SEA 6490

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School

Wilmington University *

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6490

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Law

Date

Feb 20, 2024

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docx

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Uploaded by MateLeopardMaster1437

RUNNING HEAD: A FRAMEWORK FOR HANDLING EMPLOYEE MISCONDUCT A Framework for Handling Employee Misconduct Madeline Jeffords SEA 6490: Education, Ethics & The Law Professor Kurt Hollstein

RUNNING HEAD: A FRAMEWORK FOR HANDLING EMPLOYEE MISCONDUCT Disclaimer : For the purposes of this assignment and to maintain confidentiality all names of those involved in this situation have been changed or omitted. Introduction of Interview Facts: I was able to conduct an interview with my current school principal regarding a situation that he dealt with in 2019. This situation was unique, in that it was the first report of employee misconduct that was not able to be solved in mediation and was taken to court. Due to the court involvement, this case was made very public and unfortunately still taints the school to this day. This case lasted an exceptionally long time, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was finally resolved in 2022. Teacher J, was a tenured English teacher at our school, who had worked here for eight years. Teacher J taught College Prep (CP) and Accelerated Prep (AP) English 1 and 2, with freshmen and sophomores. In 2019, a few situations occurred surrounding this employee's misconduct. Racial comments that Teacher J said, and also sexual misconduct allegations with a female student, however those were eventually dropped. One day during a lesson, Teacher J wrote the following on the board “N ___ G ___ E R” He told the students to guess the letters by way of playing Hangman, to figure out the word. Quickly, the students were able to decipher what word he was referring to. Teacher J spent the remainder of the class period using the word repeatedly, and explaining to the class that there is no logical reason why he, as a white man, should not be able to use this word, as it is merely just “another word in the dictionary.” Teacher J says that the purpose of this lesson was to show students that different words do not need to carry so much “weight.” That words are just words and should all be treated the same. This

RUNNING HEAD: A FRAMEWORK FOR HANDLING EMPLOYEE MISCONDUCT lesson was a precursor to the study of To Kill A Mockingbird, which does use the ‘n’ word on multiple occasions. As expected, this lesson did not go over well. Students actually took pictures of the Hangman game on the board with their cell phone as evidence this occurred. This image later got turned into a meme and went viral all over the internet. Multiple students, one African American, and two White, went home and expressed to their parents how uncomfortable they were by the lesson, with their teacher using that type of vocabulary, and also showed their parents the image. Their parents immediately notified the school principal, who notified the Superintendent. Teacher J was told that following evening that he was not to return to school, and would be put on paid leave pending an investigation of misconduct. Misconduct Response Plan: From the information I received in this interview, it seems the misconduct response plan was executed very well, and very swiftly in response to the allegations. Having the photo evidence in this case added additional support as to why the teacher needed to be put on leave immediately. Teacher J had also had previous conduct issues, none of which were worthy of job termination, but Teacher J was not a model employee by any means. Previous reports state that female students had felt he was “creepy” and exhibited “weird” conduct towards them. Female staff had also reported not wanting to work with him in close proximity due to his “out of pocket” comments. The information outlined in this plan has been developed by the details I was given about the case from my administrator, as well as the information available from court documents online. Information pertaining to educational law I have learned in this course is also applied. This framework is a tool to be utilized moving forward for all misconduct cases in the school setting although adaptations of steps may be applicable in a case by case scenario.

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