The Courthouse News Service reports that a charter school fired three teachers “immediately” after they testified in a lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency.
Continue reading...According to a WSBT TV report in the South Bend Tribune, Kimberly Hester, a teacher’s aide at Frank Squires Elementary in Cassopolis, Michigan, is in a legal battle with Lewis Cass Intermediate School District (LCISD) for suspending her from her position after refusing to give the district access to her Facebook page. Hester says she became a [...]
Continue reading...An African-American high school student in Fairfax County, Virginia claims that his English teacher interrupted his recitation of the Langston Hughes poem “Ballad of the Landlord” to instruct him to read the poem “blacker.”
Continue reading...A white teacher has filed suit against Chicago Public Schools (CPS) after being suspended by his principal for five days without pay, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. The teacher, Lincoln Brown, claims he used the n-word in front of his majority African-American class at Murray Language Academy in October 2011 after one of his students passed a note to a girl with rap lyrics including the word.
Continue reading...A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (NY, VT, CT) has ruled that a former probationary teacher, who was denied tenure and terminated at the end of the school year, has stated a valid cause of action for retaliation based on exercise of her First Amendment free speech rights. Rejecting the district officials’ argument that the speech was too distantly removed by time and geography, the panel said the “First Amendment protects precisely such public participation, both at the time it occurs and ever after.”
Continue reading...According to the Record, Administrative Law Judge Ellen Bass has ruled that elementary school teacher Jennifer O’Brien, who referred to her first-grade students “future criminals” in a Facebook post, should be discharged from her tenured position.
Continue reading...According to an Associated Press (AP) report in Education Week, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed legislation repealing a contentious law that had limited online communication between teachers and students and caused a judge to warn that it infringed on free-speech rights.
Continue reading...The St. Louis Beacon reports that the Missouri House has voted 139-2 to eliminate language in the state’s newly enacted “Facebook law” that, according to a court, apparently barred most social-media communication between teachers and students. Now that both the state House and Senate have approved the amending legislation, it heads to Gov. Nixon for his signature.
Continue reading...In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that a California school district did not violate a high school teacher’s free speech or equal protection rights, or the Establishment Clause, when the school’s principal ordered the teacher to remove banners displayed in his classroom that contained religious references.
Continue reading...Following a preliminary court order prohibiting implementation of the new state law banning teachers from engaging in online social networking with former and current students, the Chesterfield Patch reports that the legislature may repeal key provisions of the law.
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