Harvey's teaching certificate suspended

Harvey's teaching certificate suspended By RAY PARKER, brparker@naplesnews.com February 22, 2005

Ian Harvey's Florida teaching certificate, No. 653427, has been suspended for a year.

The former Lely High English and media teacher has maintained he's a scapegoat, a lone voice for peace in a wilderness of warmongers.

But the Florida Education Practices Commission met earlier this month, and in the settlement, Harvey signed off on the suspension.

Commissioner of Education Jim Horne cited Harvey in violating nine teaching standards, including failing to take reasonable precautions to distinguish between his personal views and those of the school system in his classroom.

"The misogynistic, homophobic, racist warmongerers in the classroom there in Collier County—and there are plenty—have nothing to worry about because the School Board shares their views," Harvey wrote Friday in an e-mail to the Daily News.

He taught in Collier County schools for 10 years with good evaluations. Then after 9/11, Harvey entered the media spotlight after participating in an anti-war rally with a couple of his students.

In February 2002, the Collier School District investigator found Harvey's teaching practices violated district and state teaching standards.

And later that month, he was suspended without pay for three days and reassigned to an Immokalee adult education position.

In July 2003, he agreed to a plea agreement, pleading no contest and paying court costs of $160, after being charged with resisting arrest during a March anti-war demonstration in Fort Myers.

Then in August 2003, police arrested the teacher on driving under the influence and drug charges. He later pleaded no contest — his driver license suspended for six months and agreed to participate in the diversion program, similar to probation, involving counseling.

Now, two years after district officials sent their findings to Tallahassee, Commissioner of Education Horne has settled the teaching allegations against Harvey by suspending his Florida teaching certificate for one year.

District internal investigator Peter DeBaun found Harvey engaged in the following inappropriate conduct between August and December 2001.

— Used his mass media class as a forum to express his hostility toward the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, American business practices, social policy, mainstream media, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization

— Criticized and belittled students for disagreeing with his personal political views in class and caused them to feel their grade would be lowered if they continued

— Gave extra credit to students who sent e-mail supporting him after his appearance on the Fox television show "The O'Reilly Factor," but failed to give any credit to students who sent e-mails supporting the show's host

— Encouraged students to attend anti-war rallies and failed to warn them that he had been threatened with physical violence

"They were going to suspend it (my teaching certificate) for one year for teaching peace before my August 2003 arrest, and since they are still going to suspend it for the same amount of time even after I broke the law, it's even clearer that my greatest 'crime' to the folks in charge of running the indoctrination, not education, system there in that balmy, polluted 'paradise,' is having pro-peace, pro-worker, pro-environment views, period," Harvey wrote.

I'd never move there.

Thanks. There'll be more room on the roads and in the restaurants, then.

Just kidding!

Collier is a great place to homeschool, however!

21 posted on 02/22/2005 8:49:24 AM PST by The Great Yazoo (Why do penumbras not emanate from the Tenth Amendment as promiscuously as they do from the First?)

There'll be more room on the roads and in the restaurants, then.

Ack. Don't mention the restaurants. There was a huge, multi-room seafood buffet in Naples, a block N of Tin City(?), where we'd eat crab legs until we could no longer get out of our chairs.

Then, there was the Grouper House in... hmm... Isles of Capri, maybe? Oh, and there was this place in Goodland... (man, my head is starting to hurt)... can't remember the name of it right now. Another half-dozen or so whose names escape me. One was an Italian place on Marco where they only played Sinatra all the time. I do miss those days.

sadly true.

Even if it is not true, the school district is probably so small that the only materials available for students are dictated by the larger establishment districts. (text book content etc.)

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