TX: Bigotry In The Classroom
This is a troubling story, for several reasons.
Georgia Clark was an English teacher in the Fort Worth Independent School District, a district with over 80% Hispanic student population. Clark sent a message to Donald Trump, asking him to do something about all the illegal [sic] immigrant students. Her request included charming lines like "anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated" and a request for "help reporting illegals in the Fort Worth public school system" and even a complaint that "the Mexicans refuse to honor our flag."
But it turns out that Clark is a little fuzzy on how to work the electric tweeter machine, and posted her various complaints as regular tweet and not direct messages, and that's where her latest troubles began. So her request for protection so that she could make her requests anonymously was, well, not so useful.
FWISD had reportedly already had Clark on their radar for not-entirely-supportive language used with students; she was apparently almost fired in 2013. This blew up in the community, and the district made the obvious call-- they put her on leave immediately, then fired her.
Clark didn't want to go, so she appealed the firing, and last week, Texas Education Agency commissioner Mike Morath ordered that she be reinstated, with back pay.
The FWISD board is appealing, and took a symbolic revote just to be clear that they really mean it, and again unanimously canned Clark. The board says that they believe the state's ruling is based on a procedural technicality, but the conclusion of the state's report also says
Clark’s Twitters were a private citizen’s free speech about a matter of public concern and was CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: TX: Bigotry In The Classroom