Free Republic

While many Michigan school districts have scoffed at merit pay for teachers, the urban school district with the worst academic performance in the nation has taken it seriously. The Detroit public school district has instituted a merit pay system that makes the vast majority of teachers eligible to earn awards, sometimes as much as $5,000. Out of 2,729 Detroit schoolteachers, 96 received awards of $1,000 in 2015-16, according to data from a Freedom of Information Act request. Michigan Capitol Confidential is reviewing the merit pay systems of the largest school districts in the state. Then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed a law...

MILWAUKEE —A fifth grade teacher who lives in Milwaukee is accused of having sexual contact with an 11-year-old boy. Katherine Gonzalez is charged with First Degree Child Sexual Assault. Prosecutors said Gonzalez and one of her fifth grade students at Atlas Preparatory Academy had been messaging on Snapchat. They eventually had contact in Gonzalez's car and at her home, according to a criminal complaint.

Pennfield Schools had just one teacher rated “ineffective” out of 124 within the Calhoun County district in 2014-15. And that ineffective teacher’s salary of $68,921 was the third-highest salary for a teacher in the district, according to documents received in a Freedom of Information Act request and the state database of teacher salaries. Teachers in Michigan are evaluated and are given one of four ratings. “Ineffective” is the worst rating. That teacher, whose name is being withheld from publication, is a good example of the problems with the union-negotiated one-size-fits-all pay scale that just about every district in the state...

Michigan’s current superintendent of public instruction claimed in a news article that first-year teachers in the state earn $28,000 a year. Superintendent Brian Whiston made his comment in an article in the Feb. 10 edition of MIRS News. If any full-time Michigan public school teacher is paid that amount, it would be an extremely rare instance. There were 540 Michigan public school districts in 2015-16, not counting charter schools. Michigan Capitol Confidential has reviewed hundreds of those districts’ union contracts and has not yet seen a starting salary under $30,000. The Michigan Department of Education didn’t return an email that...

An Ionia Public Schools teacher declared she was quitting after having an emotional meltdown in front of her second-grade students. She then abruptly walked out of the school, according to documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request. But after the school accepted the verbal notice as a resignation, the teacher claimed she did not formally quit, causing a monthslong battle over her employment status. Anne Purdun, a second-grade teacher at Emerson Elementary, yelled profanities in her classroom while students were present on April 20, 2016, according to charges filed by the school for a tenure proceeding, obtained through...

A Florida teacher has been reassigned after she wrote a Facebook status supporting President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Veronica Fleming was removed from her role as a computer lab teacher and assigned to administrative duties after she wrote that “glad about massive deportation” because it means there will be “less mouths to feed.” The principal at Parkside Elementary School, where Fleming works and where the students are 96 percent minorities, learned about her writing after parents called the school to complain, according to NBC 2. NBC-2.com WBBH News for Fort Myers, Cape Coral & Naples, Florida The matter was given...

NAPLES, Fla. – An elementary school teacher in Collier County, Florida was reassigned to administrative duties over a Facebook post during the “Day Without Immigrants” protest last Thursday.   Parkside Elementary School computer lab instructor Veronica Fleming linked to a Chicago Tribune story about the nationwide protest and offered her take on the situation.   “The funny part about immigrants staying home is the rest of us who pay for them are here at work like we’ve always been. Looks like less mouths to feed today. Have fun while you still can. So glad to hear about massive deportation....

Adria Zawatsky is a sixth-grade English teacher at Paulo Intermediate School in Staten Island, New York and angered one dad with an assignment that politicized her feelings toward President Donald Trump and Barack Obama. The worksheet asked students to fill in the blank on the following sentences: “8.) President Trump speaks in a very superior and _________ manner insulting many people. He needs to be more ________. “9.) Barack Obama set a ________ when he became the first African American president.”

Rutherford County Schools said a substitute teacher will no longer be working in the school district after he was accused of posting “inappropriate, threatening” comments on social media regarding President Donald Trump.Rutherford County Schools received several messages about David Colin on Wednesday. Colin is accused of posting on Facebook, “the only good Trump supporter is a dead Trump supporter,” on Facebook Nov. 9 at 9:29 a.m.Colin is not employed by RCS, but is contracted through PESG. The schools said Colin is no longer permitted to work in the district. The school district has notified PESG about Colin. The contractor indicted...

A Berkeley middle school teacher who was accused of instigating a violent clash with neo-Nazis in Sacramento this summer is back at it, recorded in a deranged rant at a Berkeley protest against Milo Yiannopoulos shortly before violence erupted Wednesday. Yvette Felarca, a social studies teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, attended a protest against Yiannopoulos’ scheduled speech at the University of California Berkeley Wednesday, when she spoke out against the Breitbart senior editor’s controversial views and called on protesters to prevent him from speaking “by any means necessary.” In a video posted to YouTube on Thursday, Felarca...

Trump Derangement Syndrome Trump Derangement Syndrome doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Exhibit A is Payal Modi who identifies herself in social media as a “High School Art Educator, Designer, and Foster Mommy” in Dallas, Texas.

A high school art teacher in Dallas posted an Instagram video of herself "shooting" an image of Donald Trump with a squirt gun and screaming "die" during Friday's inauguration. A copy of the video went viral on Twitter before the original source was identified.   The teacher has since deleted the video, but here's a copy:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp1A3VB6Fg8    

The law was passed in 1919 under pressure from the Ku Klux KlanA nun in Nebraska who teaches in a secondary school has been told that she is not allowed to wear her habit in the classroom.  37-year-old, Sister Madeleine Miller, was shocked to learn that, under a little-known law nearly a century old, habits were banned.  The vaguely worded ban prohibits teachers from wearing any sort of religious clothing, from burqas to yarmulkes.  “I could have been arrested, jailed, fined or had my license taken away if I had tried to teach,” Miller said on Tuesday.Now, state lawmakers are...

We recently received a disappointing ruling in the case of Bill Diss, a Portland, Oregon public school teacher who was fired after he objected to facilitating a Planned Parenthood sex education program in his classroom. The judge granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, which means the case cannot go before a jury. Life Legal is appealing the decision.Bill Diss became “enemy number one” with his local Planned Parenthood affiliate when he led opposition to a new PP mega-facility in downtown Portland.When Planned Parenthood employees wanted to come into Diss’ classroom to recruit students for their “Teen Outreach Program,” or...

Awarded several medals for bravery, along with a Purple Heart, for a severe leg wound he’d received as he and fellow marines fought in the jungles of Iwo Jima, When our new geometry teacher entered the classroom, we high school seniors almost laughed out loud. Well over six feet tall, Mr. Gordon was skeleton skinny, his clothes hung on him like a suit on a scarecrow, he walked with a wobbly limp, and the meek expression on his thin, bony face, along with his subdued, kindly tone of voice, convinced us he was a wimp. How wrong we were. To...

I know a teacher who was fired for political commentary to STUDENTS in a public school setting. And this guy Dixon believes he has the right to lecture a VP-elect, or President, for that matter? Oh, hell no... this can not be allowed to stand. You can NOT have your cake and eat it too. If someone would fund this teacher, he would sue every school system that did that to him and use this "Hamilton" case as a precedent to win.

MOUNTAIN VIEW (KPIX 5) — A Mountain View high school teacher was kicked out of his classroom and is now getting threats for comparing President-elect Donald Trump to Hitler. Frank Novarro doesn’t know when he’ll be in front of the classroom again after a history lesson he believes was misunderstood. While some are accusing the history teacher of calling Trump a racist by drawing the comparison, he says that didn’t happen. “Because I think that it is historically factual,” says Novarro.

PLEASANT HILL, Calif (KTVU) - We’re told two teachers from College Park High School were involved, one of them punched and shoved. The video is hard to watch. A crowd of people can be seen pushing each other around, and at the center of it all is a teacher and a student fighting. Top 7 Reasons to Get Your Glasses OnlineGlassesUSA.com These Sisters-in-Law Saw Something Missing From Women's FashionVeronica Beard Both the teacher and the student have their arms around each other’s neck. Witnesses can be heard screaming, yelling “stop". Teacher pushed by protesters at College Park High Then, you...

The teacher who desecrated the American flag inside a North Carolina classroom told me he has no regrets and wants the student who photographed him to be punished. Lee Francis, a first year history teacher at Massey Hill Classical High School in Fayetteville, has been placed on administrative leave while the school district investigates the incident.

A recent study by an Oklahoma think tank found that teachers’ salaries in Michigan are the highest in the nation when adjusted for the lower cost of living here. When salaries are adjusted to reflect the difference between prices here and the national average, Michigan teachers on average earned the equivalent of $69,888 in the 2015-16 school year. The study was authored by Byron Schlomach of the Oklahoma-based 1889 Institute, a free-market think tank. Schlomach said in an email he used salary data from a National Education Association survey. Michigan’s average teacher salary when unadjusted is $63,878, ranking 10th nationally....