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Female Pott County Teacher caught with Male Student in Car

Posted on Friday, March 28, 2008 at 10:32AM by Registered CommenterNathan Greene | CommentsPost a Comment

I was reading some Midwest blogs and message boards this morning and I ran on to a news story about a 32 year-old female high school teacher being caught with a 17 year old male student in Pottawatomie County. Now before you get too worked up by this is in Kansas not Iowa.

Just a quick side note, I think the TV station might be wise to remove the Teacher of the Year advertisement that’s sits right on top of the story on their website.

The reason I’m writing about this today isn’t just because it shows a failure of our society, but that it highlights one of the issues that opponents have with the collective bargaining overhaul.

Jack Hill the president of the Iowa Association of School Boards wrote the following in an Des Moines Register editorial:

“Under current law, local school boards and administration decide whether a teacher's competence or integrity is lacking and whether the employment contract should be terminated. The board's decision to terminate the contract can be appealed to an adjudicator, whose ruling can be appealed to district court.

This bill removes the ability to appeal that decision to district court. School board decisions, overturned by adjudicators, are regularly upheld by the courts.”

Adjudicators have over ruled local school boards on a number of no-brainer cases where the board has ruled to have the teacher terminated.

For example, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of the school board in Sheldon Community School District v. Lundblad despite its loss at the adjudicator level. The case involved a Sheldon teacher who berated and humiliated students. In response to a student who had written a paper on teen suicide, the teacher had suggested the student "try it" for extra credit. The teacher was repeatedly instructed to improve his behavior and was ordered to take classes to do so. When the behavior didn't improve, the board terminated the teacher.

The Adjudicator over-ruled the school board!

In Board of Directors of the Fairfield Community School District v. Justmann, the board terminated a teacher's contract for engaging in a sexual relationship with a student. The board lost that decision at the adjudicator level but eventually won at the Iowa Supreme Court.

Question: Do you think it’s the right to give these non-elected adjudicator veto power over your locally elected school boards?

It’s very clear that Senate and House Democrats do.  Is this the type of “change” you voted for in November of 2006?

Didn’t think so!

 

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