An Indiana grade-school teacher, during the run-up to the Iraq war, answered a student’s question about anti-war protests by explaining that she “honks for peace” – and soon afterward lost her job.
Two New Mexico teachers and a counselor got suspended, were docked two days of pay and received letters of reprimand after refusing to remove anti-war materials from their classrooms and office.
A Florida high school government teacher clashed with administrators over her plan to show then-President Clinton’s videotaped testimony in the Monica Lewinsky case, even though she had received parental permission for every student.
While school officials in all of these cases claimed their actions against educators had nothing to do with free speech, all turned into First Amendment lawsuits tinged with the politics of the day. Two settled out of court, and one is pending.
Amid the dust-up at Overland High School over objections to teacher Jay Bennish’s politically charged comments, the cases also illustrate how teachers and administrators venture onto tricky terrain when volatile issues are introduced in the classroom.
“A high school teacher has no speech rights yet must use words to deliver curriculum,” said Linda Manning, the Florida teacher. “We walk on the edge of a sword.”
On the other hand, school districts face what one expert calls a no-win situation when free- speech conflicts – and particularly lawsuits – enter the public arena.
“This kind of thing distracts energy and resources for defending yourself,” said Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators. “Sometimes there are important precedents to be set, but sometimes people are just trying to have their way with the districts, or people from outside with no direct stake want to use it as a platform for other issues.
“Obviously, you have to protect the rights of all the people as much as possible and be sensitive to politics and local concerns,” he said. “School districts don’t always handle it well.”
In January 2003, Deborah Mayer didn’t think she was venturing anywhere near dangerous territory as she guided her Bloomington, Ind., elementary- school class through a lesson built around the magazine Time for Kids.
The material included information about a war protest as the Iraq conflict loomed and prompted a student to ask Mayer if she would ever walk in a peace march.
She said she replied that peace marches were taking place all over the country – including at the Bloomington courthouse, where, in response to pickets’ signs, she honked her car horn for peace. She added that peaceful solutions should be sought before going to war and drew a parallel to mediators used on the school playground to solve disputes.
“I was naive enough to think there was nothing political in that statement and felt perfectly comfortable making it,” Mayer said. “It turned into a nightmare.”
According to Mayer’s complaint, one student went home and told her father that Mayer was against an Iraq war. At a subsequent conference, the student’s father accused Mayer of being unpatriotic and demanded that she not mention peace in her class.
Mayer’s lawsuit, which goes before a judge in July, claims that the conflict over her peace comment began a campaign of retaliation and criticism by school officials that resulted in her contract not being renewed.
The school district, in its response to the lawsuit, claims that several parents previously had complained about Mayer’s teaching abilities but that Mayer had a “my way or the highway” attitude and, in some cases, lashed back against the students whose parents complained.
The district holds that Mayer’s classroom speech isn’t protected in the first place but that, nevertheless, her termination had nothing to do with her comments on the Iraq war.
The experience has moved Mayer, who has a son serving in Afghanistan, to a level of civic activism she never imagined as a teacher.
“I was pretty much oblivious to all things political when this happened to me,” Mayer said. “Now I know democracy is not a spectator sport.”
The politics of the Iraq war also surfaced in New Mexico, where two teachers and a counselor who worked at separate public schools in Albuquerque found themselves the subjects of disciplinary action over materials they had posted in their office or classrooms regarding the impending conflict.
They were docked two days’ pay and had letters of reprimand placed in their files after they refused to take down the anti-war material in response to anonymous complaints, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.
The three – Carmelita Roybal, Allen Cooper and Ken Tabish – were charged with violating the district’s “controversial issues” policy.
The Bennish incident revolved around his possible violation of a similar policy. Bennish, who was placed on administrative leave after his lecture was recorded by a student and made public, was reinstated after Cherry Creek Schools officials investigated whether he violated policy. Unspecified disciplinary action was taken against Bennish, who returns today to his duties at Overland.
Tabish, a counselor at Albuquerque High School, doesn’t object to such guidelines – only to some administrators’ “knee-jerk reaction” to complaints.
“It’s important for the district to have a policy,” Tabish said. “But I think they need to investigate situations instead of reacting. In our case, the investigation came after the action had been taken. I really felt betrayed by a district I’d been loyal to for 19 years.”
Months after the three educators filed a federal lawsuit, the parties settled. The letters of reprimand were removed, docked pay was restored, and the district amended its procedures to allow for mediation before suspending teachers for violating the controversial-issues policy.
“I think we could have had a real knock-down, drag-out legal battle over whether there was a First Amendment issue at all,” said George McFall, who represented Albuquerque Public Schools. “From a legal perspective, I think we were right, but it was deemed better to work out a solution.”
As the case for impeachment of President Clinton gathered momentum in 1998, Manning, the Florida teacher, saw an unprecedented opportunity to bring current events into her Advanced Placement American government class in Pinellas County.
She wanted to show Clinton’s videotaped grand- jury testimony as a here-and-now lesson on impeachment and the checks and balances among the branches of government. Conscious of the mature content but confident that her students – all juniors and seniors taking the course for both high school and college credit – could handle it, she had them obtain signed permission slips from their parents.
But Manning’s plan collided with an administration directive, issued at about the same time as she collected permission slips, that the Clinton materials not be shown. When push came to shove, Manning felt that she would be putting her job on the line if she challenged the district administrator on her own.
So, with the backing of the teachers union, she filed suit.
“I really felt like I had a cause of action against prior restraint, because what we have is oversight that is just stifling in classrooms today, from people who are operations gurus, not curriculum folks,” Manning said.
School officials were concerned that the Clinton material might be too salacious for high-schoolers.
“The administration felt that you can teach about the impeachment process without getting into the details of what was going on at that time with Clinton and that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” said John Bowen, then the lawyer for the Pinellas County School Board.
A subsequent settlement yielded a new “academic freedom” policy that essentially changed nothing – the superintendent still has final say on curriculum materials – and the Clinton tapes, which were deemed too sexually explicit, never got shown.
After the incident, a frustrated Manning quit teaching the government class. Now she teaches honors economics at the high school – and, in retrospect, wishes she had pressed the issue further.
“I love the Constitution,” she said. “You can’t let something like this fly by.”
Staff writer Kevin Simpson can be reached at 303-820-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com.
