Posted on 05/06/2005 5:11:21 AM PDT by beaureguard
The Gwinnett County School Board voted early Friday to fire a Dacula High School science teacher who refused to raise the grade he gave a student athlete who appeared to be sleeping in class.
At the end of a Thursday night hearing that stretched into the early morning hours of Friday, the board decided by a 4-1 vote to terminate veteran physics teacher Larry Neace, school system spokeswoman Sloan Roach said.
Neace left the building after the ruling and would not comment.
His lawyers said they planned to appeal the dismissal to the State Board of Education within 30 days.
"These students lost a teacher who cared not only about their academic growth, but their growth as individuals," said Deidre M. Stephens-Johnson, who represented Neace.
While the board agreed 5-0 that Neace violated school board policy by using grades as a disciplinary measure, board member Carol Boye, who represents Dacula High School, voted against the termination. She declined to comment on her vote.
School system spokeswoman Sloan Roach said she did not know when the termination would take effect. "He was already suspended with pay until the outcome of this hearing," she said.
More than 200 students, parents and teachers packed Thursday night's hearing to see whether Neace would lose his job.
Gwinnett school officials said Neace was barred from campus for insubordination after he repeatedly refused to comply with the district policy that prohibits using grades as discipline.
Neace, who has taught at Dacula High for 23 years, was removed from class after he refused to raise the grade he had given a football player on an overnight assignment. Neace said he cut the student's perfect grade in half because he thought the student had fallen asleep at his desk the day the assignment was made.
"What we have in this case is a case of a pampered football athlete sleeping in class and being given favored treatment on an academic grade," said Michael Kramer, another of Neace's lawyers. "What we have here is the principal essentially attempting to coerce and intimidate a teacher."
School officials said they gave Neace a chance to restore the football player's grade. When he refused, they sent him home. He has not been allowed back at school since April 14, when he was told he could resign or face being fired.
Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks recommended to the board that Neace be fired. "He cannot have a policy that supersedes board policy," Wilbanks said. "He had no right to do that."
Neace said he had a practice of reducing the grades of students who waste time or sleep in class. His course syllabus warns that wasting class time can "earn a zero for a student on assignments or labs." No administrators had previously complained about the practice, which he adopted more than a decade ago, Neace said.
Neace said during the hearing that he also noted another student appeared to be sleeping in class on the same day. It was not clear Thursday what happened with the other student's grade.
School officials said Thursday that it appeared Neace allowed students to sleep in class. "He said it was not his job to wake up students," Assistant Principal Donald Mason said.
When asked Thursday if students sleep in his class, Neace responded, "Very rarely."
As school administrators presented their case to the school board, supporters of the teacher spilled over from the hearing room into a hallway outside. Some wore buttons saying "What's Up Doc?" and Dacula junior Clark Hurst wore a shirt bearing the acronym SADD, for "Students Against Dumping Doc."
Neace said he has been overwhelmed by the support he has received from students.
Posters calling for his return decorated the high school's halls. Some students wore T-shirts protesting the principal's action and passed out fliers saying, "Forget the whales, save Doc." Students also circulated a petition asking administrators to reinstate Neace.
"It's overwhelming -- the support, the phone calls, the e-mails, the [editorials] in the paper," Neace said Thursday afternoon. "I am getting support from all over the country. I got an e-mail from a professor at Rutgers University that said he wishes more teachers would do what I was doing, because it would make his job so much easier in the classroom if kids were prepared to take responsibility for what they do."
Neace said he got the nickname "Doc" years ago because of an exercise he led in class. That day he wore a lab coat and a stethoscope as he took the blood pressure of students. "Somebody said, 'Mr. Neace looks like a doctor,' " he said. "That was 22 years ago, and the name stuck."
Dacula High parent Nancy Penn said she supports Neace's methods. She said her daughter, a former student of Neace's, understood and respected his practice of penalizing students who fall asleep in class.
"As a parent, if my student was falling asleep in class, I would be upset," Penn said. "I do not have a problem with him using tactics to bring my student to attention in class. A teacher needs authority to govern his students. If someone takes away his authority, how can he manage his classroom?"
School officials said the issue was not that a student fell asleep in class. Instead, they said, Neace refused to abide by a school district policy that says, "Grading is not to be used for discipline purposes."
I was asking a rhetorical question, because as far as I'm concerned, behavior usually affects a grade whether one is graded on behavior or not.
It's not clear to me that this particular student actually "learned the material" - it seems to me that if failing one homework assignment caused him to be ineligible to play sports (not stated, but implied by all the furor), he had a pretty tenuous grasp on it all to begin with.
Of course, I haven't seen this teacher's syllabus or gradebook, and I don't know what sort of assignment this was or how it was weighted.
So?
They don't fall asleep in class in Bangalore.
What kind of moron-generating policy is that?
Should be put in charge for merit and perserverence on that basis alone.
Anyone who's been in the system for ten years and DOES understand how the system works, yet doesn't quit in outrage and disgust should be fired.
I gave a medical student a grade of "F" in Medicine, a major third-year course (of course, if the grade stood, a career-ender).
This "student" did all the assignments on time and passed all the tests. However, at 2AM when his patients were in trouble, he was nowhere to be found. Not once, all the time.
I was called in and ordered to change the grade. My grading did not conform to policy, which policy is, only tests and papers count toward the grade.
Would you have changed the grade?
How do students get to the third year of medical school thinking they can get away with bad behavior?
You forgot to mention our national ranking.
This teacher was just on with John Gibson on Fox. He said there was another student in the class that same day who also fell asleep and was given the same 50% reduction in grade for non-participation in class. Guess what - that student didn't complain and was not a football player. The teacher was fired because of the football player, not because of his policy. And it seems like this assignment was done in class, not a nightly homework assignment, so it was a class participation grade.
So, it's a pretty clear case of the school board and principal kowtowing to a school athlete.
Below was a post on another site by a parent who attended the school board hearing.
http://www.voy.com/32130/19224.html
"...A hearing officer, provided by the State Bar of Georgia, presided and served as judge of the legal issues. The School Board was the finder of fact, essentially the jury. Evidence and testimony was presented on both sides, the Superintendent Wilbanks and his attorneys who were seeking Doc’s termination, and Doc and his attorneys.
As the facts unfolded it became clear to me that Doc Neace was railroaded. Here’s what I recall from the testimony and evidence. On March 28th Doc had an assignment the students were to work on in class. After receiving the assignment sheet two guys put their heads down on their desks, apparently sleeping. There wasn’t enough time to complete the task in class, so Doc said he would give 5-10 min the next class period. One of the sleeping students handed in his assignment, and when Doc graded it there were no points taken off for the actual work, but he took half off for the student’s waste of class time the previous day when he should have been working on the assignment. Doc’s syllabus, approved by the school each semester, presented to and signed by students each semester, which had been in use for ten years includes a provision that ‘wasting time’ during class will earn the student a zero on the in class assignment. Part of Doc’s teaching process is the in class help he provides to students as they work on the assignement, so anyone not working in class is not engaged in Doc’s teaching process. Doc only took half off this paper because he gave the students time the next period to complete the assignment.
The student complained to his dad who called principal Donnie Nutt for a meeting to discuss his son’s grade. The principal contacted the science dept. admin. who contacted Doc to set up a meeting for April 1st. There was no testimony that Nutt ever contacted or met with Doc to get the facts or discuss the matter before the parent meeting on April 1st. Doc testified that as he approached the principal’s office for the meeting before school he could see the parent in Nutt’s glassed in office, laughing and talking with the principal, then Nutt shook the parent’s hand and friendly patted him on the back. Doc testified that as a result he felt apprehensive going into the meeting not knowing what was going on.
Nutt began the meeting by letting the parent tell Doc his concerns which turned into a rant at Doc for about 15 minutes, including slamming papers on the table and cursing at Doc. Finally Nutt intervened and asked if Doc had taken off half the grade for the student’s sleeping in class, and when Doc said yes, Nutt started admonishing Doc in front of the parent and told him to change the grade. Doc testified that he felt like a whipped dog backed into a corner. So much for any support or meaningful communication from Doc’s supervising principal.
Later that day Principal Nutt presented Doc with a letter of direction to change the grade, reading it 3 times to him, hence following the school system’s policy requiring three requests. At issue was the fact that Doc considered his wasting time provision an academic matter, and Nutt said according to Board policy it was a discipline issue. Doc again told Nutt he couldn’t change the grade, but the principal could.
Spring Break was the next week, Doc was trying to contact the state prof stanards people to see if he would lose his certificate for changing a grade, and then after the break he was summoned to the County office and banned form all Gwinnett County campuses. He has told he had two options, resign or be fired.
It appeared that at no time did the school system folks get a statement from Doc, but they had statements from everyone else. When Doc brought up his concerns about his certificate, he was told this was a local board issue, not a state standards issue. But his teaching certificate was the key issue to Doc.
According to Superintendent Wilbanks testimony, Gwinnett County schools is focused on the “Business of Education.” I noted that he said business first, education second, and that’s what the school system focuses on, business rules and regs and policies. Doc Neace’s focus is on education first.
One question from the Board last night asked if at any point was a third party neutral brought in, and the answer was no. Nobody cared what Doc had to say.
My take on the whole process was that there was a total lack of professional communication from Principal to teacher, an unprofessional and abusive handling of the teacher-parent meeting, allowing the parent to rant and curse, then the admonishment of his teacher in front of a parent and Nutt’s rush to judgment, to throw his hot potato to the County HR people and move Doc Neace out of Dacula HS ASAP.
Doc has 26 years of dedicated teaching, 23 at Dacula HS, and he’s never had an unsatisfactory evaluation or sanction or admonishment. In just 2 weeks, one of which was spring break, he has his career ended by a spoiled whining student and his bully parent in collusion with a controlling clueless principal who has systematically dumbed down the academic excellence at our school. I am stunned and embarrased by the action of Principal Donnie Nutt, of Superintendant Alvin Wilbanks, of the adminsitrators of Gwinnett County Public Schools and lastly the School Board. I hope and pray Doc appeals and wins!"
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