Carol Burton will be back at Garfield
Judge George Finkle decided that the district's decision to dismiss Garfield choir teacher Carol Burton for procedure violations during a choir field trip to New Orleans was excessive. See the Seattle Times article here.
Comments
On the other I am distressed by legal precedent which makes it harder to dismiss lower performing teachers, when I already think that is too hard in this district.
-sleeper
I agree that this may be an unfortunate precedent.
"At the end of a news conference Tuesday, she whooped and pumped her fists in the air.
“Thank God, it’s over,” she said. “I’m back, baby.” "
No remorse, no understanding of the bad example she has set for students and families.
Disgusted
The district still can limit Ms. Burton's autonomy. They may have to take Ms. Burton back but that doesn't mean she will come back in the same capacity. Meaning, the district could say that she can no longer go on field trips (which I advocated for given her poor judgment on the field trip in question.)
I, too, wish she made some kind of mea culpa.
Regarding Ms Burton's remorse, she has expressed it many, many times. She has been through over a year of h*ll. She admitted her mistakes - in court and in public. But she was also rightfully angry at the reckless and arbitrary manner in which the District handled this incident and her disciplinary decision. And a court of law has now agreed with her. She has every right to be happy - and isn't it good to have a teacher who is this happy to be going back to the classroom, to do what she loves? Yes, she got her job back, but this is a teacher who most suffered from being separated from her students and program.
Teachers are human. They make mistakes. District administrators are human too - and make mistakes. All happened here. It's now time for everyone to move on - teachers, parents, and District - and work to do better in the future.
This was a private arbitration? Is this the normal procedure for matters like this?
Did he issue a written ruling with findings of fact/conclusions of law? Will this be made public or does it go into a personal file and then not be subject to FOIA?
I think there were 2 questions (some in court, others not):
If this teacher broke the rules, were procedures followed (no)
If a student was assaulted, what was the proximate cause (not the teacher).
Juryisout
-- Chaperone
What a message this sends. Can't wait for the 5th grade camps this spring when teachers are basically allowed to sit around the campfire and drink with the parents. This should be interesting.
Disappointed
Patrick, I'm sure they know who didn't pass on the reason but we will never know who it is nor if they were questioned about it.
Stop being unrealistic Puritans. You're making I worse.
Reader
Also, you do know that 2.5 drinks could probably get you pulled over for DUI? And if a parent on a trip suddenly needed to be on point for a student who may get hurt and needs an adult to take charge that 2.5 drinks could interfere with that?
Parents have a right to believe that the people who go on these trips will watch over their children.
As for this particular case, I agree with Melissa: I think this particular teacher should not be going on any field trips any time soon.
To be a chaperone does not mean you are on vacation, it does not mean you get a break from being responsible for all the children present, and in order to be responsible, you have to be sober, undistracted and present. Certainly you get a break to sleep, but if needed, you have to be alert. I had to get up and follow my middle school girls, in the middle of the night for example, because they had plotted to meet the boys, Its possible it might have been harmless, but I was not going to take that chance.( my own daughter was not in my cabin, are you kidding?)
Some may like Burton's way of teaching, but is the lesson theyll remember, the one she intended?
I suggest that the district have a safety workshop and at least two chaperones on each field trip attend the workshop.
Instructions for first procedures etc, should be covered. Since schools tend to go to the same places, they could have a panel discussion to learn what worked and what didn't and how to make it a worthwhile educational experience.
Private schools don't always use parents as chaperones, they hire them. That could also be an option, if parents
Concerned dad
R
I'm certain that were the drinking more discrete - away from where the students could see it or know about it - it would not have become an issue.
The district staff person who made the decision not to pass along the information about the student's discipline history is known and has not been disciplined because that decision was within the scope of the employee's authority to decide based on her professional judgement. The employee has the duty of deciding what information is passed along and what is not, and did not break any rule and therefore is not subject to any punishment. You can question her judgement, but she didn't break any rules.
Finally, let's remember that Ms Burton will be disciplined for her violations of the procedures. No one is getting away with anything here. She will be disciplined, just not fired.
To me the point is that the "I just love to fire people" credo in the District's Labor Relations Department (direct quote repeated many times) has not served the District well.
This over-reach is what you get and the HR Executive Director (Jones) during the entire period needs to be held accountable too. Not just given a desk and phone to draw a salary at.
If they need to hire a bus, the kids can hold bakesales & carwashes to do so.
They dont need charter buses, yellow buses go to the same place.
Since Garfield has a history of employing teachers and counselors with questionable judgement ( including principal & vice- principal), I wouldn't expect discipline to be very meaningful.
It concerns me that some dont feel its reasonable for chaperones and parents to refrain from substances when supervising children.
Supervising children including high school students requires ATLEAST as much thought and attention as driving.
Isnt it prohibited on the form? ( Apparently not, perhaps that should e changed)
https://www.ocps.net/lc/southwest/ejy/parents/Documents/chaperoneapplication.pdf
I've got an idea folks: Do a better job of raising kids so they don't grope people or sneak out of cabins at night to go have sex with other students. How about that?
Or what about this: If you drop a known groper into a group of unsuspecting kids, how about informing someone, at least, of the groper's past or propensities? If not for that incident, there'd have been no firing of Burton, as anyone with a pulse knows.
Burton broke a rule. She didn't grope or allegedly rape anyone, nor did she get drunk. Regardless, "tough on crime" SPS went full CYA JackAss and threw her under the bus to make an example. The firing was overkill times ten when suspension, discipline, involuntary leave, counseling, or even rehab were on the table. If poor judgment is enough to fire teachers, close down SPS today.
"But rules are rules" is always the mindless mantra of the untouched.
WSDWG
On one hand, we have a 5th Grade Camp trip that is cancelled because a couple of students are unable to maintain appropriate behavior and the school has been unsuccessful at keeping them inside the lines. Over in that thread, we have parents repeating over and over again that school activities are for all, and if all can't go, no one can go.
Meanwhile, over here, we have a high school kid who had a past history of bad behavior. No one told the teacher, and she took the relatively new to her class student on a trip. His bad behavior led to the uncovering of her bad behavior and she is fired, then reinstated. In this thread, and in past ones on the subject, we hear, if only the district had told Burton about his past, she would never have taken him and this wouldn't have happened.
Wait, are school activities for all, and if all can't go, no one can go? Or do we still actually have the ability to enforce punishments for bad behavior?
Which Way?
It's not just the district staff member who knew this boy presented a safety risk - his parents did too. What were they thinking sending him on that field trip?
If the kids at Stevens or the Garfield groper were mine, I'd be chaperoning every field trip and volunteering during recess until the issue was resolved. Where are the parents?
No, that's what others have said but the record, Ms. Burton's own words from the investigation show that she would have wanted to know about the student's past issues but that she still would have considered taking him. You can read it for yourself.
If you read the investigation, you can see what the student's mother did and didn't do.
Lynn, c'mon. Most parents work and cannot be at recess at their child's school. It's up to the school to do its job.
Melissa is right, Ms. Burton stated that if she were required to take him, she would have, and she would have had a plan to protect the boy and other students.
GHSmom
I know most parents aren't available to be at school. I'd consider the kids at Stevens to be in crisis though - and would react to it in that way. Are they supporting the school in changing their child's behavior? If this has been going on all year, it doesn't seem like they are.
As for the Garfield student, if they could afford to send him to private school, they likely have more flexibility than most.
I guess I'm just expressing how shocked I'd be if my child's behavior caused so much trouble at school.
You're assuming the school is trying to change the behavior. My son was at Stevens and he was on track to being one of those 'bad kids' - I didn't even start getting notification that he was being sent to the office until a couple weeks in (and once I got a discipline report that covered three days' worth of incidents - that was super useful). The only strategies the school used when he was acting out were sending him out of the classroom (with 27 kids at the start of the year, some others of whom had their own issues) to the resource room or sometimes to the office to hang out with the secretaries. When I met with Ms. Archer (after asking for a couple months) all she had for me was to suggest we get him enrolled in Special Ed and it was going to take another month and a half to even start the process (this was in December and my son was screaming and hitting me every day for about twenty minutes when it was time to leave the house to go to school). I promise I was as involved as a person with a full-time job could be (yes, I chaperoned all the field trips), and we pulled him from the school when the daily reports his teacher sent us (which have to have been a significant investment of time on her part) indicated that he was really having no good days at all. I got no other communications from anyone in administration at all. If we hadn't had the ability to pull him out HE'D be one of 'those kids' now and I don't know what else I could have done. Yes, it was shocking; it was the only thing I thought about for months, and I had no control over what happened to him for the six hours a day he spent there. If you don't actually know what the situation is, I suggest considering defaulting to sympathy.
Former Stevens
HP
- A school with a consistent philosophy of discipline (they use Positive Discipline but I almost think anything would have worked if it was consistently applied)
- Consistent communication with parents
- A class size of sixteen
- An aide in the classroom
- A consulting behaviorist to provide guidance to everyone involved
- A counselor to work with him on awareness of his emotions and being able to verbalize them
- An extra staff member to take him out to recess with a small group to practice what he'd learned for a few weeks before throwing him back to full recess
His new school, as I'm sure you can guess from the list, isn't in the Seattle District.
In my opinion, yes, a lot of this is on admin but also important is the fact that we don't have the funding to have class sizes small enough or enough extra hands to help out when kids need extra help. Both are critical pieces.
Former Stevens
There are always a handful of dramatic events every year and at least one truly terrible each year. At some point, we should just being to refer to the academic years by the HR disastrous overreaction to excellence.
Martin Floe
John Greenberg
Carol Burton
David Elliot
At some point, it really beings to look and feel like there is a dedicated person in HR, whose job it is to pick a small problem and turn it into community outrage.
That is what Labor Relations does, there are 3 times as many FTE's there as there were just a few years ago and the recently departed "Director" bragged to ME many times that he loved "to fire people".
He was only here a year and a half but the taxpayers will be cleaning up his mess for years.
I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that the District apparently had no plan in place in the event they lost their case. They should have been ready to go with some kind of response.
Former Stevens
But the greater violation – by far – is that of the School District. The District knew about the past history of one of Carol’s students – a history that included this student’s having been expelled from a previous school for sexual harassment. The administrators from this previous school, in fact, went out of their way to state that they believed the student was likely to re-offend if sufficient interventions and treatment were not implemented. On the field trip in question with Carol’s Garfield choir, the student again – as predicted – sexually harassed several other students.
Somehow, this information about the student’s past was not disclosed to Carol or other relevant staff at Garfield. This failure by the District jeopardized the safety of all of the participants on the field trip – as was admitted by Supt. Larry Nyland under oath. It was also a clear violation of the collective bargaining agreement between the District and the Seattle Education Association. Specifically, the district’s failure to inform Carol violated Article III, Section G of the current binding contract, signed by both Superintendent Larry Nyland and senior administrator Brent Jones. Further, this reckless failure by the District also was a clear violation of state law, specifically, RCW 28a.225.330 subsection 6.
In short, the District violated the contract, broke the law, and in so doing put the safety of all the field trip participants at risk. People who earn six-figure salaries and knowingly violate state law thereby threatening student safety might seem to warrant some measure of accountability – an accountability to which none have been held thus far. But given these facts, the claim by the District somehow to be concerned for student welfare or student safety strains credulity.
“We are disappointed . . . the district believed it was important to send a clear message that student safety is a top priority”.
A couple of glasses of wine . . . a suspension would make sense. The judge was clear and severe in the length of the suspension he thought reasonable for an “outstanding”, hard to replace teacher who violated policy: one year.
I understand that Larry was made to look like one of the Stooges when asked what he would have done to prevent the “inappropriate touching”. Sounds like the judge realized that a teacher cannot be fully responsible, before or after the fact, for preventing every scenario of bad student behavior imaginable during a24 hour day. A glass of wine does not impair. Add to that, someone kinda sort of didn’t think it important to tell the teacher that there was a student with a history of bad behavior, and you end up with my perception that Larry and his administration are not thorough, ineffective and most of all intentional in creating an environment of fear and uncertainty rather than a safe learning and work environment. Sounds a bit like a group of bullies?
So the judge looked at all the critical facts and decided the teacher had been punished enough. His decision lines up nicely with sentencing standards used in courts. Seems like the punishment is about right . . . and the best message to help expose the personal ethics of Larry and those hands who warm armchairs downtown.
Again, that's the SSD Labor Relations Department: All "love to fire people" and NO PLAN except to let others follow thru in their own sweet time.
Ask most District employees and you will find we are treated as enemies in LR.
The 'culture of lawlessness' begins and ends there the last few years. Began with MGJ.