Teacher Elizabeth Logan is accused of stealing a third-grader's coat and trying to sell it on eBay
Posted on 05/04/2007 12:42:14 PM PDT by Incorrigible
By HOLLY DANKS And MELISSA NAVAS — Thursday May 03, 2007
| Teacher Elizabeth Logan is accused of stealing a third-grader's coat and trying to sell it on eBay |
|
HILLSBORO, Ore. — "I told her, 'Be sure not to lose this coat,''' the third-grader's mother remembers reminding the girl.
"It's expensive, and I usually didn't let her wear it to school. But it was cold.''
The 8-year-old promised. But on Jan. 10 she came home in tears. She had become warm during recess on the Jackson Elementary School playground and took off her gloves and the $114 navy blue Columbia Sportswear Tectonite coat.
When she returned without the coat, her teacher immediately sent the girl to look for it. The gloves were where she had left them, but not the ski jacket her grandmother had given her.
"A staff member found her crying by the lost-and-found,'' the mother said.
The jacket would turn up, but only after the girl's mother tracked it to an eBay auction and took her suspicions to police. On Friday, Elizabeth Lucinda Logan, a Jackson Elementary teacher, will be in court. She faces charges of stealing the coat and trying to sell it.
The girl's parents asked that she not be identified in this story because of their concerns about their children who still attend the school.
Two days after the coat disappeared, the girl and her mother blanketed the school with fliers showing a photo of her wearing it. For days, they searched classrooms, checked the school's lost-and-found boxes, asked teachers and staff whether anyone had seen the jacket.
"Things don't disappear into thin air,'' the mother said. "I just wanted an explanation. I just wanted the coat back.''
An avid online shopper, the mother decided to check out eBay to find a replacement.
"I was scanning them on the off chance that it was there,'' the mother said. "It was just a gut feeling.''
What she found Jan. 18 was like a punch to the gut, she said.
The photo of the jacket that had been auctioned for $46 first caught the mother's eye. When she opened the site, she realized that the 7/8 size, colors and model perfectly matched her daughter's missing coat. Digging further, she saw the seller was from Hillsboro and the jacket was posted for sale the day after her daughter's disappeared.
The seller's eBay ID matched a name on the Jackson School Web site.
The mother made an appointment with the principal on Jan. 22, when she presented ``all the coincidental information.'' Mysteriously, the jacket reappeared at the school that morning, ripped to pieces.
Police were called and took up the case. Investigators connected the eBay account to Logan, a Jackson Elementary first-grade teacher.
Logan, 41, will be arraigned Friday in Washington County Circuit Court on a secret grand jury indictment. The teacher was arrested Feb. 6 and cited for theft by receiving and criminal misuse of a computer.
In a prepared statement, Krista Shipsey, Logan's private attorney, said: "Ms. Logan deeply regrets the impact that this allegation has had on her community, especially the children at Jackson Elementary. She has been a devoted and caring teacher for 20 years and truly misses working with her first-graders. Ms. Logan has been devastated by this allegation.''
Lt. Michael Rouches, Hillsboro police spokesman, said Logan told investigators she found the jacket in the school's lost-and-found bin and was auctioning it on eBay until her dog tore it up. Rouches said Logan has made more than 1,000 eBay transactions.
She was still selling Wednesday under the screen name logan6921, with a 99.9 percent positive feedback rating.
Logan told police she routinely buys bulk clothing at Goodwill for $1.39 a pound, goes through the pile for hidden treasures and sells what she can on eBay.
Hillsboro School District officials said Logan was placed on paid leave Feb. 7, the day after her arrest.
Nicole Kaufman, district spokeswoman, said administrators are conducting their own internal investigation.
Logan began teaching in the Hillsboro School District in 1987. She started at Jackson Elementary in 1998, and was earning nearly $69,000 a year when she went on leave.
Jackson School principal Janis Hill said she made a "measured decision'' to call or meet with only the parents in Logan's 25-student class to tell them the teacher was on paid leave during the investigation.
Leana Garrison, whose 7-year-old son, Nate, is in Logan's class, said parents were left in the dark about the reason for Logan's leave.
Since Logan's departure, Garrison said, her son is not as excited about school.
"He's constantly writing to her,'' Garrison said. "He just misses her and really liked her as a teacher.''
Hill said school counselors have been available to students to help cope with emotional stress since Logan left.
"First-grade teachers are kind of like the princess, the queen, mom rolled together,'' Hill said.
(Holly Danks and Melissa Navas are staff writers for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. They can be contacted at hollydanks(at)news.oregonian.com and melissanavas(at)news.oregonian.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Been there...done that...by all accounts, was a "natural" at it. Nonetheless, I decided to go into a different profession after college instead of teaching.
That was 20 years ago. I work 20 hours a week, run a regional business, enjoy plenty of time with my kids, don't live under the perpetual threat of a lawsuit, and don't have to worry about violence on the job. Make $37 an hour without all the hassles teachers face every single day.
So, yes, $70K is a fair salary in certain parts of the country after 20 years in a profession.
As to the pension, depends on which state you work for, how long, how much you put into the system, etc. Pension? A teacher I know make $400 a month in pension after 25 years in the field. Her medical costs $365 a month. What can you eat on $35 a month? Noodles.
I guess the point to all this is a the grass might look greener, but for the most part, it's not.
Been there...done that...by all accounts, was a "natural" at it. Nonetheless, I decided to go into a different profession after college instead of teaching.
That was 20 years ago. I work 20 hours a week, run a regional business, enjoy plenty of time with my kids, don't live under the perpetual threat of a lawsuit, and don't have to worry about violence on the job. Make $37 an hour without all the hassles teachers face every single day.
So, yes, $70K is a fair salary in certain parts of the country after 20 years in a profession.
As to the pension, depends on which state you work for, how long, how much you put into the system, etc. Pension? A teacher I know make $400 a month in pension after 25 years in the field. Her medical costs $365 a month. What can you eat on $35 a month? Noodles.
I guess the point to all this is a the grass might look greener, but for the most part, it's not.
Yes and got paid a fair share less than 70K to do it, then again it was not on the public dollar and I had no teachers union threatening to shut down schools if their cosmetic surgery option was taken away in the new contract.
It takes years to build up to that salary, lots of 65 to 70 hour weeks.
Ill grant you the first couple of weeks but lesson plans do not change that much from year to year and teachers are given at least 1.5 hours a day for lesson planning and grading (one is usually study hall of some sort and the other is open time). I knew teachers, good teachers mind you, who got to school five minutes before class and left five minutes after. they had been doing it for a few years and had everything except exams and homework ready for the whole year.
don't live under the perpetual threat of a lawsuit
Teachers have ample legal protection and are at no more risk of lawsuit than say doctors, police, firefighters, or engineers.
So, yes, $70K is a fair salary in certain parts of the country after 20 years in a profession.
The *average* salary for teachers nation wide is close to 50K that is for 9.5 months of work and most, contrary to popular belief, do not work more than a 40 hour week. thats about 1700 hours a year or close to 30$ an hour.
A teacher I know make $400 a month in pension after 25 years in the field. Her medical costs $365 a month. What can you eat on $35 a month? Noodles.
I have trouble believing that, what state?
I am goi ng to assume that your teacher friend worked in Texas
In Texas the retirement benefit for teachers is set as follows:
1. Multiply your years of service credit by 2.3 percent. (Example: if you have 30 years of service credit in TRS, 30 x 2.3 = 69 percent.)
2. Figure the average of your three highest years of salary. *
3. Multiply your average salary (from step 2) by the number from step 1. This is your annual TRS standard annuity.
(Example: $40,000 x 69 percent. This person’s standard annuity would be $27,600 per year.)
So if we assume your friend worked 20 years (46 percent) and they only get 400$ a month (4,000) that means the average three years of high pay was 10,000$ Given the starting salasy for a teacher is 32 thousand dollars there is something you are not telling me!
If we assumed they taught only five years and would average about 35K for salary their benefit would be (4015 dollars per year or 335$ a month).
How long did your friend teach, what years, and how much did they make?
***I don’t see anything here that verifies one way or the other whether or not the principal gave her the heads up. If the mother “stated how pleased she has been with how the principal has handled the situation”, what do you think she would state if she found out that the principal did give the teacher the heads up?
You just can’t stand to lose a bet. ;-D
At the end of her interview with KGW, the newsperson made the point that the mother wanted everyone to know that she was pleased with how the school and police handled the whole thing. I really don’t know why they would make that point at the end of the piece if it were not true. Wouldn’t it be better to say nothing if you suspected the principal?
Also, maybe I’m thinking too logically here, if you were the principal and going to tip the teacher off, wouldn’t you request the coat be returned in good condition? That way you could return it to the parent, make your excuses/apologies, and hope that would suffice and the whole thing would go away. Do you really think she would risk her career by tipping off the teacher and then calling in the police? I don’t think so.
I guess we’ll have to keep following the story to see.....
She taught in Florida and Colorado for many years, and then moved to Texas a few years ago. Developed breast cancer (unfortunately, it was Stage 4 when they found it - in her spine, etc) and could no longer work. Heck, for the entire time she was in chemo, she was lucky she could keep down enough food to live on.
Since she wasn't part of the union, her time in and out of state teaching didn't count. She could "buy" her years of service for some $56K. She didn't have it. When she started teaching in Florida, she was making $12K a year, less than half of what I started out at in the working world. She had to work a part-time job as a waitress just to eat. She subsequently earned her MA and was certified in a number of different areas.
I was making in the $40K range in my late twenties; she didn't hit that range until she was in her forties.
Texas, and other states, are offering a lot more for new teachers than they did in the past (as compared to other professions) because people no longer consider it a desirable career. Given the amount of nonsense a teacher has to put up with just to teach, I don't blame them for going down a different road.
Wouldn’t it be better to say nothing if you suspected the principal?
***It would be a point of fact that at that time, the mother did not suspect the principal to have tipped off the teacher. That is not the point, whether or not she suspects the principal. I suspect the principal, and so does at least one other poster on this thread. So, the mother does not suspect the principal and maybe even STILL does not suspect the principal, that doesn’t provide much light either way on the subject.
Also, maybe I’m thinking too logically here, if you were the principal and going to tip the teacher off, wouldn’t you request the coat be returned in good condition?
***Now you may have a good point. The teacher may have gotten wind of it through someone at the principal’s office rather than the principal herself. Ripping up someone’s coat to throw off suspicion of one’s self is as old as Joseph & his brothers.
That way you could return it to the parent, make your excuses/apologies, and hope that would suffice and the whole thing would go away. Do you really think she would risk her career by tipping off the teacher and then calling in the police? I don’t think so.
***Yes, I do think that those kinds of things happen. In the beginning, the principal would probably steer the parent and try to make hush-hush over the whole thing, and during that time the principal might actually talk to the teacher. In addition, the kid was seen crying over the lost & found box, so it would have been a natural inclination for almost anyone working there to ask the teacher what she saw, why the kid was crying, why the mother was talking so long to the principal, etc.
I guess we’ll have to keep following the story to see.....
***Agreed. It’s not worth another post for me, so feel free to have the last word.
Nice catch and welcome to FR!
Ill have to look at FLA but my aunt who teaches down there does ok, maybe Ill give her a call tonight..
I am sorry to hear of your friends cancer, I truly am. But it was in some way dishonest to help her out as an example of how teachers are underpaid. Colorado is carrying about the highest pension debt per citizen in the nation and teachers are on the roll.
In Colorado the average teacher makes 42K a year and in Florida its 40,000. Teaching is a career and your friend made poor career decisions, while for her it may not have been a choice, she is the exception not the rule. I have know many teachers in my life, and many two teacher households non of them have been poor. Usually middle class but with a far better amount of time off than I can dream of.
May God bless you friend through this and grant her healing.
Thanks for the kind words about D. She's hanging on, but terminal nonetheless. Ironically, the one thing she really hates about her cancer is that it robbed her of her ability to teach. She misses her kids.
She was just one example, in response to your comment about a guaranteed pension. It doesn't always work the way it appears on paper.
Another friend of mine is a teacher on Long Island, again with his Masters. His wife often lamented that she hated when school was in session because she never saw him. He finally made it to the 69K range after 20 years in the classroom, too; meanwhile, another friend of mine, who was a computer consultant with only a BS, was pulling down a cool $150K a year.
In an area of the country where the starting prices of homes in decent, livable neighborhoods is $300K, and the average tax burden is between $6 - $10K, $69K is no big deal. He had a DJ business on the side just to make ends meet.
You're right, teaching is a career, but so are a great many other professions. Why shouldn't someone who has advanced, spent years in their career, make a higher income?
I don't mind paying more in property taxes if the schools are going to be superior (which, fortunately for me, my grade school is very highly ranked and the teachers are exceptional. We're moving, though, before my kids hit the middle school; lots of problems there). I would like to see salaries that attract the top 10% of candidates, instead of the bottom 10%.
I don't have a pension at my current job - heck, with 3 kids coming very late in life, I have no plans to retire. I'll work till I drop. But who else is riding the pension train in Colorado? Chances are high that folks earning a lot more, and doing a lot less, than the teachers are taking up a chunk of that change. Any stats on that? Could make an interesting piece to investigate...
Thanks!
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