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."
teacher=teachers
Actually the school board got him for violating the unofficial rules of every school board in Ga. "Do not allow any student to be in jeprody of falling below a 3.0 grade point average."This would result in the parents not being able to collect their share of the gamling revenues when Johnny goes to college.
Their are kids in the bottom half of the class that can't make a 1000 on the Sat with 3.0's in Ga.
But the corporation policy is there for a reason. He defied the policy. Defying reasonable policies is not a good example to set.
Grading was used to determine the student's interest and participation in class, as it should have been. Nothing was said about discipline.
>>So the question is: Which policy should stand? The teacher's or the school boards.<<
>>In this case, the school board's policy should stand. Now, which should stand afterwards, is certainly up for debate.<<
I agree with the teacher's end, but not his means. Factor class participation into the final grade. Give the sleeper a zero. Don't begrudgingly flunk a kid for actually doing the work.
The teacher's policy shows a great deal of absolutism, which is never a good thing...
Maybe he is decently intelligent. You don't have to be anything special to ace a homework assignment in a class that you didn't pay attention - they just aren't that hard. I used to it all the time.
Yep. I'm with the BoE on this.
I'm not surprised.
My dad taught Biology and Physiology for a very well-to-do school system.
Frequently, parents of students wwhom he flunked for not doing the work would raise hell over it. (this was 20 yearsor so ago)
My father would stick to his guns and make the grade stick, but he often had to invoke the Union in order to keep his job.
(So there. Occasionly even the Teacher's Union has it's uses!)
My dad got into teaching because he liked it, but after struggling with idiot parents and political admin and kids who could care less, he got so he hated it.
I had wanted to teach, and he and I had BITTER fights over it.
He actually FORBADE me to go into teaching.
I understand now that he was right.
Why? High school football teams are huge and filled with students from all academic abilities.
I have a feeling that this teacher shares your prejudices against people that are not nerdy and social retards. It is doubtful that he would have punished a audio/visual club member if they fell asleep in class but aced the assignment.
It's not like most high school classes are that hard. I rarely paid any attention in high school classes either since the teachers didn't know anything about the subjects. I just read the textbooks on my own time and aced the assignments.
Huh? The "little dirtbag" made a perfect score on the assignment.
Maybe you meant to say "the moral of the story is, lower the grades of those that can complete assigments without help from the teacher for no reason."
Another that didn't read the article. The student made a perfect score on his assignment. The teacher lowered the score on that assignment as a punishment which is a violation of school board rules.
Yes, there are kids that don't do well on the SAT. That does not mean that this kid is one of them. He could be a football jock getting high grades on basic assignments, or he could be a dedicated student who was just tired, possibly from studying late.
Maybe this teacher lets geeky students slide and has it out for athletes.
>Another that didn't read the article.<
I read the article.The parents are more concerned about the grades than they are the kid's learning anything.If they were really concerned they would add punishment of their on not whine to the principleGrade inflation is over the top in Ga. Follow the money.
>Yes, there are kids that don't do well on the SAT. That does not mean that this kid is one of them. He could be a football jock getting high grades on basic assignments, or he could be a dedicated student who was just tired, possibly from studying late.<
Or he could be a product of a system that allows 70% of the students to graduate with a 3.0 thinking they are prepared for college.The better ones go to UGA and Tech where even with the grade inflation at these schools only 2/3 of them keep a 3.0.
If the student is able to achieve perfect scores on the assignments then he must be learning everything the teacher has to offer.
Why am I having flashbacks to the history teacher, (My Favorite Martian) from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"? Mr. Spikolli, you are now wasting my time......
Maybe you meant to say "the moral of the story is, lower the grades of those that can complete assigments without help from the teacher for no reason."
No, my original statement was made as intended, after reading the entire article.
The student went to sleep in class. There are numerous deportment issues that cannot all be covered in a grading policy. Consider the implications of not sanctioning the alleged "student."
What happens when other students decide to sleep? Nothing? How about if they snore? Again, nothing? Suppose they bring in some nachos and consume them noisily. Well, we can't do anything about that either, now, can we? Or, suppose the dirtbag decides to make class more interesting by crafting snappy one-liners, thus making sure that no one can learn anything.
Let's make it simple. Give them all an A+++. Tell them they are now so well educated that they don't need to ever come to class.
Ooops! That's what we've got now. (/no sarcasm at all)
If a student is disruptive then they can be punished. The student could be given detention or something similar. No one is disputing that. Lowering grades is not an acceptable punishment as the teacher was well aware.
The teacher was the one breaking the rules.
"Me either, especially because there's plenty of ways to deal with it without basically admitting that you're using grades as a disciplinary measure. For crying out loud, just make class participation part of the grade, and give an F on that portion to the kid who falls asleep."
You are basically saying the same thing as teacher Doc is doing, so he wouldn’t be safe using your logic. They want a football player’s grade artificially raised so he could play ball. Anything less then a grade raise would have been insubordination on teacher Doc. Doc’s rule is if you don't participate in the class, your grade will suffer. But according to the school administration, a student’s grade can't be dropped do to poor behavior (Correction - football player’s grade). Disrupting the class or not following classroom rules is stealing education time away from the other students and should be dealt with in a way so it doesn’t happen again. There are consequences in life and the school should prepare the student for life in the real world.
My wife teaches High School earth science, so I understand what these teachers are going through. It's hard sometimes just to keep the kid on task. These administrators are fools to promote these student morons because they like to watch them play football. Maybe they should start handing out steroids, then the games would be much better and who gives on $#!T what happens to the students - not the administration obviously.
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