.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

When I took over a Special Education class years ago, I noticed that, rather than any students doing math in their heads or on paper, they each had big, over-sized, spring loaded, plastic calculators they automatically went to. I knew there were some students who would always rely on such devices, out of preference or necessity, and that less childish calculators were available, but as Special Ed students must be taught according to their individual needs and abilities to reach the highest level of their learning potential, there had to be some students in the class who could memorize their times tables up to at least the tens table, or at least memorize what they could up to the ceiling of their abilities.

Cell phones were a little off in the future, so telling them that they needed some basic knowledge of the times tables so they could do simple math in places where there were no calculators, or the batteries had died was useful advice at the time.

To this end, before the winter break, I gave each student three copies of the times tables, 1-10, and told them to keep one in their bedroom, attach another to hang inside the refrigerator, and, depending on their inclination, on top of the toilet tank or on the wall opposite the toilet so that regardless how they did their business, they could see the times tables and, maybe learn some of them, and it would give them something else to do along with what they were there for.

One parent, for some reason, thought it important to go to the principal to complain about the refrigerator placement as she thought it better on the refrigerator door, and another complained that I had used the word “Toilet” in class and on the note explaining the three times tables copies and their suggested locations.

I refused to apologize for mentioning toilets in class as, I was unaware that, apparently, they were a secret place that must go unnamed and pleaded innocence through ignorance, and explained to the parent with the refrigerator problem that putting it on the door was useless as no one stares at the refrigerator door but opens it to stare at what is behind it, and, in their case, what they would see were their times tables.

These parents accepted things each to their own degree, but were outdone by other parents who complained that, as by this time I was known to be a teacher who happened to be Gay, there was something Gay hidden in the assignment. Somehow, my students’ memorizing the times tables to the best of their abilities was part of the “Homosexual Agenda”.

I had once told my students that in the future, in spite of their own plans to live and work in familiar surroundings, life has a habit of throwing curves and they might find themselves living and working somewhere they had never thought of being, and they needed to be prepared to do well anywhere, not just in the neighborhood. This was seen by some parents as condemning the state and city in which they lived, turning the students against their families, and developing a strong dislike of their home state, with memorizing the times tables somehow a part of that.

A few parents objected to my forcing the times tables down the students’ throats and explained that, as they were doing well without having learned their times tables, they saw no reason why their kids should have to learn them. 

The future had no meaning for these people.

While the parents were objecting to toilets, times tables placement, memorizing the tables being somehow anti-home state, and a pro “Gay Agenda” thing, the students were competing among themselves in who could memorize the most and were quizzing each other on the tables. Some kids, rather than use the clunky plastic calculators would just yell out, “How much is……?” and get the correct answer.

At that time, a simple meeting between teacher and parent, sometimes at the classroom door or in the office with the principal, would resolve the situations mentioned. Often, these meetings would end in a reasonable solution, an enlightened parent, or modifications for a particular parent’s kid so that while the kid continued to learn, the parents had nothing to complain about even if as in this particular case, I used good peer pressure, students having friendly multiplication contests in which kids could be motivated to learn more and did.

I also avoided the word “toilet” in favor of “Throne” or “that thing in the bathroom that cannot be named”.

That was in the 1990s. If this were Florida today, there would have been end times predictions and lawsuits to keep the kids from learning their times tables.

The Florida Department of Education has rejected 54 math books out of 132 submitted for review because,

“they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.”

They object to the alleged inclusion of social-emotional learning (SEL) which is,

“the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” 

Basically, social skills, social interaction in a larger society, and meeting problems head on and well-equipped to handle them.

In my day, it was that section of the report card that included “works well with others”.

When I taught in one school district, it became obvious that even within the district there were many cases where, although students were to have learned certain things by the end of any given year, the order and approach being left up to the school or the individual teacher, meant when they transferred to another school, what they needed to add to what they learned at the old school was already covered at the new one or they had already covered what was being covered after the transfer at the new school. As a result, the district came up with a quarterly schedule so that all students in any given grade covered certain topics at approximately the same time leaving some wriggle room, so that a student could pick up where they had left off when they transferred and not end up behind trying to catch up.

It also ensured that all students were learning the same things.

Expand this nationally so a student transferring to another town or state would not fall behind but, theoretically, continue where they had left off, more or less, and you have the other thing the governor hates, Common Core.

Simply put, Common Core has standards designed to ensure every kid gets the same education as everyone else without lags in the coverage from one school to another. Parents can look over the standards on their own and know what their kids are learning at any given point during the year.  

Apparently, the governor has no fear that kids in Florida will end up greatly educated, but, perhaps, compared to kids in other states are woefully behind.

I taught at a school where all seniors were labelled “Honors”, which looks good on college applications. During his time at that school, the principal was so concerned that his approach to grades, attendance, graduation rates, and college acceptance would show him to be a shining star in education since under him those numbers had improved, he was eventually removed from his position and education in general  because he had doctored the records so most of them were false and misleading, and students found when they reached college that even their friends who had attended others school and may have had lower grades, had learned more.

The term “honors” had actually meant nothing.

The students at the school found themselves required to take remedial classes before they could take regular classes with their friends who had attended other schools in the same district.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis loves the book banning.

“It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students.  I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.”

Commissioner Corcoran thanked DeSantis for the compliment by claiming that Florida had become “a national leader in education”.

“Other states continue to follow Florida’s lead as we continue to reinforce parents’ rights by focusing on providing their children with a world-class education without the fear of indoctrination or exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts in our classrooms.”

Maybe Long Division included in math texts is problematic.

Although it isn’t, the Florida Department of Education has already voted to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory because it presented “false history” and “denigrates the Founding Fathers.”

Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani has countered.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Florida Republican leaders are preparing to ban Algebra from high schools. They object to the subliminal use of [brackets] as an indoctrination to the concept of inclusion, they don’t like the equal sign, and they hate solving problems!”

The math books being banned were found acceptable when they were first approved by the same Department of Education that now bans them with some approved during the DeSantis administration. Along with this tidbit, neither the Department nor the governor has released the names of which books are out or any of the reasons upon which each is.

They simply claim the intrusion of Critical Race Theory but refuse to show how and where it is happening in the the books.

If almost half the books supposedly contain indoctrination in those things that DeSantis and his ilk find troublesome, should they not show instances where damage has been done?

To make such a law which includes parents having the ability to sue schools and individual teachers if they feel the books used in schools have an agenda it would seem that justifying the law with actual citable instances of things that need to be stopped should be required.

I could have been sued if this law existed for mentioning “toilet” in class or having a kid learn something their parent didn’t which was offensive to the parent.

With almost half the math books being presently used in Florida schools slated for removal or rejection, replacements will be needed.

Who will review them is an important question, as is the more important one, who will the vendors be?

I’m guessing Christian and right-wing publishers

 Perhaps in the word problems in these banned texts it is Father who goes to the store to buy the five apples when it should have been Mother, a Black man was in line at the register instead of bagging the groceries referenced in the problem, or a parent made the child say “Thank you” after Billy gave her one of his oranges leaving him with how many?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

No matter where I had taught or what grade level, I always advised my students to learn as much as they could because people, like employers, want those who they can easily lead, and the less educated a person is the better for them. For them, the best employee is one that does not ask questions or make suggestions but will accept shiny objects without examining them.

Teaching for 38 years meant I have had the opportunity to see where students ended up, and barring the luck of having connections, those willing to learn did better as a group than those who did not and had better lives than the students who just were there.

The less they knew, the more they could be flim-flammed, and the worst thing for authority, be it school, work, society, government, is to have people smart enough to ask questions mainly because very often there are no acceptable answers, In order to have certain societal things work, those in charge need sheep not thinkers.

The sad thing is that certain sectors of the corporate and political world do not want an educated workforce because they cannot justify a lot of what they do and can continue doing if no one calls them on it.

Fox News has decided to become active participants in the dumbing down of America.

Teachers have enough to deal with already. Being public employees, there are segments of society, usually those who learn important things by reading comments on the web without reading the article they are related to, who not only know more about teaching than teachers do, but like to treat teachers like the “Help”.

“I pay your salary” is a common response when a parent does not like what a teacher is saying or doing, or finds the teacher has better justification for their teaching than the parent has to justify their complaint.

I once heard a very direct school secretary telling a parent over the phone,

“You might pay my salary, but I live in town too and contribute equally to it. So, we are even. Now let’s deal with the issue.”

And preferring  the term “public servant” rather than “public employee” seems to give people the impression that teachers are to be subservient and answer to the public no matter how off base the public might be on a given issue.

Teachers are accused of offenses based solely on a child’s attempt to defend him or herself for bad behavior, “The teacher made me”, for not doing school work, “The teacher is mean to me”, holding the child to the same rules and requirement of all other students, “The teacher won’t let me do my work”, and the one that is guaranteed to get the parent to go after the teacher and not the kid, “The teacher GAVE me an F” to avoid tsking responsibility for not studying for the test

Heard them all.

Now Fox wants to add a new charge.

Teachers are pedophiles and enable child abuse.

Speaking to everyone but the teachers in the classroom, a common approach when it comes to education, Fox has decided that children as soon as the first grade are being taught about sex, homosexuality, bisexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

They are supported in this by such statements as that made by the Florida Republican governor’ spokesperson who claimed anyone who opposed the “Don’t Say Gay” law is “probably” a “groomer”.

A groomer is a pedophile, pedophile enabler, or pedophile supporter, who prepares kids to accept the sex that is forced on them and teaches them how to be alluring so they will attract pedophiles.

In my advocacy during the early 2000s it was once claimed that the reason I wanted Gay kids protected in schools and have positive and real information made available to them just as was done with other groups of students, was so I would know who the Gay and vulnerable kids were so I could prey on them.

For this “reason” I had some parents remove their daughters from my classes to keep them safe from the Gay teacher, an action that showed their bigotry was a bit confused and uninformed.

Laura Ingraham, an educational expert and a scholar in the field of gender studies asked,

“When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?”

The answer should be reassuring for her.

They have not. So, never.

Fox news officially claims,

 “Liberals are sexually grooming elementary students.”

Award winning American play-wright David Mamet was on Foxx recently. Mamet is known for such plays as American Buffalo. Glengarry Glen Ross, and The Postman Always Rings Twice. He is not a teacher, nor does he have training or experience in childhood development, education, or sexual studies, but he was not interviewed about literature or the theater, but public education, and he made the claim that male teachers, are “sexual predators.”

“Teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia.”

He cited no studies or facts to back that up.

In my early years of teaching there was an attempt to get more males to enter elementary special education so young kids could see that school and education were not just a “girl thing” taught by mother figures but could see that education applied to all and men, father figures, could help those kids who needed one.

Tucker Carlson has called for men to engage in verbal or physical abuse of school teachers.

“I don’t understand where the men are. Like where are the dads? You know, some teachers pushing sex values on your third grader why don’t you go in and thrash the teacher? Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else’s values on your kid about sex, like where’s the pushback?”

Foxx defended him with,

 “CNN, Washington Post, Vice and more fret that Republicans are worried about child grooming, pedophilia.”

These claims are very dangerous for teachers as they have to deal with people constantly, and some have mental difficulties or poor anger management skills. are public figures and are easily identified in the community, and this often leads to informal parent/teacher conferences in those settings. Not all interactions with parents in stores, restaurants, and on the street are pleasant, and some have become physical attacks when they involve certain parents.

Not bragging but I have received two death threats on my phone’s answering machine and one typed and unsigned one delivered to my teacher mailbox without any stamp or address beyond my name meaning the threatener had been able to casually stroll through the school’s main office and into the teacher’s mailroom to leave it in my cubby hole or it was another employee making then treat.

No one who should have claimed to not know anything and the school’s police officer, claiming there was no way to trace the letter to its source without a return address or a postmark, refused to follow through.

I was also accused of promoting abortion in class because I had a poster of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies in my classroom and my firing was called for by an irate parent, and this resulted in a meeting with administrator where the parent, in quoting the Bible at me, was silenced when she realized I knew the Bible as well as she and was able to counter each of her quotes with another that contradicted it.

Another time, a group of Baptist ministers went to the principal’s house to demand he end the course on Homosexuality and the person teaching it after they had told their congregations about the class and the teacher and encouraged them to go to the school and make those same demands.

There was no such class and no such teacher, but there was a lot of community anger based on a falsehood, and that’s when the death threats came.

If parents are not the type to cause a scene in public or face the teacher for clarification or just for a confrontation, the Florida law promotes parents suing their school districts because they believe or have been told that a teacher is “grooming”.

Fox is pushing this idea knowing full well that there are people out there who will act out about this outrage and teachers can be harmed.

To avoid the charges and threats that could lead to physical attacks, teachers will have to engage in self-censorship resulting in depriving students of a complete education because fear of career ending lawsuits could silence the teacher from dealing with certain topics.

The education of students is dependent on the craziest parent in the school now.

Apparently, with too many kids in the public school system taking teachers’ advice to become educated so they will not get fooled, Fox and its Republican congressional employees need a different way to keep the kids dumb.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Even if only a few people have been paying attention and many seem to ignore the information and reminders when supplied, this coming May ends not just a chapter in my life, but the end of the book if you take the whole situation as a complete and separate sequence of events with a beginning, a body of events, and a measurable end point. 

I have remained silent about one aspect of the events, but, after all this time, I think it safe to open up and, perhaps union leaders will learn something.

Although my 2009 Civil Court case was ostensibly about my claim that I had been wrongfully dismissed from my teaching position as it was based on fabricated evidence and documentation, it would have had a broader application to all teachers if the union leadership did not get mired in the Gay teacher getting fired part of it, but saw how the Gay teacher was fired and how the process, applied as it was to many teachers, had unfairly arrived at that conclusion.

As it was, the reluctance of Union leadership to take on such a case was the fear that by defending a Gay teacher with it being in the Buckle of the Bible Belt, members would leave the union and weaken it. But I was a dues-paying member who had been on the Union’s executive board and very active in Union activities and, having had years of experience in Union activity and leadership in other places, I knew as a member, the Union really had no choice in taking my case, although the depth of their efforts in it was up to them.

Initially I received more excuses why my case would be a loser and why the district certainly would not be so careless as to leave such an easily followed paper trail exposing their machinations. Internally the case was seen as a nuisance that just needed to go away and the union hired an outside attorney who knew of my situation and wanted to pursue it. He saw the full value of the case but was as successful as I was in getting the Union leadership to see what the case actually meant.

Although by contract a teacher cannot be dismissed without just cause, which means any accusation upon which the dismissal is based must be accompanied by evidence to support that, what the contract does not cover is how this evidence is collected and how it is reviewed both in closed and open sessions of the school board.

The process had generally been that if for whatever reason beyond gross and obvious incompetence an administrator wanted a teacher dismissed be it political, religious, or personal differences, or the administrator would like the job open to someone with whom they have a bond such as a friend or relative, in lieu of real evidence, what they needed would be fabricated.

Meanwhile, after collecting what the administration considered evidence, the teachers would be shown the evidence and given the option to go before the board and deal with accusations and defenses in public, potentially losing their appeal, and being unable to get another job in the field because of the dismissal and the reasons for it on their record.

The other option offered to teachers was the chance for avoiding all that by simply accepting the dismissal quietly and leaving, maintaining control of the narrative until they left if their dismissal was not immediate, and gossip began. In exchange for this silent departure, all the documents except the good ones on file would be handed to the teacher to destroy and even really bad teachers could get employment elsewhere.

Even if the evidence was so totally fabricated as to be obviously so, this was usually the one chosen because the administration of the district controlled the hearing according to a process that prevented a teacher from presenting evidence the administration thought might disprove their charges or answering questions about things that needed clarification. Prior to the hearing, all the teacher’s evidence had to be handed over to the administration’s attorney who would excise any evidence in favor of the teacher and return what remained to the teacher or the teacher’s representative, if there was one, and was the only evidence the teacher was allowed to present.

There were other procedural actions that were allowed and disallowed such as who could speak and who could answer questions during a dismissal hearing, but the application of the rules was dependent on how the situation would affect the mostly predetermined outcome.

With teachers quietly leaving, this system was never exposed until the Gay teacher decided not to go quietly and fought the dismissal in court where raw, unredacted evidence could be presented to the judge without administrative editing.

When the Gay teacher won both at the district and appellate court levels, the union leadership was glad the Gay stuff was over, and they could move on. What they failed to see was that when the standard procedure was challenged, all that it was based on was exposed, and, therefore, being so exposed could be ended and a fairer and more just process would have to be devised that did not victimize teachers.

In spite of prevailing in both courts, thereby showing his dismissal was wrongful and based on fabrication, this  teacher could not return to his previous assignment from which he had been wrongfully removed because, assuming they would prevail in the district court, instead of holding the position open by filling it with a substitute, they had hired a full time teacher and it would be mean of the Gay teacher, the person who won the case to be re-instated, to have that new teacher transferred to another school.

The administration also claimed that his return would be bad for morale, although they never stated whose, the administration who lost the case and had their methods exposed, or the teachers who would see that one of them prevailed.

By contract, regardless of the administration’s hiring hubris, the teacher was to be returned to the position he had before his wrongful dismissal, but going along with this, the Union leadership had no problem having this teacher who had just proven his competence as a teacher in court sent to a high school that was in the final year of at-risk status and which at the end of the year would go through a required reformation beginning with only 50% of the teachers allowed to remain, the rest having to find jobs at other schools, work as substitutes, or go to another school district.

If the school district truly believed the teacher was incompetent, it was questionable why he would be sent to a failing school in need of good teachers.

In spite of having only been at the new school for only three-fourths of the year, getting good evaluations of his teaching performance, and having other members of the English department adopting his method of teaching vocabulary, the teacher was put on the list of those not to be retained. The principal, rightfully, chose to keep teachers with experience at the school and often made the tough decision which of two good teachers should be kept, the newer or the more experienced one.

As a result of this, not only had he not been returned to his original school and classroom assignment where such a school rating was avoided by good student achievement scores partially due to his student’s measurable performance on required standardized tests, he had been sent to a high school that was in its fifth year as a failing school with its complete overhaul inevitable, resulting in him, in spite of his performance, having to find another school that would take him, reduce his position from full time teacher to substitute, or go elsewhere.

This was perfectly fine with union leadership.

He should be happy he had a teaching position if he got one.

He, along with a number of non-retained teachers, secured a position at another high school which was in its second year of rebuilding after having been rated as a failed school, and that meant there would be a new school-wide approach to things that the teachers already on campus had had a year of training in, while those arriving new to the school had none.

New teachers that year were required to abandon any previously successful approaches they had used in class and begin using the new methods required of all teachers based on all the training workshops the previous year. The new teachers had to attend all the meetings and workshops concerning training in the second half of the new approach while playing catch up in what the older faculty had training in the year before on their own.

They would be evaluated on how well they applied the new method and were held to the same level of mastery of the new method as those with training.

The new teachers, having come from elsewhere, relied on what they knew when approaching their classes dovetailing in the new approaches as they learned them to be eventually up to speed, but found their evaluations were being based on the principal’s criteria requiring them to already be up to speed.

They also noticed some odd practices and asked questions, and this was inconvenient for the principal.

By contract, if a teacher is deemed to need a plan for improvement because of poor performance, the teacher and administrator were to design it together making it relevant to that particular teacher. Obviously, the plan for improvement for a math teacher would be different for that of an English teacher.

However, in this case, just as with what had happened at his original high school, when the Gay teacher was handed his already written plan and told to sign it, the principal claimed the signature fulfilled the requirement of teacher input. Beyond that, each teacher who received a plan of improvement by the end of the first semester, and it was the majority of the faculty, regardless of subject taught or what grade level, got plans for improvement that were the same, word for word, with a common failing being failure to keep accurate grades and attendance.

Because of his past experiences as a Union building representative in a variety of cities over the years, the Gay teacher had developed the habit of collecting documentation at the first questionable act of an administrator in relation to the contract. One practice was to make photocopies of the week’s gradebook and daily attendance as back up because these were all entered on computer, and computers can crash.

When receiving his plan for improvement, the teacher was shown pages from his allegedly poorly kept computer grade book and sloppy attendance recording on the principal’s office computer screen, and in some cases it was noticeable immediately because of the grades of some students, and the obviously incorrect attendance dates what was being shown did not match his hard copies or changes had been made. He later went and ran off the principal computer pages to compare with the originals and the paper attendance and grade book that was not required, but he kept in his desk for his own records and whose existence was unknown to anyone else and saw the discrepancies.

In the first attempt to dismiss him, one of the charges was that he kept poor records, but the trial had revealed that the administrator responsible for his evaluations had gone onto his attendance and grade book page on the district’s teacher tool webpage without his knowledge and played around with grades and attendance changing some in the process and then using those changes as evidence of poor record keeping. No one was aware at that time that he had a second hardcopy grade and attendance book and that he ran off his computer attendance and grades weekly.

Having these records questioned again had raised a red flag.

Both his printed computer pages and his hand-written records matched. The principals did not.

He also discovered that in his case, and, as it turned out in others, on the most minor of transgressions, the simplest violation of a procedure, such as forgetting to lock the classroom door at the beginning of class, was not addressed in an informal way with the teacher, but, rather was mentioned in e-mails, copies of which were sent to central administration personnel before a teacher was even aware there was such a transgression. Forgetting to lock a door one day in a semester did not require notification to central administration, just a reminder to the teacher to make sure his door was locked.

 The principal then notified Union leadership claiming he had evidence to show the teacher was, actually, incompetent and he would be requesting the Board to dismiss him. In response the Union leadership decided the district court and the appellate court wins were pure luck, so they would not invest time or money in a case whose luck might run out at the Supreme Court level to which the district wanted to take the matter.

In spite of the Gay teacher then showing the Union leadership the evidence he had that exposed the principal’s questionable actions and the violations of the contract regarding teacher evaluations and plans for improvement, the Union president supported the claims of the principal and, missing a huge red flag, made his decision not to defend the teacher any further.

He had won his case, was assigned to a classroom, so it was over as far as leadership was concerned.

The teacher could not afford to pursue the case on his own and saw that this unnecessary prolongation of the case was a distraction from the actual issue—the safety of Gay kids in school—keeping attention on him rather than his goal.

The teacher agreed to leave the district to both end the distraction from the real issue and save the taxpayer money being spent solely for the administration to put off accepting defeat. He got a fully paid administrative leave until the end of the school year, received $4,354 for his accumulated sick leave because he would not accept the pittance teachers were given upon retirement for all unused sick and personal days, and a special arrangement with the state for an early retirement pension that was an extremely rare thing.

He did agree to the administration stipulation that he never teach in the city again, step on any school property without prior permission, or take any further action on this situation unless the district did.

What he did not agree to was never telling his story publicly, a sort of Non- Disclosure Agreement.

The union got $24,000 in attorney fees for the cost of the trial and the initial appeal and defense.

The month after the teacher had left the system, both the principal and the Union president attended a conference on teacher evaluations at which the principal declared,

“We must have all highly effective teachers. We can’t even have average teachers. Across the country, at our persistently low-performing schools, you are going to see something like this,”

before offering as proof of his seriousness that he had started the 2010-11 school year with 55 teachers and “exited” (fired) all but 15 of them, using an evaluation system that set expectations high and held teachers accountable.

In spite of the Union president having seen the evidence and should have recognized these lofty ideals and his achieving them was based on an abuse of the evaluation system and teachers, the president of the Union praised the principal’s achievement in eliminating Union members under questionable procedures saying,

“We were really disappointed on the number of teachers who flat out said ‘We’re not doing it.”

The “it”  was the new methodologies ,full training in which was denied to the teachers who arrive at the beginning of the second year of instruction on the new program and had to learn the previous year’s training on their own, and there was no refusal, but, rather, constant requests for that training that were ignored or at least the acknowledgement that new teachers could not possibly master that of which they had no knowledge and should be given the opportunity to catch up.

The Union president agreed with the principal that the teachers were refusing to comply with the requirement to use the new method when in reality, they were attempting to apply it as they learned it.

He also supported the principal’s claim that he employed an evaluation system that set expectations high and held teachers accountable in spite of the documentation he had been shown.

It was decided at the conference at which the principal was a star that attendees would hear about different ways to quantitatively evaluate teachers, in part using student test score results.

The Union president was aware of the grade changing. He had been informed of this and shown the documents among them what had been collected while the Gay teacher had been attempting to have his senior students apply for a local foundation grant toward their college. The students only needed to fill out a form, write an essay, and include their transcripts. As he had each student bring their information in individual envelopes to be placed in a single large envelope on a set day that the teacher would drop off at the foundation on the way home since he drove right by the foundation’s headquarters, he found as he photocopied each transcript, front and back, as a backup copy in case one was needed that the majority of his students had not taken the required standardized test before graduation with very little time and opportunity to take them all before graduation. With all his senior classes labelled “Honors English” there should be no reason to have allowed honors students’ exemptions to a state requirement. Some had taken some tests, the majority none

Of course, any college receiving an application from any graduate of that school would be more than happy to accept honors students. Test scores and real grades would have shown this title was bestowed in spite of actual academic achievement, but without them, the label alone, as deceitful as it was, helped with college admission but had future college disaster written all over it.

The principal had a scam going regarding student achievement but evidence  of this was ignored and all those teachers with plans of improvement and who were “exited” were disgraced and their departure misrepresented.

A year later, after the teacher had left the system and moved out of state to be closer to his elderly father, the teacher received an email from an unknown attorney hoping he had some of the records that the students and faculty who thought he was a little off about collecting now found was needed for an important investigation.

He sent hard copies and digital copies of everything he had shown the Union leadership.

In the time between his departure and the phone call, Students and some faculty had called for an investigation because students had found when they got to college that they had not received an education.

An investigation found that the principal made an “extremely high” number of unauthorized grade changes between 2009 and 2012 without informing teachers of them.

Along with changing failing grades to passing ones, the district hired independent attorney who investigated the claims against the principal found he had been reporting false attendance to the central office and had been giving students credits for classes they weren’t even in.

The report stated the principal “did not comply with board policy” in changing grades or documenting changes and there no policies that no policies “authorized the grade changes.”

The principal could not prove his claim that his grade changes were the result of teacher requests or for any other reason because he “was not able to produce records relating to these grade changes, and therefore, little documented proof exists”, according to the report.

It was found that at the end of school year after the teacher had left the district that approximately 68 seniors, his students, had had their transcripts altered to include grades and credit “in courses for which the students had not registered and for there is no record that they had taken,” courses needed to meet certain graduation requirements.

One student who was not on his roster at any time, one whom he had never met and who acknowledged she had never met or spoken to him, found she had an A in senior English without ever having attended a class she had not been enrolled in.

The principal had not only changed teachers’ attendance records, but he did so “by the frequent and excessive withdrawals of students” and “dropping students from the rolls” before they reached required attendance thresholds.

While the Union leadership was happy to go along with the principal’s machinations in spite of having been shown the evidence that the evaluation system for teachers was being abused and teachers could find themselves potentially liable for falsely manipulating attendance and falsely recording grades while being totally unaware of any grade and attendance changes, the former employees’ and students’ had filed a complaint against the school district with the U.S. Department of Education, one that the Union, had it not been so dismissive of the Gay Thing should have filed for the sake of the teachers.

Employees had been wrongfully terminated when they spoke out about the principal’s questionable practices, something the Union leadership was comfortable with.

As a result, where this could have been done by the Union, the complacent community rallied around the students and the school, and the district implemented several safeguards to assure that student records are accurate including training for counselors, ongoing transcript reviews, and new technology that offers an additional layer of checks and balances.

The principal is gone.

But so are the teachers wrongfully dismissed and the students who began finding in their post high school life that they really were not given a decent education.

Sitting 1,781 miles away on the patio of a house on Cape Cod, the teacher got a phone call informing him that all the evidence he had given to the attorneys that he had first presented to the Union which chose to ignore it, had been the necessary documentation to seal the case against the principal. Until those documents had arrived all the attorney had was anecdotal evidence but nothing tangible. The Union had been shown the documents and had ignored them for at least three years and probably never admitting they had been made aware of the problem but chose inaction.

It has been twelve years since the union saw and ignored potent evidence, and a few less since the investigation determined that the fired teachers whose dismissals the Union leadership accepted as proof of the principals’ effectiveness, had been wrongful.

Perhaps, they are owed compensation from the district that dismissed them and the Union leadership and by extension the Union who refused to fight these dismissals.

But certainly there is a question as to why, in spite of having been shown the evidence later used in an investigation that found the abuse of teacher evaluations, manipulation of grades to have it look like the principal with his leadership and his methodologies had increased the school’s graduation rate and had increased the number of students accepted into colleges, and  attendance changes that deceived people who needed accurate records, the Union chose to do nothing.

He had won his case, had been instrumental in others winning theirs, and knew the teachers had the wherewithal to have the evaluation system less corrupt, but the Union would not look.

There was one person who observe all this and took action. The Republican governor of the state was so angry that a lowly teacher, and a Gay one at that, had won in district court because she believed teachers were evaluated honestly and all dismissals were proper without looking at the details, that she advocated for and got the Republican led legislature to eliminate the Trial de Novo law which the teacher had use to get to district court and exonerate himself. He had been one of two teachers since that law came into existence to have used it and the only one of the two to win. So, based on one teacher prevailing in court, teachers can no longer challenge a dismissal in the that manner and must accept the School Board’s decision no matter how fabricated the justifications for the dismissal are or how many violations to its own established procedures the Board members committed during the dismissal hearing such as, in this case, improper voting.

The burden of proof in a dismissal hearing is on the administration to present solid evidence that the board would accept as valid and strong. The teacher did not have that burden of proof, only having to show the weakness of the evidence without presenting his own case. If the administration did not present a strong enough case, the vote was to go toward the teacher’s retention. However, on the night of the dismissal hearing, one member left before the vote, another abstained which was not included in Board established procedure, and two members, after admitting that neither side had presented a strong case, a requirement of only one side, voted to support the administration in a clear violation of procedure, one made more ironic by one of the charges against the teacher being that he, allegedly, did not follow all procedures 100% of the time.

Meanwhile the Gay teacher had to supplement the meager early retirement pension he got from Oklahoma with a retail job at a discount outlet on Cape Cod until he could apply for Social Security.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.