Post by Moses on May 27, 2005 14:30:35 GMT -5
A child is forced to pick up rocks all year for failing to do schoolwork, and a concerned teacher is fired for helping her.
7 teachers quit to protest firing of colleague
May 26, 2005
EAST LYNNE, Mo. -- Seven of 10 classroom teachers in a tiny school district resigned after a colleague was fired for helping an 11-year-old girl who was left alone in a playground to pick up rocks as punishment.
The fourth-grader in the East Lynne School District in Cass County was assigned the task last September for refusing to do her schoolwork, but she was unsupervised except for a security camera. The playground was near a road but inside a fence.
Objected to girl's punishment
The fired teacher, Christa Price, went to the principal -- who is also the district superintendent -- and asked him to reconsider the punishment, but he wouldn't. So on her free period, Price helped the girl pick up rocks. Other teachers watched the girl the next day.
At contract time in March, Supt. Dan Doerhoff recommended firing Price, a popular teacher with good performance evaluations, for insubordination. Seven other teachers chose not to return their contracts.
''If a teacher who advocates on behalf of safety of a student is not fit to be a teacher at East Lynne or anywhere in Missouri according to this administration, then none of us are fit to teach at East Lynne,'' the teachers who resigned said Tuesday in a statement.
One of the teachers who resigned, Jenny Neemann, said having a security camera on the area where the girl worked wasn't enough.
''Somebody could have nabbed her in 10 seconds,'' she said.
Doerhoff has since dropped the punishment of picking up rocks because of the uproar.
AP
7 teachers quit to protest firing of colleague
May 26, 2005
EAST LYNNE, Mo. -- Seven of 10 classroom teachers in a tiny school district resigned after a colleague was fired for helping an 11-year-old girl who was left alone in a playground to pick up rocks as punishment.
The fourth-grader in the East Lynne School District in Cass County was assigned the task last September for refusing to do her schoolwork, but she was unsupervised except for a security camera. The playground was near a road but inside a fence.
Objected to girl's punishment
The fired teacher, Christa Price, went to the principal -- who is also the district superintendent -- and asked him to reconsider the punishment, but he wouldn't. So on her free period, Price helped the girl pick up rocks. Other teachers watched the girl the next day.
At contract time in March, Supt. Dan Doerhoff recommended firing Price, a popular teacher with good performance evaluations, for insubordination. Seven other teachers chose not to return their contracts.
''If a teacher who advocates on behalf of safety of a student is not fit to be a teacher at East Lynne or anywhere in Missouri according to this administration, then none of us are fit to teach at East Lynne,'' the teachers who resigned said Tuesday in a statement.
One of the teachers who resigned, Jenny Neemann, said having a security camera on the area where the girl worked wasn't enough.
''Somebody could have nabbed her in 10 seconds,'' she said.
Doerhoff has since dropped the punishment of picking up rocks because of the uproar.
AP