East Helena schools approve separation agreement with teacher Erik Pritchard

East Helena Public Schools trustees unanimously approved a separation agreement with teacher Erik Pritchard, ending his employment with the district on June 30, 2026 and putting a formal stop to a case that had stretched across classrooms, board meetings and public pressure in East Helena.

The agreement keeps Pritchard on paid leave until the end date and requires the district to pay the remainder of his contract, accrued leave and a lump sum of $36,563.50. It also includes a neutral letter of recommendation, a sign that both sides were aiming to close the employment relationship without a prolonged public fight over the terms of his departure.

The board acted after district attorneys and the Montana Federation of Public Employees spent more than a month and a half negotiating the deal. Pritchard had filed a grievance on Feb. 10, 2026 and later appealed it to the board on April 15, 2026, setting up the final vote that trustees took at their meeting Thursday, May 28.

District leaders said they made the decision with staff and student safety in mind, and Superintendent Dan Rispens said trustees were weighing the situation as a whole rather than any single incident. Pritchard teaches at East Valley Middle School and also works as a driver’s education instructor at East Helena High School, so the separation affects two school buildings and two parts of the district’s staffing structure.

The record before the board included a March 2024 Title IX investigation that found Pritchard violated the district’s sexual-harassment rules, along with a later complaint from spring 2026 that did not produce enough evidence to move forward with Title IX action. In May 2026, the school board also voted 7-0 to expel the student who assaulted Pritchard for 13 months, after the student’s family said the confrontation followed an allegation involving Pritchard and the student’s sister. The district said its investigation did not support that allegation.

Public pressure around Pritchard had already been building before the separation agreement. An online petition calling for his firing drew more than 1,700 signatures, and former students and parents protested outside East Helena City Hall in September 2025. Pritchard has publicly denied the accusations, calling them defamatory, unverified and not properly fact-checked.

Rispens has said the board rarely handles discipline matters of this scale, noting that trustees had seen only three student cases in his five years as superintendent and fewer than six or seven in 25 years in the district. For East Helena, the agreement closes one personnel file, but it also leaves a clear public record of how the board chose to resolve a problem that had become too disruptive to leave unresolved.