Posted on 08/10/2014 2:34:17 PM PDT by Kaslin
On November 12, 2013, Amy Lacey, the principal of Texas’ Hempstead Middle School, was placed on administrative leave and subsequently fired when she made a simple request to students: speak English.
Now that the gag order has expired, Lacey is speaking out about what happened that day, dispelling rumors that she banned Spanish from the school’s campus.
“I informed students it would be best to speak English in the classrooms to the extent possible, in order to help prepare them for [state] tests,” she wrote in a letter to the Houston Chronicle explaining her side of the story. “It is important to note that I did not ban the use of Spanish anywhere in the school or at any time, even though teachers had reported to me that they had experienced instances in which students had been asked to stop talking during instruction, and they responded that it was their right to speak Spanish — ignoring the fact that they shouldn’t have been speaking [in any language] during class without permission. The perception of the teachers was that students were being disrespectful and disrupting learning, and they believed they could get away with it by claiming racism.”
By telling students to speak English, Lacey was not being racist, she was merely pointing out that the academic language in Texas is, by law, English.
“Even so, I did not suggest that there would be any adverse consequences for any student speaking Spanish at any time. I merely encouraged students to speak English in classrooms by advising them that it would be to their advantage to do so especially with regard to state testing,” she continued. “English language immersion is an accepted best-practice teaching strategy, and Hempstead ISD board policy provides for its practice.”
She ended the letter thanking those who supported her “even when true facts were never given to the media” because she and others were not allowed to publicly defend her position.
“I think the public needs to know that in public education there are only one or two district personnel designated to talk to media,” she wrote in closing, “so any teachers that would have liked to speak on my behalf were not allowed without risking their job status.”
**Fired Texas Principal Speaks Out: ‘It Would Be Best to Speak English in Classrooms’**
Amen!
Remember the cr** they pulled on Perry about some dumb rock near the old homestead....
That’s terrible...just terrible, I tell ya!
How dare she speak the truth. She should lose her job.
Silly me...she did.
The principal is and was 100% correct
By design, of course. Only lies and/or Spanish will be tolerated.
“I think the public needs to know that in public education there are only one or two district personnel designated to talk to media,” she wrote in closing, “so any teachers that would have liked to speak on my behalf were not allowed without risking their job status.”
I understand not being able to make official comments but what happened to free speech?
She is 100% correct and our country would be better off for everyone.
So is she now unemployed? I hope not. If that blond lady in the photo is her, she’s far too young to even say the word ‘retirement’ unless she has a well to do husband.
We’ve already give away our nation. It’s already too late.
She’s right. So what. Later this month Obama is going to grant broad amnesty, and John Boehner will cry.
And so goes the Republic.
She needs to be given Award not fired for speaking the Truth. Everything is backwards Everywhere.
I've told this before but many many years ago when my husband and I had first married, we were at a laundromat and two hispanic women were speaking spanish and kept looking over at us and laughing. I quietly joked to my husband that they thought he was a weenie for doing "women's work"..... he looked right at them and broke out some long sentence in German (which of course I did not understand!) and you should have seen the look on the faces of those women! You would have thought he had slapped them both. They don't like it when they geet the tables turned on them.
This is a months old event resulting in principle Lacey’s contract not being renewed after being placed on leave.
Lacey comported herself well in her letter to the Houston Chronicle and the associated chron.com gives a short list, in March, of superintendent Flores-Smith’s case against Lacey, who was placed on leave in December and who has engaged a lawyer to appeal the nonrenewal of her contract.
I found no news on this since then and would love to know the outcome.
Language is now race??? What the hell goes on in a liberal mind??? They are so blinded by race that EVERYTHING is race. Now the language we speak is racial? Is an African from Sierra Leone now French race because he speaks French? I speak limited Spanish. Does that make me a Mexican (which is not a race?).
What a bunch of idiots.
My son came from China 5 years ago. He spoke almost no English. Today he is fluent. There is no reason others can’t do the same thing.
Of course unless the goal of these educators is to create permanent under class that is dependent on the government. Which also just happens to also be a majority of Democrat voter.
Is not a gag order a violation of the 1A? From now on they should respond by saying ‘gag this’.
Good for your hubby! I hope you pretended to understand his every syllable This response of his probably made them consider that if he could speak German, he might very well know Spanish too, and could possibly understand every word they had said! Bet they were embarrassed to get exposed and nailed in the same manner. Great anecdote you have shared. Thanks.
It's obvious that liberals had to be behind this.
I’m doing that the next time that happens to me which is often here in the Hispanic region of the us
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