Posted on 05/21/2010 10:05:37 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
New York City violated a teacher's constitutional right to due process when it removed her from the classroom for eliciting vulgar words from students during a lesson about HIV and AIDS, a federal judge ruled yesterday.
After being put on administrative duty for eight months for allegedly causing the group of eighth graders "mental distress" and violating a regulation prohibiting "verbal abuse," Faith Kramer turned around and accused the Board of Education of violating her First Amendment and due process rights.
While Eastern District Judge Jack B. Weinstein held that Ms. Kramer's speech was not constitutionally protected, he agreed that the regulation as applied to her was unconstitutionally vague.
"If the Board of Education wants its teachers to instruct adolescents about HIV using Latinism of the academy, excluding vulgarism of the street, it should tell them so plainly. Instructors in the position of plaintiff are entitled to know what the rules are before they are going beyond unmarked boundaries they reasonably believed did not exist," he wrote in Kramer v. New York City Board of Education, 09-CV-1167.
In allowing Ms. Kramer's $1 million suit against the board to go forward, the judge noted that many of the terms used by the students, which he listed in an appendix to the 67-page ruling, had "distinguished literary pedigrees," including Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead," James Baldwin's "Another Country," and Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer."
Judge Weinstein also noted that as a senior judge, father and grandfather who was educated in New York City public schools, "there appears to be no more daunting undertaking than discussing sex and HIV/AIDS" with a class of male and female 13 and 14-year-old eighth-grade students. This mission" he said, was given to Ms. Kramer.
In a statement, Blanche Greenfield, senior counsel in the New York City Law Department, said that "The DOE's HIV/AIDS Curriculum requires that the information provided to students be accurate, age appropriate and consistent with community values." But she said that many of the words that the judge found "suitable for use in an 8th grade classroom" were "entirely inappropriate."
"Their use in the classroom reflects unacceptable and extremely poor judgment by the teacher and is plainly not consistent with community values," she added.
In February 2008, Ms. Kramer, a 26-year veteran of the city schools with what the decision said was an "unblemished record," gave a mandatory lesson about HIV and AIDS transmission to a group of 30 male and female eighth-grade students at I.S. 72 in Staten Island.
The teacher notes accompanying the HIV/AIDS curriculum issued by the board of education stated that "many students use other terms to describe…body fluids and other matters related to sexuality."
"As with all HIV/AIDS education, it is important that students understand the terms used in the classroom, use them correctly, and relate them to their own experience and language. If students use different terms to refer to body fluids, make sure they understand the relationship between both sets of terms," the notes stated.
The curriculum did not restrict the terminology teachers were to use with students.
During the lesson, Ms. Kramer asked her students to think of words they had heard that referred to sexual acts, body parts or bodily fluids.
She then wrote the terms on the blackboard, and "where applicable…associated each word with its more socially acceptable equivalent," according to the ruling.
The students were told to copy the terms in their notebooks.
Ms. Kramer later testified that her method comported with training she had received from the school system and said she had been using a similar teaching technique for roughly 15 years.
However, after some parents complained, Ms. Kramer was removed from the classroom and told she could no longer earn money for teaching overtime.
She also was given an "NA" or non-applicable rating for the school year, a marked departure from the "satisfactory" rating she had received since 1990.
Following an investigation, Ms. Kramer's principal accused her of engaging in verbal abuse in violation of Chancellor's Regulation A-421, which prohibits "language that tends to cause fear or mental distress."
While not formally disciplined and eventually allowed to return to the classroom, Ms. Kramer was warned that the "incident could lead to further disciplinary action."
She then sued the board of education for violations of her First Amendment and due process rights, breach of contract and negligent supervision. The judge granted the city's motion for summary judgment on all but the due process claim.
Regulation Found Vague
The school board argued that Ms. Kramer had no claim that her due process rights were violated when she was assigned to temporary administrative duty.
Judge Weinstein disagreed.
Noting that the "board has not cited any school policy, rule or guideline charged against the plaintiff that purports to regulate teachers' use in the classroom of words that are vulgar, sexually explicit, obscene or otherwise objectionable," the judge held that regulation A-421 "does not, by its terms, cover the acts committed."
"As applied to [Ms. Kramer's] conduct, the regulation fails to satisfy both aspects of the vagueness doctrine—lack of notice and lack of limit on arbitrary enforcement," Judge Weinstein held.
In reaching this conclusion, the judge pointed out that the "substantial weight of pedagogical literature and other authorities supports the reasonableness" of Ms. Kramer's approach.
He noted that many of the terms used by Ms. Kramer's students not only appear in fictional works "recommended for young people by state and city educational authorities," but throughout the mainstream media.
And while Judge Weinstein acknowledged that the board had the power to "restrict" a frank discussion of HIV/AIDS, he ruled that "administrators cannot decide post hoc, without justification in any stated school rule or policy, to censure an experienced teacher for conducting candid discussions with students, particularly when it impinges on the teacher's professional reputation, her standing within the school and larger community, and her supplemental compensation."
The neanderthals who infest pubic schools are leading us into gomorrah.
It seems a little silly, but not worth the furor. And certainly no 8th graders suffered appreciable "mental distress" from the exercise. They're the ones who came up with the terms in the first place.
Language is not the issue at the heart of this matter. The fact that schools are wrapping their promotion of a immoral behavior in AIDs education is the issue.
You can bet your Aunt Fanny that all these students hear is “wear a condom” and “gay is good” and “you might be gay, ask us how!” Do you think they hear any truth about AIDs? Or any of the medical dangers of anal sex? Or the safety of monogamous heterosexual sex between two people married to one another? Hell no! That would be a value judgment and would exhibit HOMOPHOBIA!!.
Jumping baby Huey on a pogo stick. What idjits do they take us for?
I don't know. Maybe the words were "homosexual" or "sodomite." Just guessing though.
Knowing some of today's teachers it probably isn't; more than likely it was vile and inaccurate.
The kids can not read or write or reason..but they will know every sexual perversion and be able to call it by name..
Gotta love what America is calling education these days
Wonder how many of the little “bastids” can read or write at grade level?......
In one word: GetYourKidsOutOfThoseSchools!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.