Having read the link, I am wondering what the beef is? The offending teacher was investigated by the police and the school administration. Evidence showed that the student and teacher were exchanging e-mails and text messages, but yet nothing inappropriate was indicated by either investigation.
Had there been evidence of law-breaking, action could have been taken. The man was innocent until proven guilty, right? He could not be fired without substantiated cause.
I'm not unsympathetic to the desire to fire a teacher who is prone to manipulate his students. There was an incident similar to this several years ago at my old school.
The teacher in question had been caught in three inappropriate situations with students in as many years. Incident one: He bought hard liquor for two female students while on a week long field trip to the Grand Canyon. Incident two: He wrote love letters to, and gave a ring to, a 14 year old girl, promising to divorce his wife and marry her. Incident three: he retrieved a note from a female student, during class and in full view of several students, which she had secreted away inside her brazziere.
The parents of the girl in incident two were friends of mine. The girl's adoptive father was a fellow teacher at the same school. Yet our superintendent and his wife, also friends of mine, were so agog over the offender's teaching ability, they ran interference for him.
The second incident alone should have gotten him fired. Yet, it took the third incident to get the job done, and then it only happened because the girl with the booby note was related to a school board member.
Even at that, he was "allowed" to tender his resignation at the END of the school year, and nothing was ever written into his record.
The wife of the superintendent, who was and is a close friend, thought he was the victim of a witch-hunt, and she was angry with me for a while because I didn't give him any sympathy. I'm unrepentent in my views on the subject. The bastage needed to go. If he had manipulated a daughter of mine the way he did the girl in the second incident, blood would have flowed.
Yet, even HE deserved a hearing, and since all three incidents took place at or during school functions, the school board and administration were obligated to do something.
The difference rpm, between this man and the teacher cited in your link, is that one provided plenty of evidence of wrongdoing, while the authorities could find no evidence in the other.
You cannot convict without evidence.
Regards, Shuckins
