An East Texas school district has agreed to a settlement with a girls basketball coach who claimed she was being fired because she is a lesbian, the coach’s attorney said.

The Bloomburg Independent School District’s school board moved to fire Merry Stephens in December, alleging insubordination, failure to comply with board policies and flagrant mistreatment of students. Stephens appealed to the Texas Education Agency.

“It didn’t really have anything to do with my teaching abilities or my coaching abilities, it was just based on my sexual orientation,” Stephens said.

In exchange for Stephens’ agreement not to pursue further legal action, the district agreed to pay her the value of her two-year contract. Michael Shirk, her attorney, said that probably will amount to about $100,000.

Officials at the 265-student district 20 miles south of Texarkana did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

The settlement agreement came after school board President Derous Byers testified in a deposition that the board’s decision to fire Stephens was based on the personal anti-gay animosity of several board members, Shirk said.

“In my 15 years of representing workers throughout Texas, rarely have I seen such bigotry and flagrant discrimination,” Shirk said, adding that the agreement came days before a state-appointed judge was to hear Stephens’ case.

Stephens said she received excellent teaching evaluations in the five-and-a-half years she taught biology, reading, music and physical education.

“It was a real small school, so I had to teach everything,” she said.

She also led the team to district and regional championships. Bloomburg fell one game short of qualifying for the Class A state tournament in 2004.

Stephens said the trouble began when Bloomburg got a new superintendent in August 2003. He and other school officials began harassing her, she said, and punishing her for behavior other teachers got away with. She declined to go into specifics.

Stephens will remain on paid leave through the end of this school year. She said she isn’t sure what she’ll do next, though she’d like to return to teaching and coaching.

“I feel vindicated. At first I was scared to stand up to this kind of discrimination, but now I feel that a weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” Stephens said.