vs. ) CASE NO. 82-3241
Respondent. )
Pursuant to notice, this cause was heard by Linda M. Rigot, the assigned Hearing Officer of the Division of Administrative Hearing, on March 24, 1983, in Miami, Florida.
For Petitioner: Phyllis O. Douglas, Esquire
By letter dated November 10, 1982, Petitioner advised Respondent of her suspension and of the initiation of dismissal proceedings against her as a teacher in the Dade County Public Schools. Respondent timely requested a formal hearing, and a formal Notice of Charges was thereafter filed. Accordingly, the issue for determination is whether Respondent should be suspended and/or dismissed from her employment as a teacher.
Petitioner presented the testimony of William R. Jones; Desmond Patrick Gray; Anastasia M. Castiello, Jr.; Elizabeth Bragg; Louis Perez; Wendell Newton; Manuel Rosales; Raymond Harrell; Gary Graziani; Donald C. Wilson; and Charles Sherwood. The Respondent testified on her own behalf and presented the deposition testimony of William Gustafson, M.D. Additionally, Joint Exhibits numbered 1 and 2, Petitioner's Exhibits numbered 1 through 16, and Respondent's Exhibits numbered 1 through 4 were admitted in evidence.
Both parties submitted post hearing proposed findings of fact in the form of a proposed recommended order. To the extent that any proposed findings have not been adopted in this Recommended Order, they have been rejected as not having been supported by the evidence, as having been irrelevant to the issues under consideration herein, or as constituting unsupported argument of counsel or conclusions of law.
Petitioner filed a post hearing Request to Correct the Record, and Respondent filed an Objection to Request to Correct the Record Petitioner's request, which is accompanied by an affidavit of Dr. Patrick Gray, seeks to correct Page 51, Line 15, of the Transcript of the formal hearing in this cause
by substituting the word "acceptable" for the word "exceptional." The undersigned finds, as a matter of fact, that either the witness misspoke or the court reporter misheard, and Page 51, Line 15, of the Transcript is hereby corrected by substituting the word "acceptable" for the word "exceptional."
Respondent has a bachelor's degree in secondary education in English, which she received from Penn State University in 1973. After graduation, she took ballet lessons for six months in New York and then returned home to recuperate from pneumonia. She returned to Philadelphia and taught in a private school for a short time. She then attended a graduate program at Temple University and received her certification as a reading specialist in 1977, although she did not complete her master's degree. While she was in graduate school, she was a long-term substitute for one and one-half years in Philadelphia. She returned home to Miami Beach, Florida, because she was assigned to a school which she considered undesirable and because she had some dental problems.
Respondent started teaching in the Dade County Public Schools in September of 1980 at Robert E. Lee Junior High School. During most of that school year, William R. Jones, who is currently the principal of Robert E. Lee Junior High School, was the assistant principal for curriculum at that school. As such, he received numerous complaints concerning Respondent and her classroom instruction from other teachers, from students, and from parents. Therefore, he observed Respondent teaching.
Jones attempted to help Respondent with her teaching presentation, a fact which was acknowledged by Respondent at the formal hearing in this cause when she admitted that he had helped her a great deal in the field of teaching. However, during the 1980-1981 school year she responded to his assistance inappropriately. She told Jones that he had conditioned her to respond favorably to him sexually, and she told other teachers of her physical attraction to Jones.
Respondent began to display bizarre behavior at school. On three occasions she was found lying on the front lawn of the school. The students thought that she was asleep, ill, or possibly dead, and this understandably caused commotion in the classrooms. After the first such occasion, Jones told her not to do it again. However, on two subsequent occasions she was found lying on the front lawn of the school.
On another occasion, Respondent hysterically interrupted a conference Jones was having with another member of the school staff. He told Respondent that he was involved in a conference, but she refused to leave. She vacillated between laughing and crying. Finally, Jones advised Respondent that if she did not leave, he would call school security. She continued to refuse to leave, and he was compelled to terminate his conference so that he could talk to her. She then indicated that she had nothing to say to him.
At the conclusion of the 1980-1981 school year, after Jones had become the principal of Robert E. Lee Junior High School, he was conducting a faculty meeting. Respondent got out of her seat and began to yell and scream. She ran about the cafeteria where the meeting was being held and made threats toward Jones. Due to this disruption, Jones had to end the faculty meeting and send Respondent home.
After observing Respondent's classroom technique, Jones determined there was a need for her to obtain additional help or training in Preparation, planning and techniques of instruction. For example, Respondent changed her classroom activity six or seven times during the class period; she would start the class on an assignment and three or four minutes later, before the class had finished, would change the assignment to something else. Jones requested Respondent to attend the Teacher Education Center. She refused to attend.
Jones had Respondent transferred from her regular class of approximately 30 to 35 students to a smaller classroom with 13 to 15 students in the hope that she would be able to cope with this reduced-size class. The attempt was unsuccessful. Both Jones and his new assistant principal, Mr. Bonilla, still found Respondent's performance to be unacceptable. In his final evaluation of the school year, Jones rated her as unacceptable.
About halfway through the 1980-1981 school year, Jones advised the executive director for the Division of Personnel Control of the Dade County Public Schools, Dr. Patrick Gray, of Respondent's difficulties. After Jones's and Bonilla's annual evaluation of Respondent at the end of the 1980-1981 school year, Gray held a conference with Respondent and referred her to a psychiatrist, Dr. William Gustafson.
As a result of his evaluation, Gustafson advised that Respondent was definitely emotionally disturbed and in need of psychiatric treatment. He further opined that Respondent was definitely not able to function as a teacher at the present.
Thereafter, Respondent requested a medical leave of absence without pay for psychiatric reasons, and that leave was approved.
About this same period of time, Dr. Gray's office received an undated letter from Respondent charging Jones with numerous acts of unprofessional conduct. Among other things, she alleged that Jones, a married man, was having an affair with a fellow educator and that that person had become pregnant. In fact, that faculty member had never been pregnant.
During the 1981-1982 school year, Respondent was on a leave of absence from the Dade County Public Schools on medical leave for psychiatric reasons.
It is the school system's policy to pay the premiums on hospitalization, vision and dental insurance during such a leave of absence, and this was done for Respondent.
Midpoint in that school year, Respondent advised that she wished to return to work, and Dr. Gray arranged to obtain a medical evaluation by psychiatrist Charles B. Mutter. Dr. Mutter reported that Respondent's judgment was impaired, her insight was nil, and she had marked emotional difficulties warranting further psychiatric treatment. He found she had a schizoid predisposition and was in a borderline state with marked anxiety. As a result of Mutter's evaluation, Respondent did not return to work.
On March 2, 1982, Dr. Gray received a report from Dr. Gustafson advising that Respondent had returned to treatment with him. Gustafson stated that she was still quite impaired by her condition, although she had improved in some respects. That same day, Gustafson telephoned Gray to advise that Respondent was no longer in treatment and that she considered Gustafson and Gray to be in a conspiracy against her. Gustafson further opined that Respondent had potential for desperate actions and needed continuing therapy.
On June 16, 1982, Gray received a letter from Respondent requesting that her medical leave be extended for another year. However, on July 2, 1982, Gray received a report from Dr. Gustafson recommending only a two-month extension of Respondent's medical leave.
On August 4, 1982, Gustafson wrote to Gray stating that Respondent had been successfully able to function as a teacher in a private school over the past summer. At that time, it was his opinion that she could handle the responsibilities of a classroom teacher once again. Gustafson's opinion at that time was based in part on Respondent's representation that she had been teaching a classroom of students during the preceding summer. He stated later that had he known that Respondent was only tutoring one student at a time during her summer employment, a fact which Respondent acknowledged at the hearing, he would have been more cautious about his recommendation that she was able to return to work.
On the strength of Gustafson's recommendation, Respondent was returned to work in the Dade County Public Schools. She was assigned to Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High School, a school with a low incidence of student disruption and of high student test scores. Hialeah-Miami Lakes was in the top one-third of Dade County schools academically as well as in student activities and in the overall operation of the school. Respondent was assigned to teach English/Communications.
Respondent's classes each lasted 55 minutes. During the first nine weeks of the school year, she typically assigned students a test which took approximately five to ten minutes to complete. For the rest of the class, she told them to read material of their own choosing. The students either read or slept.
While the students were testing themselves and/or reading and/or sleeping, Respondent stared at the ceiling or else read a book. Sometimes she giggled to herself, even though there did not appear to be anything to laugh at occurring at the time. Some of the students felt that she screamed at students without good cause and "acted crazy." Some students requested to be transferred out of her class.
The assistant principal in charge of curriculum at Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High School observed Respondent's class and found that there was no teaching being done.
Further, although the Faculty Handbook at Hialeah-Miami Lakes requires that a minimum of two grades a week be placed in the teacher's grade book for each student, and although Respondent was advised of this requirement, she had no grades in her grade book by the end of the seventh week of school. Instead, she placed colored squares in her grade book. Although this coloring system may have held meaning for Respondent, a substitute or new teacher for the class would not be able to understand anything from this form of grading system.
A conference was held with Respondent, the principal of the school, and the assistant principal for curriculum in the principal's office regarding Respondent's unacceptable performance. At that time, both the principal and assistant principal found Respondent's behavior to be bizarre. She grabbed her arms and started to giggle and laugh even though no one had said anything to precipitate any laughter.
Although Respondent insists that her testing of the students was absolutely necessary, it normally takes other teachers one week at the most to accomplish the same testing of the students prior to commencing instruction. Respondent was still testing in the seventh week of school and had not yet begun to instruct or teach the students.
Other teachers observed Respondent's behavior during the time she was at Hialeah-Miami Lakes and became concerned to the degree that five of them approached the principal regarding Respondent.
Raymond Harrell, the language department head at Hialeah-Miami Lakes, described Respondent's behavior, including her inappropriate giggling. Harrell and another teacher, Gary Graziani, related an incident concerning a school- sponsored television program, which is run every other Friday for 15 minutes and is part of the school curriculum. Respondent was upset about the noise from the televisions and stated to them and others: "We have got to stop the noise, I cannot teach with that noise, it's pounding in my blood." It was suggested that she might take her class to the auditorium on the days that the newscast was run; however, she refused and insisted that the noise must be turned down. She stated: "It's like being behind a train. I just can't take it, I just can't take it."
No other personnel at the school, including the teacher who had Respondent's classroom before her, had complained about the noise from the televisions.
On another occasion, while Harrell was chairing a department meeting concerning curriculum, Respondent raised her hand and gave a 10- to 15-minute speech about the history of her high school curriculum and the way she did things in Pennsylvania. Her comments had nothing to do with the subject of the meeting, and she told the department head to be quiet and pay attention.
Harrell, who has also observed Respondent staring at the ceiling and even talking to the ceiling, is of the opinion that she is absolutely incompetent to be a teacher.
During the month of October 1982, the principal of Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High School requested Dr. Charles Sherwood, the regional supervisor for the Dade County schools, who has extensive background in reading and in English, to come to Hialeah-Miami Lakes to evaluate the reading program at that school. On October 15, 1982, Dr. Sherwood complied with that request, and, as part of his evaluation, he observed Respondent.
Dr. Sherwood observed Respondent give a test to her students which required approximately five or six minutes to administer and take. She collected the test sheets and told the class to find something to read. Some students looked at magazines, others talked with each other, and Respondent sat down in a chair and looked at the ceiling. She was not teaching at all. Although Respondent's students were required to have writing instruction, she did not give them any. Dr. Sherwood questioned Respondent as to the materials and supplies she would be using, and she advised him that she would find some when she needed them. The materials that she did have and intended to use when she finished testing the students were not appropriate for her class.
Dr. Sherwood does not believe that Respondent is competent to teach school.
When the principal of Hialeah-Miami Lakes raised questions as to Respondent's fitness to teach, she was again referred to Dr. Patrick Gray. Gray again referred her for psychiatric evaluation, and, although Respondent resisted, eventually the evaluation did take place.
On November 5, 1982, Respondent agreed to see Dr. Anastasia M. Castiello, a board certified psychiatrist. Dr. Castiello diagnosed her as schizophrenic. Dr. Castiello concluded his report on his November 5, 1982, evaluation of Respondent as follows:
. . . Finally, in response to your specific question, i,+ is my opinion that Miss Ronburg's mental condition is such at the present time that she would be unable to properly function as a teacher and as a matter of act [sic], it is unlikely that she could function in whatever capacity
in a job situation of any kind.
After reviewing Dr. Castiello's evaluation, Dr. Gray concluded that the school system had exhausted its efforts to help Respondent and would not be able to be of further assistance to her. He did not feel that medical leave of absence would achieve any further positive results and therefore recommended the termination of Respondent's employment with the school system. On the basis of his educational background and his experience in the area of personnel control, Dr. Gray believes that Respondent clearly lacks the competence to perform the assigned functions of an instructional staff member in Dade County Public Schools.
Effective November 18, 1982, Respondent was suspended from her employment with the Dade County Public Schools, and the school board instituted proceedings to dismiss her from employment.
On February 7, 1983, Respondent's attorney took the deposition of Dr. William Gustafson who had first seen Respondent in the spring of 1981. Dr. Gustafson agrees that Respondent is suffering from schizophrenia, which he describes as an inability to differentiate what is real from what is unreal and a difficulty in arranging thoughts in an orderly, reasonable, and rational manner. When he first saw her, Gustafson believed that Respondent was delusional about her situation at Robert E. Lee Junior High School and her feelings about Mr. Jones. He noted her inappropriate laughter, from which it appeared that she was responding to things that were within herself. Although Gustafson believes that Respondent has improved somewhat, as of the date of his deposition, his diagnosis remains the same.
Dr. Gustafson has been hampered in his treatment of Respondent by her refusal to come for treatment as often as the psychiatrists recommend to be desirable and necessary for treatment of her condition and by Respondent's refusal to take the medication prescribed for her. After her suspension from her employment, Respondent visited Gustafson, who became concerned that she had suicidal feelings, and he hospitalized her for this reason. She checked out of the hospital within three hours. Gustafson believes that if Respondent continues in treatment and accepts medication, she can recover. She has not, however, admitted that she is sick, and she continues to refuse medication and treatment.
As of his deposition on February 7, 1983, Gustafson had not seen Respondent in his office for approximately one month. In fact, he had seen her only three or four times since he hospitalized her in November of 1982 and has no reason to believe that she will come in to see him any more often than she has in the past. He believes that in order to be of assistance to her, he should see her once or twice a week for hourly sessions.
Since Respondent has only seen Dr. Gustafson approximately 12 times over the period of two years between her first referral to him and the date of the formal hearing in this cause, Dr. Gustafson cannot be considered as her treating physician, and his opinion is entitled to only the same weight as the opinions of the other two psychiatrists who have evaluated Respondent.
The most recent psychiatric evaluation of Respondent was performed by Dr. Charles B. Mutter on March 23, 1983. Dr. Mutter is the same psychiatrist who evaluated her in January 1982.
Dr. Mutter found that Respondent's judgment is impaired, and her insight is superficial. He further found that she needs more intensive psychotherapy than she is receiving and is in definite need of medication to help her remain more stabilized." Dr. Mutter concluded that Respondent's present mental state precludes her from teaching. He would only recommend that Respondent be permitted to return to the classroom with two stipulations: that she continue treatment with Dr. Gustafson on at least a twice-monthly basis, and that she take medications prescribed by Dr. Gustafson on a consistent basis.
At the formal hearing in this cause, Respondent admitted that she would not take medication for her illness even though she has been advised to do so by the psychiatrists. She also testified that she does not feel that she requires psychiatric treatment in order to perform the role of a classroom teacher.
Since all three psychiatrists agree that Respondent needs continuing regular therapy and medication in order to improve, and since Respondent refuses to undergo therapy and take medication, it is clear that until she chooses to follow medical advice she will not improve and cannot function as a teacher.
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
The Division of Administrative Hearings has jurisdiction over the subject matter hereof and the parties hereto. Section 120.57(I), Florida Statutes (1981).
Respondent is incompetent to teach school in the Dade County Public Schools system by reason of incapacity, as defined in Section 6B-4.09(1)(b)(1), Florida Administrative Code, in that she lacks the emotional stability to perform the functions of a classroom teacher.
Respondent is also incompetent to teach school in the Dade County Public Schools system by reason of inefficiency, as defined in Section 6B- 4.09(1)(a)(2), Florida Administrative Code, in that she has demonstrated a repeated failure to communicate with and relate to her students in the classroom to such an extent that those students have been deprived of minimum educational experiences.
Based on the foregoing Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, it is RECOMMENDED that a Final Order be entered affirming the suspension of
Respondent Donna Ronburg, dismissing her from her employment with the School Board of Dade County, Florida, and denying her claim for back pay.
DONE and RECOMMENDED this 30th day of June, 1983, in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida.
LINDA M. RIGOT, Hearing Officer Division of Administrative Hearings The Oakland Building
Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 30th day of June, 1983.
Phyllis O. Douglas, Esquire School Board of Dade County Lindsey Hopkins Building, Room 200
