John Clearwater, Princeton
Times of Trenton headline: “Teacher who made biased comments agrees to quit.”
This front-page headline on Jan. 30 makes one’s blood boil. Again and again newspapers like The Times choose to highlight need for corrective action and discipline of persons within our education establishment and public service for discriminatory attitudes or remarks.
To quote from this article, the teacher made “racist, sexist and homophobic remarks.” Having done so, he is not fired or disciplined, but “agrees to quit.”
As a former public school and currently a private school board member, I was shocked and dismayed when I read further that there were “tenure charges” pending citing the teacher “ displayed a complete lack of ability, effort and motivation to teach”!
Further, he “frequently arrived late to work, submitted poorly drafted or even stolen lesson plans. … inaccurately graded assignments” and was “insubordinate, defiant, exhibits a threatening demeanor to all.” Is it really possible that we are dealing a tenured teacher ? Yes it is and it is clear the school board as usual took the easy way out.
Resolution and disposition of this case by allowing this teacher to quit because of “biased comments” shows once again flaws in leadership and administration within public school systems. These serious shortcomings are unfortunately exacerbated by school districts and state personnel policies and union agreements that make performance-based adverse personnel actions like tenure cases costly and time consuming. School boards and superintendents can and will find any readily available means to avoid them.
John Clearwater
Princeton
