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Downingtown students gather 50,000 signatures supporting embattled vice principal

Zach Ruff's videotaped confrontation with antiabortion protesters on April 21 led to his suspension and possible firing.

Holding a stack of papers Wednesday night with 50,000 signatures on a petition in support of Downingtown STEM Academy vice principal Zach Ruff, whose video-recorded confrontation with anti-abortion protesters on April 21 led to his suspension and possible firing, sophomore Zach Ng said, "We need him back."

He and more than two dozen students sporting blue "I Support Dr. Ruff" T-shirts went to a school board meeting Wednesday to present the petition but were told they would have to wait until the end of a long agenda. So they patiently took their seats as the board honored about two dozen retiring teachers and afterward presented long committee reports. Just before 9:30, they made their case.

For the students, the petition was a victory, even as their teacher was going through a school district process that included an investigation and hearing that could lead to his termination.

"We didn't think we'd get this far," Ng said of the online CARE2 petition, which has received signatures from across the country.

Ruff will  need it. After being put on paid administrative leave, he was suspended without pay Friday, said Michael Levin, a lawyer who is handling the case for Downingtown.

The 13-year veteran teacher was presented with charges at a school district hearing earlier, he said.

"My opinion is, First Amendment rights were violated," Levin said, referring to Ruff's obscenity-based tirade against two teen protesters who showed up with signs outside the school as students were driving home for the day.

The fallout from Ruff's rant and subsequent punishment has jolted the Chester County district and the prestigious STEM Academy, which has been twice ranked as Pennsylvania's top public school since it was established in 2013.

Ruff, 40, one of two assistant principals at the academy and its dean of academics and student life, has worked for the Downingtown district since 2004. He came to the STEM Academy when it opened. His expletive-laced encounter with Conner and Lauren Haines outside the school was captured on a cellphone video that quickly went viral.

In the roughly 10-minute video, Ruff clashed with the protesters — who do not go to Downingtown schools and held aloft pictures of aborted fetuses — over whether they had a right to protest on school property during the afternoon dismissal.

Ruff, who received a doctorate in educational leadership from Drexel University this year, told them that aborted fetuses were "cells,"and that he was gay and didn't "give a … about Jesus."

"You and Trump can go to hell," he said, and then loudly sang "I Love a Parade," apparently to drown out the pair.

Levin said there other issues that did not appear on the video, but he declined to elaborate.

Another student, Jacob Lemlar, acknowledged that students did not condone Ruff's behavior but said he did not believe Ruff broke any laws or violated the school's code of ethics.

Some alumni and parents also came to support the educator.

Jon Best, 19, who graduated from STEM last year, said there was "definitely a lot of emotions involved, but he was in the right for wanting to protect students."

Sara Leidal, whose son is a senior at the school, also said she believes Ruff was motivated to protect his students, "to keep them from a traumatizing and potentially dangerous situation."

But Levin said "cursing at young people" was not something the school district condones.

In the ensuing uproar, officials in the state's eighth-largest school district said they were "very dismayed" by Ruff's behavior as they placed him on paid administrative leave, posted an apology on the district website, and launched a more in-depth investigation.

That decision sparked a backlash, led by students who called Ruff "the heart and soul" of the nearly 800-student elite school, as they launched the petition drive to reinstate him while urging the assistant principal's backers to speak up at Wednesday night's board meeting.