Art teacher lawsuit?

Looks like Ms. McGee hasn’t met expectations since her last hearing according to the school board:

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

District officials have repeatedly pointed to other performance issues and said the trip didn’t spark the reprimands.Ms. McGee became the subject of frequent media reports over the last month after the board rejected her August request to transfer to another Frisco school.

District officials said they didn’t want to give Ms. McGee an escape hatch to move elsewhere without addressing other issues, including lesson-plan preparation.

But Ms. McGee said she received a negative review and several directives from Fisher principal Nancy Lawson only after a parent reportedly complained about the trip.

The school board stopped short of terminating Ms. McGee’s contract Monday night. But after a closed-door session, Dr. Reedy said he would recommend that her contract not be renewed.

“If they had good reason to fire her, they would have, but they don’t,” Mr. Dunn said. “It’s mind-boggling.”

Buddy Minett, school board president, declined to talk about the case.

“This is something where it’s really better if we don’t comment,” he said.

I’m sure that the administration has of course, documented her inability to improve her lesson plans. After all, this was the rational some board members gave at the previous hearing.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Collin County News:

Some board members said it appeared that Ms. Lawson was trying to improve the art teacher’s performance and should be allowed to do so.

Now if she was such a horrible teacher, shouldn’t the board be looking at the administration of the school who was willing to accept her transfer? Doesn’t this show poor judgement on that prinicipal’s part by offering her the transfer? Oh that’s right, the board doesn’t want to stand in the way of principals running their schools no matter how arbitrary her actions may be. Remember, there was no written record of previous reprimands, whether she deserved them or not.

I see this as a case where the board realizes it screwed up by reacting to one over-zealous parent and is now trying to bury its mess as quickly as possible. I can’t say what kind of teacher McGee was before all of this and whether or not she deserved to be reprimanded. I do sincerely hope that she was smart enough to dot every i and cross every t these past six weeks and be able to sue the heck out of the district.

No, that’s not fair to all of the teachers and employees who are doing a great job for Frisco. But it would be doing them a service as well by letting the board know that they have to hold principals accountable for completing their duties as required. The principal tried to use a parent complaint as the basis to take action against a teacher. They refused to substantiate the complaint in any way that would allow the teacher to address the issue. And when it became clear that most people didn’t consider the complaint by itself worthy of discipline, all of a sudden the board hears about previous “verbal” reprimands and goes along with it.

I have said all along, this is not about whether or not McGee had work issues. It has to do with a principal and a board being able to discredit a teacher without adequate proof. The rules that the administration and board ignored are designed to protect all teachers. For those who say that by following the rules, the school may be keeping an ineffective teacher in the classroom and the students are the only ones who suffer, I would point out that the reason that the teacher is still there is because the administration didn’t do its job in the first place!

And if you think this is exactly the sort of thing that encourages law suit abuse, who’s fault is it? But it doesn’t really matter, does it? The board of Frisco ISD has decided to go ahead and pay the potential lawsuit costs (I know, I’m guessing here) to make the problem go away. In six months, no one is going to care about how much Frisco ISD paid to settle except the insurance company. If anyone really does care, they would do something about it at the next school board election.