A Bennett music teacher said Tuesday that her school district has turned down a buyout offer and is apparently preparing to terminate her for showing first-, second- and third-graders part of a video introduction to the famed opera “Faust.”
“They want me to be quiet and take responsibility and walk away,” said Tresa Waggoner, a teacher at Bennett Elementary. “They’re treating me terribly wrong. I can’t even fathom this.”
If the Bennett School District’s board does vote to fire her, she pledges to sue the district and try to generate as much publicity as possible about what she sees as unfair treatment.
District Superintendent George Sauter said he could not comment on the situation because it is a personnel matter, but he denied the district had broached a buyout.
“There was no discussion of a buyout or anything. Absolutely,” he said.
Waggoner’s presentation of about 12 minutes of an installment from a 33-year-old series titled “Who’s Afraid of Opera?” led in January to demands by some parents that she be fired. It ignited an uproar that refuses to die in the prairie town 30 miles east of Denver.
Some parents said their children were traumatized by the appearance of a leering devil in the video as well as such objectionable elements as a man appearing to be killed by a sword in silhouette and an allusion to suicide.
The day after an article on the controversy ran in The Denver Post on Jan. 29, Waggoner was placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.
Sauter said he will present the results of his findings to the school board during a closed session at the end of its Thursday evening meeting. He said no decision on disciplinary action would be made at that time.
Articles on the debate have appeared in newspapers across the country as well as on websites such as artsjournal.com, and discussions of it have taken place on blogs, including dailykos.com.
Waggoner said that at Sauter’s request, she prepared a list of her buyout terms, including the removal of disciplinary documents from her file, letters of recommendation, pay for the rest of this school year and next, and reimbursement of her legal fees.
She is worried that negative publicity generated by this affair might prohibit her from working as a teacher anywhere in Colorado.
“So I don’t think it is too much to ask for them to pay for my next year’s contract,” she said.
According to Waggoner, Sauter told her union representative, Norm Milks, on Monday that the board had refused her buyout terms and some of its members were insisting she be fired. Milks could not be reached for comment.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
