The State Ethics Commission is accusing a former ­Lawrence High School teacher of paying kickbacks to School Depart­ment employees so they would steer contracts to his small business.

“I am innocent,” Algird ­Sunskis, 65, of Lanesborough said Monday night. “I have great difficulty believing that the people in authority and respon­sible positions at ­Lawrence public [schools] would be forced to destroy me with their lies. I just don’t know what they fear.”

According to an order the commission made public on Monday, Sunskis, while teaching at the high school, paid two School Department employees a total of about $2,600 in 2008 to obtain contracts for Wellington House Publishing Inc., a business he co-owned.

The contracts were worth a total of about $11,000 to provide timesheets, pocket folders, and a folding machine to the Lawrence schools.

On Monday night, Sunskis insisted that the two employees, who are no longer with the School Department, lured his company into the contract arrange­ments under false pretenses and that the alleged kickbacks were payments for expenses that he believed were tied to school operations.

He said that he and his co-owner at Wellington unwittingly stumbled into a web of corruption at the School Depart­ment and that officials retaliated against him for his efforts to reform school practices and expose sexual harassment of a teacher.

The two former employees in question, John Laurenza and Charles Birchall, settled their cases with the Ethics Commission by agreeing to pay fines of $4,536 and $8,449, respec­tively.

A working phone number for Birchall could not immediately be located. Laurenza did not return a message seeking comment late Monday night.

The commission said in a statement that it will schedule a public hearing for Sunskis within 90 days.

Sunskis contends that he was fired by the Lawrence schools, but that could not be confirmed late Monday night.

A spokesman for Lawrence schools said Sunskis taught at the high school from 2003 to 2009, but declined further comment because the department does not discuss personnel matters.