Nation & World

The Los Angeles Unified School District paid Mark Berndt, the teacher at the center of the Miramonte Elementary School child sex-abuse scandal, $40,000 to drop the challenge to his dismissal last year.

The payout consisted of four months of back salary plus reimbursement for the cost of health benefits. Berndt was fired by the Board of Education in February 2011 after officials learned that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was investigating him for alleged lewd acts against students. He was arrested last week.

The firing took Berndt off the district payroll. But he fought to keep his job through an appeal process that lasted until he settled with the school system and resigned in June.

The settlement with Berndt came in the face of a dilemma, said school-system general counsel David Holmquist. A hearing on the dismissal was pending, but the district didn't have evidence to justify the firing because the Sheriff's Department investigation was continuing.

"We were told we could not do any investigation" to avoid interfering with a law-enforcement probe, Holmquist said. "We didn't have any evidence, and we couldn't put on any witnesses. We didn't have anything to successfully defend a challenge."

Berndt, 61, was charged last week with 23 counts of lewd acts upon children, ages 6 to 10. He is accused of feeding his semen to some students during "tasting games" in his classroom and taking pictures of that from 2005 to 2010.

Another Miramonte teacher, Martin Springer, was charged this week with three counts of lewd conduct; he is accused of fondling a girl in his class. Springer, 49, was freed on bail Friday, but the Sheriff's Department said he was fitted with a court-ordered electronic ankle monitor.

The Berndt and Springer cases are believed to be unrelated.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.