Grade school teacher’s aide fired for refusing to hand over Facebook password

Kimberly Hester, a grade school teacher's aide in Michigan, was fired for refusing to hand over her Facebook password to her supervisors. Hester posted a picture of a co-workers' shoes and pants bunched around her ankles on Facebook in April 2011 with the caption, "Thinking of you." She posted the picture in jest, but a parent who's on her Facebook friend list saw the image and reported it to Frank Squires Elementary where Hester was employed, prompting the investigation.

Teachers have gotten in trouble for Facebook status messages before, but in Hester's case, it's her refusal to hand over her password that actually got her fired. One of the supervisors from the Lewis Cass Intermediate School District (ISD), the regional service center for education in Michigan, even wrote her a letter when she refused to give them her password for the third time. Part of the letter read: "... in the absence of you voluntarily granting Lewis Cass ISD administration access to you[r] Facebook page, we will assume the worst and act accordingly." Lewis Cass wanted to put Hester on a paid administrative leave before they fired her, but she chose to go on an unpaid leave because she believes she did nothing wrong. She plans to use the letter she received to sue the school district.

I was using two id’s on one site for a couple of years. I figured it would last a week, and just sort of did it on a fun lark. It got pretty comical. I would even log on as one person on IE and the other on firefox and the two id’s would have conversations with each other within a thread.

The liberals were going nuts because I did not even try to hide the fact that they both used the same conversation style. Finally, about a month ago, one of them got permabanned and the admin said he confirmed it via IP address. It was all in good fun and I let him know it was the only time I had done it or would do it. You need to keep your wits about you because it’s surprisingly easy to use one ID when you think you are using another. I did that one time, but it was late at night and nobody else was on. I caught it immediately and deleted the post. (Oh, if only you could do that here).

If it was something “bad” and/or I was doing something illegal, I would have also gotten a knock on the door.

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