddy Zeigler, Sally Zeigler, Dennis J. Ballock, Dave Patterson, Curt Field and Kimberly Fish.

At the time of the alleged incidents in the lawsuit, Paul Fish was the chairman of the school's board and also its pastor. Teddy Zeigler was the principal of the school and an acting member of the school's board. Sally Zeigler was the school's administrator and an acting member of the school's board. Patterson, Field and Ballock were also acting board members of the school. Kimberly Fish was a treasurer for the school.

The titles of all of the former defendants are included in the lawsuit.

Additionally, the children of Gail S., who are identified as Jo. S and Je. S, were also dropped from the case, according to court documents. The only parties left in the case are Gail S. as the plaintiff and Butler Wesleyan Academy as the defendant, according to court documents.

The lawsuit claims that during the school years of 2017-18 and 2018-19, teachers and students on several occasions told Gail's two children that they hated them, asked them if they were Black, told them they didn't belong there and called them “Black trash,” according to the suit. The two children are identified in the lawsuit as being of East Indian and Jewish ancestry.

As a result of these alleged racially charged attacks, the children's mother claims their civil rights were violated and their educational experiences were damaged.

The suit claims that on multiple occasions, teachers and students, along with the Zeiglers and the Fishes, referred to the school's only two non-white students as Black “in a way that was intended to embarrass, degrade and/or humiliate the plaintiffs for not being 'white.'”

It is alleged that the two couples, teachers and students also “conducted conversations about the ethnicity of the plaintiffs in a derogatory manner and repeated racial slurs” to the two students, according to the lawsuit.

When Gail S. confronted the school board, it responded that the comments “were harmless and that teachers and students at (the school) were merely trying to figure out 'what (the plaintiffs) were' if they were not 'Black.'”

The lawsuit concludes that the children of Gail S. were treated less favorably than the white students in the school because of race and ethnicity because the white students “were not subjected to any harassment based on race or ethnicity.”