The Issue Whether Respondent should be terminated from her employment with the Miami-Dade County School District.
Findings Of Fact The Petitioner is responsible for the operation and control of all public schools within the Miami-Dade County School District. As such, it is authorized to employ the personnel necessary to instruct the school district's students. At all times material to this case, Respondent was employed by Petitioner as an annual contract teacher at Miami Springs Middle School. Respondent was born in Africa and received college degrees from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France. Respondent holds a bachelor's degree in American Literature and Civilization, a master of arts degree in English Literature, a master of arts in International Relations, and a doctorate in American Civilization and Third World Literature. Prior to emigrating to the United States in 1989, Respondent had approximately three years of teaching experience. She taught secondary students for one year in England and France, and for an unknown time in the English Department at Cheikh Anta Diop University in West Africa. After coming to the United States, Respondent taught at Michigan State University for one semester, then at Vassar for one year, at Miami-Dade Community College during a two-year span, at Nova University for one semester, at Jones College in 1994, and at the Florida International University in 1995. In these instances, Respondent's teaching experience was limited to college-age students. Additionally, the number of terms or courses taught in the various settings is unknown. Respondent is certified by the Florida Department of Education in language arts. Pursuant to this certification she may teach middle school students. Respondent began her career with Petitioner as a substitute teacher. Respondent was hired for a full-time teaching position at Miami Springs Middle School for the 1996/97 school year. The transition from college-age students to middle school students proved difficult for Respondent. The students' lack of respect, discipline, and interest in education were new to Respondent. During her first year at Miami Springs, Respondent was assigned a "peer teacher." This individual, Caridad Hildago, was to assist Respondent to overcome beginning teacher problems. In this regard, over the course of the year Ms. Hildago gave Respondent numerous suggestions to help her keep students on task, to maintain control, and to promote interaction between teacher and students in the class. Although she received an acceptable evaluation for this first year at Miami Springs, Respondent exhibited problems with student management. Security monitors were sent to Respondent's classroom on more than one occasion. Nevertheless, because she made progress in the first year, Respondent was expected to become an adequate teacher and was retained for the 1997/98 school year. During Respondent's second year at Miami Springs, the 1997/1998 school year, Dr. Senita became the principal. In October 1997, Dr. Senita informally met with Respondent and told her that students had complained that Respondent had pushed them or handled them roughly. Dr. Senita reminded Respondent that such behavior was not appropriate and that she should keep her hands off the students. Teachers employed by the School Board are evaluated pursuant to the Teacher Assessment and Development System (TADS). TADS has been approved by the Florida Department of Education and is incorporated into the labor contract between Petitioner and the United Teachers of Dade (UTD). At all times material to this case, TADS was employed to evaluate Respondent's performance. The same TADS documents are used for all grade levels, subject areas, and all teachers. TADS objectively measures 68 minimal behaviors necessary for teaching. TADS' observers are trained and certified. The observer records deficiencies which are observed during the observation period and provides a prescription (a plan) for performance improvement when needed. During the 1997 legislative session, the Florida Legislature amended Chapter 231, Florida Statutes, effective July 1, 1997, to provide for a 90-calendar-day performance probation for annual and professional service contract teachers who are observed to have unsatisfactory performance. Because the statutory amendment impacted how TADS would be used in the future, Petitioner and the union began collective bargaining to revise performance review procedures. In the midst of these negotiations, on October 1, 1997, Respondent was formally observed in her 4th period creative writing class by Mr. Scriven, assistant principal. She was rated unsatisfactory in classroom management and techniques of instruction. Respondent was unsatisfactory in classroom management because the students were off task throughout the lesson and Respondent did nothing to redirect them. Two students had their heads down and/or slept during the class. By Mr. Scriven's count, ten students never participated. Additionally, Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in techniques of instruction because during sustained silent reading, Respondent continually interrupted the students. Respondent also failed to give instructions prior to beginning the lesson. Respondent did not make adjustments when the students' performance warranted it. When students did not understand the assignment, Respondent did not clarify areas of confusion by giving examples or re-explaining. During the post observation conference with Respondent on October 6, 1997, Mr. Scriven made recommendations to correct the areas of unsatisfactory performance, and provided assistance to help Respondent understand the deficiencies. Suggestions included observing a lesson taught by a fellow teacher and listing the non-verbal techniques used by that teacher to redirect off task learners. Mr. Scriven also directed Respondent to read specific pages from the TADS prescription manual and to complete the activities. Respondent was directed to list areas where she would expect student confusion and to discuss strategies with another teacher to address that confusion. On November 25, 1997, Respondent was formally observed in her 5th period creative writing class by Dr. Senita. Respondent had no lesson plan and her performance was marginal. Normally, the absence of a lesson plan would automatically render the observation unsatisfactory. The union asked Dr. Senita to work with Respondent while the Respondent attempted a transfer. To accommodate this request, Respondent was rated satisfactory. On December 5, 1997, Respondent was formally observed in her 4th period creative writing class by Dr. Senita and was rated unsatisfactory in knowledge of subject matter and classroom management. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in knowledge of subject matter because the sequence of information she presented was illogical and she failed to include important dimensions in her instruction. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in classroom management because there was too much wasted time with no instruction. Additionally, off-task students were not redirected. One student colored with markers for twenty-five minutes and then began bouncing a ball. Some students participated in a conversation about a sports figure and others talked about a girl's boyfriend. Many students chewed gum. Respondent failed to redirect any of these students. Dr. Senita made recommendations with respect to the specific areas of unsatisfactory performance, and provided assistance to help Respondent correct her deficiencies. These included observing a lesson taught by a fellow teacher and noting the strategies that teacher used to deal with students who were interacting inappropriately. Respondent was also directed to list three topics and to outline their components to ensure that the sequence would be logical. She was to list the important dimensions of each and state how they would be incorporated into the lesson. She was to estimate the amount of time each activity would take. She was to review her lesson plan with the principal. On December 10, 1997, Dr. Senita held a conference for the record with Respondent to address her unsatisfactory performance, to provide recommendations to improve the specific areas of her unsatisfactory performance, and to discuss her future employment status with the school district. Respondent was placed on a Performance Probation in accordance with Section 231.29(3)(d), Florida Statutes, and was provided assistance to help her correct her deficiencies within the prescribed time frame. Meanwhile, bargaining on the changes to TADS between the School Board and the Union culminated in a Memorandum of Understanding which was executed by the parties on December 9, 1997. On January 20, 1998, Respondent was formally observed in her 5th period creative writing class by Ms. Bell, assistant principal, and was rated unsatisfactory in classroom management and techniques of instruction. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in classroom management because her instructional activities did not fill the allotted time. Again, there was wasted time. There were instances of prolonged off-task behavior which Respondent did not address. Respondent was unable to keep students quiet. Ms. Bell made recommendations with respect to the specific areas of unsatisfactory performance and provided assistance to help Respondent correct her deficiencies. These included having Respondent observe a demonstration lesson in the same class. Ms. Bell also prescribed activities from the TADS prescription manual. On January 28, 1998, pursuant to Respondent's prescription, Ethel Dickens, a reading specialist with Petitioner's language arts department, presented a demonstration lesson utilizing the reciprocal teaching method to teach The Red Badge of Courage in Respondent's class. Respondent was already familiar with the technique of reciprocal teaching because she had learned it in a workshop during the summer of 1997. Prior to the start of the class, Ms. Dickens attempted to meet with Dr. Senita and Respondent. Because Respondent would not meet with Dr. Senita, Ms. Dickens met with Respondent in the teacher's lounge. At the start of the class, Ms. Dickens observed Respondent handling her class for about 15 minutes. The students did not appear to have a routine. Lack of routine constitutes poor classroom management. In contrast, Ms. Dickens began her instruction with class rules. Ms. Dickens introduced the students to unfamiliar vocabulary prior to reading the book. The lesson was very productive. Ms. Dickens had no discipline problems while she taught the class. On March 2, 1998, Respondent was formally observed in her 4th period creative writing class by Dr. Senita and was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning and classroom management. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in preparation and planning because she had no lesson plan. Respondent's class was in the library and Respondent requested that the principal not observe her in the library. Dr. Senita requested Respondent's lesson plan but Respondent refused to give one to her. The lesson plan is a contractual requirement. It guides what goes on in the class for the day. Respondent was required to allow Dr. Senita to review the lesson plan. An administrator has the right to observe any class at any time. Respondent was rated unacceptable in classroom management because she did not start her lesson for twenty-five minutes while she was on the telephone attempting to call different people to have the principal not observe her. Students reported late to class. Some students chewed gum. One student yelled an obscenity and another barked like a dog. Respondent did not correct the misbehavior. Dr. Senita made recommendations with respect to the specific areas of unsatisfactory performance, and provided assistance to help Respondent correct her deficiencies. These included completing activities from the TADS prescription manual and reading portions of a book entitled Learning to Teach. Respondent was also required to submit her lesson plans on the Friday prior to the week she would teach from them. On March 25, 1998, Dr. Senita formally observed Respondent in her 2nd period creative writing class and rated her unsatisfactory in preparation and planning, classroom management, and techniques of instruction. As this was the confirmatory observation, a prescription was not issued. The lesson was disjointed and did not extend for the allotted time. The students were again off task. As a result of the observation on March 25, 1998, Dr. Senita notified the Superintendent of Schools that Respondent had not satisfactorily corrected her performance deficiencies during the Performance Probation and recommended that Respondent's employment be terminated. The assistance provided to Respondent through her prescriptions was appropriate to remedy her deficiencies. Respondent completed all of her prescriptions. Nevertheless, Respondent continued to fail to plan for and manage her students. Respondent failed to improve her performance such that the students' instructional needs were not met. On April 2, 1998, the Superintendent of Schools timely notified Respondent that he was going to recommend that the School Board terminate her employment contract because she had failed to satisfactorily correct her performance deficiencies during her Performance Probation. On April 15, 1998, the School Board acted upon the Superintendent's recommendation and terminated Respondent's employment contract.
Recommendation Based on the foregoing Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, it is RECOMMENDED that the Miami-Dade County School Board enter a Final Order sustaining the action to terminate Respondent's annual contract. DONE AND ENTERED this 6th day of October, 1998, in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida. J. D. Parrish Administrative Law Judge Division of Administrative Hearings The DeSoto Building 1230 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32399-3060 (850) 488-9675 SUNCOM 278-9675 Fax Filing (850) 921-6847 Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 6th day of October, 1998. COPIES FURNISHED: Roger C. Cuevas, Superintendent School Board of Miami-Dade County, Florida School Board Administration Building 1450 Northeast Second Avenue, Suite 403 Miami, Florida 33132 Frank T. Brogan, Commissioner of Education The Capitol, Plaza Level 08 Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400 Madelyn P. Schere, Esquire School Board of Miami-Dade County, Florida School Board Administration Building 1450 Northeast Second Avenue, Suite 400 Miami, Florida 33132 Leslie A. Meek, Esquire United Teachers of Dade Legal Department 2929 Southwest 3rd Avenue, Suite One Miami, Florida 33129
The Issue The issue in this case is whether Respondent had good cause to reject the then Lake County Schools’ Superintendent’s nomination of Petitioner, Dennis Teasley, to be Assistant Principal I of Eustis High School for the 2008-2009 School year.
Findings Of Fact From 1987 until 2006, Dennis Teasley was employed by the Broward County School System. During those years, he served the school system in a number of capacities, including: dropout prevention teacher from 1987-1988; middle school science teacher from 1988-1999; Assistant Principal of Pines Lakes Elementary from 1999-2004; Intern Principal from 2002-2004; and Principal of Pines Lakes Elementary from 2004-2006. The Intern Principal title was used by Broward County School System to designate an assistant principal as a “principle-in-training.” The designation provided an assistant principal with additional opportunities to become involved on a larger scale with the administrative responsibilities of the school. Mr. Teasley’s performance appraisals from Broward County consistently rated him as “Effective” or “Highly Effective” in all the criteria assessed. Additionally, Mr. Teasley received or was nominated for numerous awards based on his performance or the performance of the schools under his charge. For the school year 2003-2004, when Mr. Teasley served as assistant and intern principal, Pines Lakes Elementary earned an “A” rating. For the school years 2004-2005 and 2005-2006, when Mr. Teasley was principal of Pines Lakes Elementary in Broward County, the school earned grades of “B” and “A,” respectively, and achieved AYP each year. “AYP” refers to Adequate Yearly Progress under the No Child Left Behind Act. To achieve AYP, a certain percentage of students from each population demographic represented at the school must achieve a Level 3 or higher in reading and mathematics, as measured by Florida’s “A-Plus” program. Sometime during the summer of 2006, Mr. Teasley either relocated or intended to relocate to the Lake County area. He applied for a position with the Lake County school system. Eventually, he was hired as a principal by Lake County Schools sometime in July, 2006, just prior to the beginning of the 2006- 2007 school year. Mr. Teasley was assigned to Beverly Shores Elementary School. Beverly Shores has a large population of students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as a large population of students requiring Exceptional Student Education (ESE). The ESE population includes students designated as Emotionally Handicapped (EH), and Educable Mentally Handicapped (EMH). Indeed, 68 percent of the students at Beverly Shores in 2006- 2007 came from economically disadvantaged homes and 11 percent of the students were classified as ESE. The environment of the school was described by most of the witnesses as being a tough environment with a variety of discipline problems. Prior to Mr. Teasley’s appointment as principal, 447 students were suspended from Beverly Shores during the 2005-2006 school year, with 422 students suspended out-of-school (OSS) and 25 students given in-school suspensions (ISS). Eighty of the students given OSS were kindergartners. The principal for that year was described by the Superintendent as being burned-out and needing a respite from such a tough environment. Mr. Teasley entered this environment with insufficient time to familiarize himself with staff and/or review procedures and policies that were in place. He had one Assistant Principal (AP) to support him. Mr. Teasley’s two goals for the 2006-2007 school year were: 1) improving the academic standing of the school, by raising FCAT scores in mathematics and in the lowest performing quartile of students, all without a reduction in the scores for reading and writing; and 2) reducing the rate of serious discipline incidents by 50 percent. Mr. Teasley wanted to redraft the prior year’s disciplinary policy. There was some lack of communication on the status of the redrafted policy between teachers and Mr. Teasley and lack of activity by the committee responsible for the redraft. Eventually, some teachers felt that Mr. Teasley did not support them when it came to disciplinary matters and that Mr. Teasley allowed the students to get out of control. In September or October of 2006, a first-grade student brought a cellophane baggie containing a white powder to school. The police were called to confirm that the substance was cocaine. After confirmation, the child was removed from the custody of his mother, and immediately suspended from school. There was no evidence to suggest that the discipline imposed for this incident was inappropriate. In early September, Mr. Teasley placed an ESE/EH student in a non-ESE class. The student in question had been “retained” (or “held-back”) twice. As a consequence, the student was a seventh-grade-age student in a classroom of third- grade-age children. Mr. Teasley thought that the student’s development would be better met in middle school with similarly aged peers. He, therefore, hoped to have the student reassigned to middle school. While waiting to hear if the reassignment would happen, Mr. Teasley placed him/her in a non-ESE fifth- grade class under the supervision of a teacher with whom he had a good rapport. The decision to place the student in the non- ESE classroom was predicated on a number of factors, including Mr. Teasley’s desire to put the child in an environment where he/she could be successful, as well as, safety concerns regarding significantly younger ESE students being in the same class as the ESE student. Unfortunately, the student was not reassigned to the middle school and Mr. Teasley transferred him back to his original class. After the ESE/EH student was returned to his/her original class, the student “jumped” another student after school was dismissed, breaking the other student’s wrist. The ESE student was immediately given an out-of-school suspension (OSS). However, because the child was an EH student, he/she could only be suspended for a cumulative maximum of ten days, without convening a special ESE disciplinary staffing. Since the student had already been suspended for five days earlier in the year, his/her suspension was limited to five days. After this incident, the student’s parent consented to placement in an alternative school and the student was transferred to the Lifestream school. Again, there was no evidence that Mr. Teasley’s method of handling this student’s behavior problems was inappropriate given the fact that this student was a special education student and special disciplinary procedures applied to such students. Additionally, during the first semester, there was an on-going concern with a second-grade EH student who was “stalking” a female student. Mr. Teasley attempted to have the EH student assigned to the alternative school. However, the student’s mother was “dead-set” against the assignment and the student remained at Beverly Shores. At the same time, Mr. Teasley immediately informed the mother of the child being stalked of what was going on, as well as the steps that were being taken for the girl’s safety. Mr. Teasley assigned an adult to escort the EH student everywhere he/she went on campus. He also rearranged the lunch schedule for the student’s entire class to ensure that the student was not in the cafeteria at the same time as the girl. Again, there was no evidence that demonstrated the steps taken by Mr. Teasley in regard to this EH student were inappropriate given the fact that the student’s mother refused alternative placement and the student was an EH student. Ms. Jule Hand, a kindergarten teacher at Beverly Shores, provided the only direct testimony regarding Mr. Teasley’s perceived lack of support for the faculty. Specifically, she recounted incidents in which she personally sent referrals to the administration and was disappointed when a referral was not addressed on the same day it was written, or when the consequences were not, in her opinion, suitable for the incident. Ms. Hand testified regarding one incident where a student, with a history of significant disciplinary problems and multiple suspensions, pushed two students in her classroom and then threw down all the chairs around the classroom. In the process of throwing chairs, the child hit her and was physically and verbally abusive to her senior volunteer. Ms. Hand called the office for assistance in removing the child from the classroom. The child was removed and received a verbal reprimand with a warning to discontinue the behavior or harsher consequences would follow. To Ms. Hand’s dismay, the student was returned to the classroom. Ms. Hand went on to detail further incidents of misbehavior by this particular child, such as hitting the physical education teacher, spitting in another child’s face, throwing food, grabbing a child from behind, verbal defiance, swinging a metal pipe, and hitting another student with his/her shoulder hard enough to almost knock her over. During this time, the student’s parent was contacted on numerous occasions by both faculty and administrative personnel. Additionally, the student had been suspended twice during the course of these incidents. However, even with these suspensions, the student continued to have disciplinary problems. Mr. Teasley did not want to expel the student and recommended that Ms. Hand contact a social worker and counselor so that the student could be referred to ITOS, a behavioral- intervention study. Eventually, the student left Beverly Shores to attend the study. However, the year following Mr. Teasley’s term as principal, the student returned to Beverly Shores and continued to have behavioral problems. Again, the evidence did not demonstrate that Mr. Teasley’s handling of this matter was inappropriate, given Mr. Teasley’s desire not to expel the student. Ms. Karen Seltzer also testified at hearing about her impressions of the discipline problems at Beverly Shores under Mr. Teasley. Some of her testimony involved the EH student referenced above who again began stalking during the second half of the school year. Ms. Seltzer’s testimony was quite confusing and based on hearsay she had gathered from discussions with other teachers who did not testify at hearing. Furthermore, she also testified that she was unaware of the actions taken by Mr. Teasley in response to the incidents she related. The Assistant Superintendent, Mr. Cunningham, observed the students and environment of Beverly Shores during his visits in the first semester of the school year. The visits were prompted by complaints he or the Superintendent had received about the lack of discipline at Beverly Shores. During his visits to Beverly Shores, Mr. Cunningham observed behaviors that he reported to Mr. Teasley as situations that should be addressed from a discipline and control standpoint. He witnessed students traveling about the campus unsupervised by adults, as well as various unsafe behaviors such as running and jumping. There was some testimony from staff that indicated Mr. Cunningham’s observations regarding unsupervised students were not isolated incidents. Mr. Cunningham also saw classrooms that were cut-off from casual observation (e.g., the blinds were drawn). He also testified that at the beginning and the end of the day, when the entire student body was on the move, he observed that teachers were not “on duty” supervising the movement of students. He instructed Mr. Teasley that during those times it was especially important that teachers be in “supervisory mode.” Mr. Cunningham did not return to Beverly Shores until just before the end of the school year. At some point around March 2007, a parent named Ms. Burry contacted Mr. Teasley about obtaining a Sheriff’s Resource Officer (SRO) for Beverly Shores. Ms. Burry thought a uniformed officer on campus would help with student discipline. Even though a SRO is not involved with student discipline, Mr. Teasley felt that a uniformed officer on campus would serve as a positive role model at Beverly Shores. In support of Ms. Burry, Mr. Teasley attended a March 12, 2007, Leesburg City Commission meeting in which parents and teachers sought funding for an SRO at Beverly Shores. He spoke in favor of the idea. The City Commission referred the request back to the Board. At that point, Mr. Teasley felt that the SRO issue was “out of his hands.” Ms. Burry began to contact the Board and Superintendent about her desire for an SRO on campus and the need for greater discipline in the school. Around March or April 2007, Mr. Cunningham was again contacted by parents who were concerned about safety at Beverly Shores. At about the same time, a representative from the teacher’s union had come to him with concerns about the administration at Beverly Shores and “suggested pretty strongly that they might file a grievance” regarding Mr. Teasley’s performance. Mr. Cunningham did not identify which or how many parents voiced concerns to him. Likewise, he did not identify which or how many teacher complaints created the impetus for the union to consider filing a grievance. None of the parents testified at the hearing. On April 30, 2007, Mr. Teasley sent a letter to Assistant Superintendent Cunningham requesting that an additional assistant principal be assigned to Beverly Shores. As indicated earlier, Beverly Shores operated with one AP in 2006-2007. The letter, in part recognized there was a significant disciplinary problem at Beverly Shores and that the school did not have adequate administrative staff to handle the number of disciplinary referrals. Mr. Teasley made the request based on the approximately 1,200 disciplinary referrals the administration had processed through April 19th of the school year and the amount of time spent on processing those referrals. Mr. Teasley stated that the time spent processing those referrals reduced the time administrators were able to spend in classrooms or on campus. The number of disciplinary referrals was due, in part, to Mr. Teasley’s philosophy of using OSS as a disciplinary tool of last resort. In his view, a child cannot be educated if they are not in school. At some point, the Superintendent became aware of the complaints and problems at Beverly Shores and decided to meet with the staff and faculty to assess the situation at the school. In May of 2007, the Superintendent held two meetings with some teachers and staff of Beverly Shores. Ms. Rhonda Lynn attended those meetings. Her interpretation of the tone of the first meeting was that some members of the faculty and staff were frustrated and searching for leadership and that such leadership should have been provided by the principal and his administration. Some teachers and staff in attendance voiced complaints about Mr. Teasley’s lack of discipline and control of the student population. The Superintendent indicated such complaints would remain confidential. At the second meeting with the Superintendent, Mr. Teasley was present and either various complaints were mentioned by the Superintendent in Mr. Teasley’s presence or he was clearly aware of the complaints that had been made in the first meeting. Ms. Lynn’s interpretation of the tone of the second meeting was that the Superintendent had breached the confidentiality promised the staff in the first meeting regarding complaints about Mr. Teasley and that the staff was very upset over that breach. Ms. Lynn admitted that she could not speak for how every teacher at Beverly Shores felt about Mr. Teasley. Ms. Lynn stated that she never had any discussions with Mr. Teasley regarding an explicit philosophy for dealing with students who had received multiple referrals. She also testified that she had no responsibilities for the processing of disciplinary referrals. Throughout the time period outlined above, Mr. Teasley was formally evaluated by the School District. Originally, Mr. Cunningham would have been assigned to perform Mr. Teasley’s evaluation. However, at the time he would have performed the evaluation, Mr. Cunningham was assigned other duties within the District. Therefore, Ms. Pat Nave, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, K-12, completed Mr. Teasley’s evaluation. In the course of performing her evaluation of Mr. Teasley, Ms. Nave made four separate visits to the Beverly Shores’ campus. During those visits, Ms. Nave and Mr. Teasley would discuss a number of different topics regarding the operation of the school. Specifically, Ms. Nave and Mr. Teasley discussed his policies for monitoring faculty and student conduct. One such tool for monitoring the campus was a structured system for scheduling the weekly classroom walk-through assignments by members of the school’s leadership team. Based on the reports Mr. Teasley would receive as a result of these walkthroughs, Mr. Teasley would follow up with individual teachers regarding their performance. Additionally, during the evaluation visits, Ms. Nave and Mr. Teasley would discuss the goals that Mr. Teasley had established at the beginning of the year to gauge the school’s progress in the areas he had identified as needing improvement. As noted earlier, those goals were: 1) improving the academic standing of the school, by raising FCAT scores in mathematics and in the lowest performing quartile of students, all without a reduction in the scores for reading and writing; and 2) reducing the rate of serious discipline incidents by 50 percent. Ms. Nave concluded that all of the strategies that had been outlined for reaching those two goals had been, or were being, implemented. With regards to discipline, she specifically noted that referrals had decreased. Indeed, the evidence demonstrated that out-of-school suspensions decreased from 422 the previous year to 221 for the current year and that on-going concerns were being addressed through the safety and discipline committee Mr. Teasley had established, even though the evidence at the hearing showed that this committee was not very active. Additionally, there was some suggestion at the hearing that disciplinary referrals may have been down because Mr. Teasley was not processing such referrals. There was no competent evidence to support such a conclusion. Evidence did demonstrate that Mr. Teasley preferred ISS to OSS. Toward that end, the ISS procedure was altered from the way it had been operated in the years prior to his tenure at Beverly Shores. During the course of the 2006-2007 school year, Mr. Teasley hired a teacher to monitor the ISS room and provide instruction when necessary, eliminated the practice of sending children to the ISS room as a “time-out” by requiring administrator approval, and required teachers to supply the child’s lessons for the periods that the child was in ISS so that the student could keep up with his or her classes. Finally, Ms. Nave discussed the School Advisory Council’s (SAC) performance rating of Mr. Teasley. SAC had given Mr. Teasley a mixed satisfaction rating at one of its meetings. At that meeting, eight members of SAC were present. Four of those members voted that Mr. Teasley was doing a satisfactory job. Four voted that Mr. Teasley was doing an unsatisfactory job. Ms. Nave and Mr. Teasley, nonetheless, discussed the issue of the need to foster a productive working relationship with SAC. After the discussion, Ms. Nave was satisfied that Mr. Teasley was taking appropriate actions to continue working with SAC members to implement changes at Beverly Shores. As a result of this performance review, Mr. Teasley received the maximum amount of points on his evaluation and met the performance criteria of that evaluation. After the evaluation and three weeks before the end of the school year, a fifth-grade student at Beverly Shores wrapped the leather portion of his belt around his hand and began to swing the belt, striking students and adults with the metal buckle. Mr. Teasley and AP Jeff Williams were called to the classroom to assist with restraining and removing the student. Once they got the student to the office, Mr. Teasley immediately notified the police that a battery had occurred, suspended the student for the ten-day maximum suspension period, and began the expulsion process. The student did not return to school that year. No suggestion was made that Mr. Teasley’s response to this event was inappropriate. The belt incident garnered media attention. Shortly after the incident, the Superintendent went to the Beverly Shores campus, but could not locate Mr. Teasley in his office or on campus. She, therefore, sent Mr. Cunningham to the school. Eventually, she assigned Mr. Cunningham, along with Messrs. Mitchell and Habring, to Beverly Shores for the remainder of the school year. The Board also authorized the placement of an SRO at Beverly Shores. Mr. Cunningham testified that within a few days of the assignment of the extra personnel, the discipline situation began to improve and the school began to operate in an orderly way. Mr. Cunningham stated that he started to do the things that he had told Mr. Teasley needed to be done earlier in the year. The actions of Mr. Cunningham included administrative staff becoming more visible on campus while students were in transit from one place to another and dealing with each and every referral on the day in which it was written. Importantly, these actions were accomplished with a significant increase in administrative personnel. From an academic standpoint, there can be no question that Beverly Shores made significant improvements under Mr. Teasley’s direction. Evidence admitted at hearing showed that the school grades from the Department of Education (DOE) based on the students’ FCAT performance for Beverly Shores for the six school years prior to Mr. Teasley’s tenure (i.e., 2000- 2001 through 2005-2006) were “C”, “B”, “B”, “B”, “C” and “C”, respectively. During Mr. Teasley’s time as principal, Beverly Shores earned a grade of “A.” Beverly Shores also achieved AYP. Additionally, Beverly Shores had increases in the percentage of students meeting high standards in mathematics, as well as an increase in the percentage of students in the lower-quartile who made learning gains. The school’s grades did not decrease in the areas of reading and writing. These improvements show that the school was successful in achieving the academic goals that Mr. Teasley had identified at the beginning of the year. It should also be noted that such improvements were also due to the efforts of teachers and other staff at the school. Due to this achievement, Mr. Teasley was one of only 92 principals in the state to receive recognition as a “Turn- Around” Principal in 2006-2007. The “Turn-Around” award recognizes the principal of a school which improves by at least two letter-grades in one academic year. In 2007-2008, the year after Mr. Teasley’s tenure, Beverly Shores’ grade fell back to a “C” and the school failed to make AYP. The evidence did not demonstrate that Mr. Teasley had more discipline problems at his school than in prior years. There was some evidence to demonstrate that there may have been some student control problems related to monitoring the passageways of the school. Those problems were in part due to a lack of sufficient administrative staff to patrol the school. There was also some evidence to demonstrate that Mr. Teasley had lost the support of some of the faculty because he would return students to the teacher’s classroom or not assess a harsher penalty for misbehavior. However, there was only one teacher who testified to support that conclusion. Other staff testimony regarding lack of support and lack of discipline was based on hearsay. Just as Beverly Shore’s grade was not dependent on one person, Beverly Shores alleged discipline and student control problems cannot be attributed to one person. One teacher’s testimony coupled with hearsay and vague testimony is insufficient evidence to conclude that Mr. Teasley was no longer professionally qualified to perform in some capacity within the School District. At a May 21, 2007 Board meeting, Mr. Cunningham gave a report of the actions that had been taken at Beverly Shores to deal with discipline during the time he was assigned there. He also made suggestions for improving the discipline situation at the school going forward. Some of the suggestions involved actions previously sought by Mr. Teasley. At about the same time, the 2006-2007 school year came to a close. The Superintendent began to finalize the academic teams she would recommend to the Board for the 2007-2008 school year. In fact, for the next year, 2007-2008, the Superintendent and the Board recognized the need for additional supervisory staff at Beverly Shores and appointed two APs and a behavioral specialist to the school. The Superintendent was mindful of the events at Beverly Shores and the fact that some of the faculty and staff had lost confidence in Mr. Teasley’s ability to lead the school as principal. She decided not to recommend Mr. Teasley for principal at Beverly Shores. However, she did not want to lose Mr. Teasley’s skills as an administrator and recommended him for a district level administrative position for the 2007-2008 school year. The Superintendent’s recommendation was accepted by the Board and Mr. Teasley fulfilled the duties of that position during the 2007-2008 school year. At the close of the 2007-2008 school year, the Superintendent again created staffing recommendations for the 2008-2009 school year. Toward that end, the Superintendent created staffing recommendations to the Board that considered many factors. The most important factor was the creation of administrative teams for each school that would serve as that school’s “instructional leaders.” Similarly, it was very important that at least one member of an administrative team be well-versed in making learning-gains, raising student achievement and school grades. Mr. Teasley was clearly well- versed and well-qualified in such areas. The Superintendent recognized that since the 1998-1999 school year, Eustis High School had earned a grade of “C”, except for the year 2006-2007, when the school’s grade was “D.” Because of the high school’s performance, the Superintendent intended to make changes at Eustis High School to attempt to address the academic problems and raise the school’s academic performance. Additionally, the school was not known for having any extraordinary disciplinary issues. Mr. Larry was the principal of Eustis High School. He had been appointed the principal of the school because of his success in implementing advanced programs as a principal at the middle-school level. Mr. Larry was also very strong on discipline, had 4 other APs and did not require additional help in the area of discipline. Therefore, the Superintendent was not worried about discipline-related issues at Eustis High School. In putting together an educational team for the school, the Superintendent wanted to place a person who had demonstrated their ability to raise a school’s academic achievement and performance. As indicated, the Superintendent did not want to place Mr. Teasley back at Beverly Shores because that educational team had not been successful. However, Mr. Teasley had skills in school improvement that were very useful to the District. She recommended Mr. Teasley for appointment as one of Eustis High School’s five APs. Her recommendation was based on Mr. Teasley’s proven ability in achieving AYP, his ability to analyze the raw performance data for AYP and to work with teachers to raise the test scores which form the basis of a school’s grade. Indeed, the Superintendent felt that Mr. Teasley was one of the strongest individuals she could recommend to Eustis High School to work with the current administration and to help improve the school’s academic performance. Mr. Larry indicated to the Superintendent that he could work with Mr. Teasley. There was no direct testimony given at the hearing of how Mr. Larry wanted to use Mr. Teasley at Eustis High School, although there was some hearsay testimony that Mr. Teasley would be placed at the Curtright Center, a separate ninth grade center that is approximately 1.5 miles from the main high school campus. The Superintendent recommended Mr. Teasley for the position of AP-1 at Eustis High School. Ultimately, the Board rejected the Superintendent’s recommendation. The testimony at hearing and the evidence admitted shows that the primary reason that the Board rejected the Superintendent’s nomination was because of the Board’s lack of confidence in Mr. Teasley’s ability to maintain discipline and control at Eustis High School. Mr. Cunningham, Assistant Superintendent for Administration and Safety, testified that he did not believe that Mr. Teasley was qualified to serve as an AP-1 at Eustis High School. He based that opinion on his observations at Beverly Shores during the 2006-2007 school year and his opinion that if one loses his administrative authority at an elementary school, that person has “no business” as an administrator of a high school. Mr. Cunningham did not offer an opinion on the academic-improvement functions the Superintendent intended Mr. Teasley perform in the academic team to which she assigned him. In addition, the individual members of the Board testified regarding their reasons for rejecting the Superintendent’s recommendation. Mr. Strong testified that his basis for rejecting the Superintendent’s recommendation related to the situation at Beverly Shores during the 2006-2007 school year; particularly, the perceived lack of administrative discipline that created a disorderly educational environment, and the Board’s decision in May of 2007 to place an SRO at the school. He also stated that his vote was influenced by the public input of Ms. Pam Burtnett, president of the Lake County Education Association (“LCEA”), received by the Board at the June 23, 2008 meeting, and by his conversations in the spring of 2007 with one parent and one teacher from Beverly Shores, Ms. Denise Burry and Ms. Bordenkircher, respectively. Ms. Burtnett was not a teacher at Beverly Shores. Neither Ms. Burry nor Ms. Bordenkircher testified at hearing. However, Mr. Strong also testified that prior to the School Board meeting on May 7, 2007, no one had previously raised the issue of discipline at Beverly Shores at any previous Board meeting, and that he never personally witnessed any discipline problems at Beverly Shores. Ms. Kyleen Fischer testified that she had visited the Beverly Shores campus while it was under the direction of Mr. Teasley. Specifically, she testified that she observed that Beverly Shores’ students were not under control and that they were disrespectful. Based on her observations, she felt that the appointment of Mr. Teasley to Eustis High School would create a safety issue. Ms. Cindy Barrow testified that she did not believe Mr. Teasley possessed the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to serve as a high school AP-1. She based her belief on information gathered from many different sources, including reports such as the 2006-2007 climate survey, conversations with Mr. Cunningham and Ms. Burry, reports given orally to the Board at the May 21, 2007 and June 23, 2008, Board meetings, and the fact that 22 teachers and one guidance counselor left the school during or after the 2006-2007 school year. However, she did not speak to any of the departing personnel regarding their reasons for leaving, nor did she testify as to any of the specifics regarding the above. Ms. Barrow’s belief was that Mr. Teasley had not been able to maintain order or deal with behavioral problems at Beverly Shores and, therefore, he would not be successful at dealing with behavioral problems at Eustis High School. However, Ms. Barrow admitted that she had never been to Beverly Shores. She believes that a primary duty of any high school AP-1 is to handle disciplinary issues. However, she also testified that she had no specific conversations with Mr. Larry or the Superintendent about how either planned to use Mr. Teasley as AP-1 at Eustis High School. Mr. Metz, who testified that he had never visited Beverly Shores during its hours of operation prior to May of 2007, stated that his decision to vote against the Superintendent’s recommendation was based on the situation at Beverly Shores in the Spring of 2007, his written and verbal communications with concerned parties, and Ms. Burtnett’s presentation to the Board in June of 2008. The Board re-reviewed the issues the Superintendent had already considered in creating her educational teams at the various schools and in making her recommendations to the Board. The Board concluded that Mr. Teasley was not qualified to serve as an AP-1 at Eustis High School based on very broad generalizations about appropriate discipline. The Board’s action was not based on any knowledge regarding the role Mr. Teasley would play in the Eustis administration. As indicated, the Superintendent, as is her authority, considered all of the issues surrounding Mr. Teasley’s tenure at Beverly Shores. She also recognized the successes in academic improvement achieved during Mr. Teasley’s tenure and that those skills were needed at Eustis High School. The Superintendent assembled an administrative team after discussing the team members with the principal of the High School and assuring as much as possible that Mr. Teasley could function within that team. The evidence did not demonstrate that the Board’s assessment should trump the Superintendent’s recommendation regarding Mr. Teasley, especially given the fact that Mr. Teasley had many years of good performance evaluations as an AP in Broward County and a good performance evaluation in Lake County. As a consequence, the Board has failed to carry its burden of showing “good cause” to reject the Superintendent’s recommendation and the Superintendent’s recommendation should be accepted.
Recommendation Based on the foregoing Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, it is RECOMMENDED: that the Board enter a Final Order reversing its earlier decision and accepting the nomination of the Superintendent. DONE AND ENTERED this 6th day of March, 2009, in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida. S DIANE CLEAVINGER Administrative Law Judge Division of Administrative Hearings The DeSoto Building 1230 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32399-3060 (850) 488-9675 SUNCOM 278-9675 Fax Filing (850) 921-6847 www.doah.state.fl.us Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 6th day of March, 2009. COPIES FURNISHED: Susan E. Moxley, Ed.D. Superintendent School District of Lake County, Florida 201 West Burleigh Boulevard Tavares, Florida 32778 Stephen W. Johnson, Esquire McLin & Burnsed Post Office Box 491357 Leesburg, Florida 34749-1357 Martha Harrell Chumbler, Esquire Carlton Fields, P.A. 215 South Monroe Street, Suite 500 Post Office Drawer 190 Tallahassee, Florida 32302-0190 Deborah K. Kearney, General Counsel Department of Education Turlington Building, Suite 1244 325 West Gaines Street Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400 Dr. Eric J. Smith Commissioner of Education Turlington Building, Suite 1514 325 West Gaines Street Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400
The Issue Whether Respondent committed the acts alleged in the Notice of Specific Charges filed September 28, 2010, and, if so, the discipline, if any, that should be imposed against Respondent's employment.
Findings Of Fact At all times material hereto, Petitioner was the constitutional entity authorized to operate, control, and supervise the public schools in Miami-Dade County, Florida. At all times relevant to this proceeding, Respondent has been on a professional service contract that is subject to a collective bargaining agreement between Miami-Dade County Public Schools and the United Teachers of Dade (hereinafter "the UTD Contract"), applicable Florida Statutes, applicable rules adopted by the Florida State Board of Education as set forth in the Florida Administrative Code, and Petitioner's adopted policies and procedures. Article XXI, Section 1.B(1)(a) of the UTD Contract provides that "Any member of the instructional staff may be suspended or dismissed at any time during the school year, provided that the charges against him/her are based upon Florida Statutes." The School Board has adopted Rule 6Gx13-4A-1.21, Responsibilities and Duties, which provides in pertinent that: All persons employed by The School Board of Miami-Dade County, Florida are representatives of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. As such, they are expected to conduct themselves, both in their employment and in the community, in a manner that will reflect credit upon themselves and the school system. Unseemly conduct or the use of abusive and/or profane language in the workplace is expressly prohibited. School Board Rule 6Gx13-4A-1.213, Code of Ethics, requires employees of Petitioner to abide by state regulations. The Principles of Professional Conduct for the Education Profession in Florida are set forth in Florida Administrative Code Rule 6B-1.006. Subsections (3)(a) and (e) thereof provide as follows: Obligation to the student requires that the individual: Shall make reasonable effort to protect the student from conditions harmful to learning and/or to the student's physical health and/or safety. * * * (e) Shall not intentionally expose a student to unnecessary embarrassment or disparagement. Petitioner has employed Respondent as a full-time P.E. teacher at South Miami Heights since the 2006-07 school year. South Miami Heights is a public school located in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Respondent has not been the subject of any disciplinary actions by Petitioner other than the incident that is the subject of this matter. Respondent's practice throughout her tenure at South Miami Heights was to require students arriving at P.E. to line up, stop talking, and generally exhibit good behavior prior to starting class. On those occasions when students were not well- behaved, Respondent required the students to walk in an orderly fashion until they calmed down and showed they were ready for class. On hot days, she would required them to walk around the inside corridors of the school, while on cooler days the students would walk outside. In prior years, with a different principal, Respondent would have the students walk in front of the principal's office, who would then go out and call the students to attention to get them to calm down. During the 2009-10 school year Respondent taught P.E. at South Miami Heights to second, third, fourth, and fifth-grade students between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Her last P.E. class started at 2:00 p.m. and ended at 3:00 p.m. Students in her last class typically brought their book bags with them. On April 15, 2010, at approximately 2:00 p.m., third- grade students from Ms. Fuentes-Garcia's class walked from her class to Respondent's class. There were approximately 25 students in the class. Each student had a book bag. When Respondent took responsibility for the class, many students were talking or otherwise misbehaving. Respondent directed all students in the class to make laps around an outdoor basketball court by walking the white lines that define the outer boundaries of the basketball court. The temperature on April 15, 2010, was 81 degrees. The students were exposed to the sun while they were walking. Respondent required the students to carry or wear their backpacks while walking around the outdoor basketball court.1 According to Respondent, the students were required to walk around the basketball court until they calmed down. She had no idea how long the students would have to walk until they calmed down when she first directed them to start walking. All students in the class were required to walk without stopping for 32 minutes. A student who tried to put her book bag on the ground was told by Respondent to pick it up and keep walking. At the end of the 32-minute period, Respondent escorted the class back to the vicinity of Ms. Fuentes-Garcia's classroom and had the students walk in an orderly fashion to the playground, where they played games until approximately 2:54 p.m. There was a water fountain on playground, but it was not functioning on April 15, 2010. Water was available in a building adjacent to the playground. The students were not permitted to drink water between 2:00 p.m. and 2:54 p.m. At approximately 2:54 p.m. the students left the playground and entered the adjacent building to drink water. A video of the students walking the white lines of the basketball court was captured by the school's security cameras. In one portion of the video, a child can be seen dragging a backpack on the ground. It cannot be determined from the video whether the backpack had wheels. In another portion of the video, Respondent can be seen monitoring the students while standing in the shade of a tree. On April 16, 2010, Ms. Hernandez, the school principal, received complaints from four or five parents of students in the class. M.V., the mother of one of the students in the class, confronted Respondent about the incident on April 16, 2010. This parent testified, credibly, that Respondent told her that she had the class walk the white lines of the basketball court to calm them down and as punishment for being hyper. Following the complaints, the matter was referred to Petitioner's Civil Investigation Unit (CIU) where it was assigned to CIU investigator Terri Chester. Ms. Chester prepared a report after she concluded her investigation. Ms. Duboulay reviewed the report with Respondent in a Conference for the Record on June 8, 2010, and provided Respondent an opportunity to respond to Ms. Chester's report.2 Thereafter a Disciplinary Review Team convened and reviewed the case and concluded that probable cause existed that Respondent had committed the violations subsequently alleged in the Notice of Specific Charges dated September 23, 2010. The Disciplinary Review Team recommended that Respondent be suspended without pay for 30 days based on the totality of the circumstances of the case and the exposure of the students to harm. The manner in which Respondent disciplined her class on April 15, 2010, did not reflect credit on herself or on Petitioner. The manner in which Respondent disciplined her class on April 15, 2010, was inconsistent with her duty to "make reasonable effort to protect the student from conditions harmful to learning and/or to the student's physical health and/or safety."3 There was insufficient evidence to establish that Respondent "intentionally expose[d] a student to unnecessary embarrassment or disparagement." Petitioner followed all relevant procedures in prosecuting this disciplinary proceeding.
Recommendation Based on the foregoing findings of fact and conclusions of Law, it is RECOMMENDED that the School Board of Miami-Dade County, Florida enter a final order adopting the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law contained in this Recommended Order. It is further RECOMMENDED that the final order sustain the suspension of Respondent's employment without pay for a period of 30 workdays. DONE AND ENTERED this 14th day of March, 2011, in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida. S CLAUDE B. ARRINGTON Administrative Law Judge Division of Administrative Hearings The DeSoto Building 1230 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32399-3060 (850) 488-9675 Fax Filing (850) 921-6847 www.doah.state.fl.us Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 14th day of March, 2011.
Findings Of Fact Allan Bonilla, currently Principal of Riviera Junior High School, was one of at least two assistant principals who attempted to work with Venus Tara Rodriguez during her 7th grade experience there in the 1984-1985 regular school year. He has been employed four years at that facility. Immediately prior to the winter vacation (commonly known as the extended Christmas holidays), on December 20, 1984, Venus left the campus without prior permission, this activity resulted in a two-day indoor suspension. In February, 1985, she received a three-day indoor suspension as the result of tardiness which culminated in an outdoor suspension the same month because her behavior at the three-day indoor suspension was so disruptive that it was deemed ineffective for her and the other students. In March, 1985, her rude and disruptive classroom behavior resulted in two indoor suspensions. In April 1985, as a result of her refusal to work during the last indoor suspension, she was assigned an outdoor suspension. Mr. Bonilla did not work with Venus as regularly as another assistant principal who was not available for hearing, but he expressed personal knowledge of the foregoing events and had interacted with Venus on several occasions for being out of class and boisterous. His assessment was that Venus could do the work required of her but that her behavior was so disruptive in the classroom that at the conclusion of the regular 1984-1985 school year she was failing two out of six subjects and was doing approximately "D" work in the rest. He agreed with the decision to assign her to an alternative school program, which decision was made because of Venus' need of individual attention and smaller class due to her habit of "acting out" in large groups. Venus' parents were contacted concerning each suspension. Mr. Bonilla testified that Venus has successfully finished 7th grade during the 1985 summer school session at GRE Lee opportunity School and he has received notice she will be reassigned and enrolled at Riviera Junior High School for the 1985-1986 school year commencing in September 1985.
Recommendation Upon the foregoing findings of fact and conclusions of law, it is recommended that the School Board enter a final order returning Venus Tara Rodriguez to Riviera Junior High School. DONE AND ORDERED this 29th day of August, 1985, at Tallahassee, Florida. ELLA JANE P. DAVIS, Hearing Officer Division of Administrative Hearings The Oakland Building 2009 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32301 (904) 488-9675 Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 29th day of August, 1985. COPIES FURNISHED: Phyllis O. Douglas, Esquire 1410 N. E. Second Avenue Miami, Florida 33132 Madelyn P. Schere, Esquire Dade County Public Schools Board Administration Building 1410 N. E. Second Avenue Miami, Florida 33132 Mark A. Valentine, Esquire 3050 Biscayne Blvd. Suite 800 Miami, Florida 33137-4198 Ms. Wilhelmina A. Rodriguez 4110 S. W. 104th Place Miami, Florida 33165 Dr. Leonard Britton Superintendent of Schools Dade County Public Schools 1510 N. E. Second Avenue Miami, Florida 33132
The Issue Whether the Respondent's teaching certificate should be revoked or disciplined on grounds that she is incompetent to teach or to perform her duties as an employee of the public school system and is unable to effectively meet her responsibili- ties as a classroom instructor, and that she intentionally ex- posed her students to unnecessary embarrassment or disparagement.
Findings Of Fact At all times material hereto the Respondent held Teaching Certificate Number 182937, issued by the Department of Education for the State of Florida. This certificate covers the areas of English and administrative supervision. The Respondent was first employed by the Dade County School Board in 1966. She taught elementary levels first through fourth grades at Shadowlawn and Allapattah Elementary Schools. In 1971, the Respondent transferred to Shenandoah Junior High School, where she taught seventh through ninth grade English until she transferred to Highland Oaks Junior High in 1982. (RE 1) Prior to the Respondent's transfer to Highland Oaks Junior High School she received observations and evaluations which rated her performance in the 3.6 to 4.5 range. The Respondent testified that she received excellent to superior ratings on her evaluation sheets. The school system however considers this to be the ratings of an acceptable or satisfactory teacher. Over 4.6 would be considered excellent or superior. (T538, 623) For the 1982-83 school year through the 1984-85 school year (with the exception of a maternity leave of absence), the Respondent has been employed with the Dade County School Board and assigned to Highland Oaks Junior High School as an English language arts teacher. (T536) The Respondent started the 1982-83 school year late due to a back injury. (T223) Within a week the school began receiving complaints from parents dissatisfied with the Respondent. Parents complained that their children who were Level III students (average - above average ability) were being taught at Level II (below average ability). One of the Respondent's Level III classes through no fault of the Respondent's had been mislabeled as a Level II class. This was corrected immediately. The parents from her other Level III classes which were not mislabeled also complained. The Respondent testified that the dissatisfaction and complaints of the parents all stemmed from the mislabeling of her one class. (T221-223, 548) On October 8, 1982, Assistant Principal Nelson had an informal conference with the Respondent following phone calls and complaints from parents. (T182-183) Mrs. Nelson recommended that the Respondent not eat in the classroom and not use the T.V. for watching soap operas. (SE24F) Mrs. Nelson discussed the need for more rigorous assignments for the Level III students. She asked another teacher, Mrs. Susan Ruskin, who was also the department chairman for language arts, to explain the difference between Level II and Level III students to the Respondent. Mrs. Nelson informed the Respondent that she needed to keep her lesson plans up-to-date. She also needed to specify different lesson objectives for the Level II students as opposed to the Level III students. Mrs. Nelson cautioned the Respondent to watch her language and word choice when speaking to her students. She encouraged the Respondent to call the students' parents when a problem arose. (SE24F) On October 12, 1982, Mrs. Ruskin met with the Respondent to assist her in differentiating between Level II and Level III students. She also discussed discipline, homework, and other curriculum problems with the Respondent. Mrs. Ruskin told the Respondent that she was available if the Respondent needed assistance. The Respondent never asked Mrs. Ruskin for help. (T362, 366-367, SE24) On October 13, 1982, the Respondent's seventh grade Level III English class was formally observed by Assistant Principal Nelson. Mrs. Nelson rated the Respondent unacceptable in the areas of preparation and planning and techniques of in- struction. Mrs. Nelson rated the Respondent unacceptable in preparation and planning because the Respondent did not list more rigorous lesson objectives for the Level III students. The Respondent's lesson objectives were too general and her homework assignments vague. (SE24-B) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because she did not adapt the materials to the interest and ability of each student. The Respondent's questioning of her students was not done in depth and lacked important follow-up questions. Her lesson lacked closure: there was no overview or conclusion at the end of the class period. The Respondent's homework assignments did not have any value and the Respondent failed to recognize students for having done or not done their homework. (T188-190) Although Mrs. Nelson rated the Respondent acceptable in the area of classroom management, she was concerned that the Respondent wasted twenty (20) minutes getting the class settled down and on task. Mrs. Nelson recommended that the Respondent establish and enforce classroom rules. (T195) On November 9, 1982, Dr. Mildred B. Augenstein, the principal of Highland Oaks Junior High School did a formal observation of the Respondent. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter, classroom management and techniques of instruction. (SEI) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter because she neither presented her lesson knowledgeably nor used the appropriate teaching methodology. When asked for the definition of science fiction the Respondent answered incorrectly that it was fiction about science. In giving a spelling test, the Respondent merely read the words off instead of following the accepted and simple procedure of pronouncing the word, using the word in context, and then repeating the word. (T20-23) Dr. Augenstein rated the Respondent unacceptable in classroom management because the class was not in control. Students spoke up at-will without raising their hands for acknowledgment. The class was late in beginning because the children would not settle down. The Respondent appeared unable to keep her students focused on the learning process. Children who were trying to learn were distracted by the unruly children. (T28-30) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the category of techniques of instruction because the Respondent's instructions to the students were unclear. When the students asked questions for clarification, the Respondent could not adequately answer. Dr. Augenstein felt that the Respondent was deficient in the sequence of her lessons. There was no background, no purpose and no follow through. Instead of facilitating a learning experience the Respondent was merely assigning activities. (T3O-40) Dr. Augenstein used the Teacher Assessment Development System (TADS), the approved assessment instrument (jointly developed by the school system administration and the teachers union and approved by the school board and the state) to assess the Respondent. The TADS is meant to act as a support system to help teachers overcome their deficiencies. A part of the system is the TADS prescription manual. This is a large manual which contains various self- assessment activities and learning materials keyed to various problem areas. (T20-26) On November 24, 1982, Dr. Augenstein presented a prescription to the Respondent to address the deficiencies noted at the observations on October 13, 1982 and November 9, 1982. To remediate weaknesses observed by Mrs. Nelson in preparation and planning, Dr. Augenstein made specific recommendations. These included turning in lesson plans every Friday to Mrs. Nelson. They were to be done separately for the Level II and Level III classes. They were to include the days' objectives, activities, assessment procedures, homework assignments, and the materials and media to be utilized. Dr. Augenstein recommended Mrs. Ruski (she language arts department head) and Mrs. Earle (the librarian) as good source people. (SE1-B) To remediate weaknesses observed in the Respondent's knowledge of subject matter, Dr. Augenstein assigned specific pages and exercises in the TADS prescription manual to be completed by December 8, 1982. The Respondent was also instructed to contact the Teacher Education Center (TEC) and enroll in course offerings of language arts by December 15, 1982. Dr. Augenstein suggested that the Respondent visit other language arts classes prior to December 15, 1982. To remediate the Respondent's weakness in classroom management, Dr. Augenstein recommended that the Respondent establish class rules and enforce them. The Respondent was directed to investigate a course on assertive discipline or teacher effectiveness training and to enroll in a TEC course in classroom management by March of 1983. The Respondent was also directed to review the faculty handbook which contained the rules and regulations of the school. She was directed to work with Assistant Principal Fontana to set up her classroom rules. (SEI, T32-36) To remediate the Respondent's deficiencies in techniques of instruction Dr. Augenstein prescribed resources such as the TADS manual exercises on questioning students, verbal interaction, effective teaching strategies, and instruction sequence. These were to be completed by January 15, 1983. Dr. Augenstein felt the Respondent needed to learn how to ask questions which lead the students into more critical thinking. The Respondent was to demonstrate at least one new teaching approach by January 15, 1983. (SEI) On November 29, 1982, a group of nineteen (19) parents met with Dr. Augenstein to lodge complaints against the Respondent. The parents requested that their children be assigned to another teacher for language arts instruction. The parents complained that the Respondent was not adequately prepared to teach, that she did not address separately and adequately the needs of Level II and Level III students, that she used "atrocious" grammar and poor pronunciation, and that she taught at a level below her students' abilities. The parents were angry that at the end of November their children were still in Chapter I of their textbook. They complained that work assignments were without purpose and often meaningless. Furthermore, the parents complained that the Respondent used inappropriate language in the classroom. The Respondent had called a child "a stupid ignorant person, yelled "shut-up" and had referred to the mother of one of her students as a "whore." The Respondent asked one student (in response to a request for a bathroom pass) whether she was "going to smoke or take quaaludes." The parents were upset that their children were subject to the Respondent's verbal abuse. They also complained that the Respondent had retaliated against students whose parents had made complaints by threatening and ridiculing the students by lowering student conduct grades. (SE2, T50-55) The parents reported a change in their children's atti- tude toward learning and school. Their children hated school and did not want to attend. The parents reported that the Respondent would indiscriminately punish an entire class for the misbehavior of various individuals. The Respondent had handed out detentions to two whole classes and then did not show up herself to supervise the students when they reported for the detention. (SE2-A) The parents reported that the Respondent had watched the soap opera "The Young and the Restless" on the educational T.V. in her classroom. They complained that at an open house for parents the Respondent was late and then allowed her own child to disrupt the program. The Respondent did not abide by school procedures requiring notice to parents of their child's unsatisfactory progress before giving a students an "F" in conduct. One parent related that the Respondent initially would not provide homework assignments for a sick child and then finally, after repeated requests, provided an inadequate and incomplete assignment. (SE2-B) The Respondent's response to the parents' comments and concerns was that the parents and students had "fabricated stories" and told "terrible lies" about her. She testified that the disciplinary problems in her class were because the students conspired against her to prevent her from teaching. She said that the students continually disrupted class and prevented her from teaching. The Respondent stated that she was shocked by the profanity that the students used among themselves. The Respondent denied that she had ever "blasphemed" a child. (SE2-E, T550-553) On November 23, 1982, one parent wrote a letter to Dr. Augenstein complaining of the Respondent's unjust treatment of her daughter, one of the Respondent's students. The parent complained that the Respondent punished all the students for the misbehavior of a few, She also complained of the Respondent's word choice, quoting the Respondent as saying in class,, "I'm not taking any crap from you kids." Her daughter had been so upset by the Respondent's treatment that she became physically ill with stomach cramps. When she requested a bathroom pass the Respondent "gave her a very hard time in front of the whole class." After the student insisted that it was an emergency, the Respondent looked at her watch and told her that she had sixty (60) second to go to the bathroom and was being timed. The parent was very upset at the emotional distress her daughter was suffering at the hands of the Respondent. (T2-1) Two other parents wrote the School on November 23, 1982, complaining that the Respondent's treatment of their particular children, and the students as a whole, was abusive. One parent emphasized that he did not want his child "humiliated or mistreated" by the Respondent. Both parents requested that their children be moved out of the Respondent's classroom. (SE2-J, 2-K) After the November 23, 1982, meeting with parents, Dr. Augenstein continued to receive complaints from other parents. On December 7, 1982, several parents met with Mr. Marvin Weiner, Superintendent of the North Area of Dade County Schools, Mr. Roger Frese, Director, and Principal Augenstein, and presented a petition signed by parents of the Respondent's students. They also presented more letters of complaint against the Respondent. (SE3) On December 13, 1982, Dr. Augenstein wrote the Respon- dent a letter to notify her that she had failed to comply with the prescription of November 24, 1982. The Respondent had failed to turn in lesson Plans as directed and the one plan she did turn in did not differentiate between Level II and Level III students. (SE4) On December 16, 1982, another parent wrote to Dr. Augenstein complaining of her son's treatment in the Respondent's classroom. Her son had been involved in an altercation with another student which developed into a fist fight. The Respondent ignored the incident and refused to separate the two boys stating, "let them both hang themselves back there." The parent sent a note to the Respondent requesting a seat change for her child. The Respondent read the note and did not respond to the parent. The Respondent, after some sarcastic words with the boy, refused to change his seat. The parent then received a poor progress report on her son, which the parent felt was either unjustified or due to her son's seat in the back of a noisy and unruly classroom. The parent felt that her son was not physically safe and secure in the Respondent's classroom. (SES-C) On January 6, 1983, another parent wrote complaining of a distressing phone call with the Respondent. The Respondent had told her that her son never came to class on time, never did his homework, and never passed any tests. The parent did not believe the Respondent since the parent closely monitored her child's homework. The parent went on to relate that she had given her son a note for all of his teachers indicating that he would be absent on a Friday and requesting assignments. The Respondent was the only teacher who did not provide any assignments. The letter written to Dr. Augenstein asked why if her son was doing absolutely nothing had she not received any sort of home progress report. (SE6) Teachers are required by the School Board to send notice to the parents any time their child is doing below average work or exhibiting below average behavior efforts. (T59) On January 6, 1983, the Respondent was again formally observed by Dr. Augenstien. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the areas of preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, techniques of instruction, assessment techniques and teacher-student relationships. (SE7A, T60-67) Dr. Augenstein felt the Respondent's lesson plans were not being used as an important resource for the structure of her class. The plans were done but not followed. The Respondent also displayed an inadequate grasp of her subject matter language arts. She used the grammatically incorrect sentence, "what hour you went to bed last night." Furthermore, the Respondent provided unclear and inadequate instruction when giving a test on homonyms. Her lesson plans lacked cohesiveness and sequential meaning. There was little if any connection between lessons, leaving the students unable to grasp the overall meaning of what was being studied. (T6O-65) Although the January 6, 1983 observation was done near the end of the first semester, there was no evidence of a structured composition program. The county language arts directives require teachers to assign compositions, collect-the assignment, constructively critique it and then reassign it. This is done to benefit students in developing their writing skills. (T66-68) The atmosphere of the Respondent's classroom was uncomfortable and hostile. The teacher and student interchanges were very cold. (T67) No prescription was given following the January 6, 1983 observation due to the fact that the Respondent had not completed the November 24, 1982 prescription. The Respondent was instructed to continue with the old prescription. (T68) On January 11, 1983, Dr. Augenstein gave the Respondent a listing of courses offered by the Teacher Education Center (TEC) to remediate unacceptable areas noted on November 24, 1982 and January 6, 1983. (SE8) On January 19, 1983, another parent wrote Dr. Augenstein complaining that the Respondent had assigned a book report which was inappropriate for seventh graders. Dr. Augenstein agreed that the book report was too elementary for junior high school, particularly the Level III children. (T70) On February 8, 1983, Dr. Augenstein formally observed the Respondent. Since the January 6, 1983 observation, the Respondent had been reassigned lower performance students. This was done with the hopes that she would be able to handle her students more successfully. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter, classroom management and techniques of instruction. (SEIO, T71) The Respondent mispronounced "architecture" and "denouncement" words that were critical to her lesson. The students were quiet and well behaved as long as Dr. Augenstein was in the room. When the Principal was in the adjoining room, the class became extremely loud. The teacher next door indicated that the Respondent's class was always very loud. The Respondent's lesson lacked closure; rather, it ended when the bell rang. Finally, the Respondent did not adequately answer her students' questions. (T70-73) Although the Respondent had been switched to all Level II students, she exhibited the same problems she had with her other classes. (T74) On February 17, 1983, Assistant Principal Nelson conducted a formal observation of the Respondent's seventh grade, Level II class. She rated the Respondent unacceptable in the areas of classroom management, techniques of instruction and teacher-student relationships. The Respondent's students were very noisy and the Respondent had great difficulty getting them settled. There was an undercurrent of noise throughout the whole class period. There was no focal point to the Respondent's lesson. The lesson should have been reinforced with supportive material such as writing on the chalkboard or an overhead projector to assist the students who were visual rather than auditory learners. Some of the Respondent's students were totally uninvolved with the lesson. A few students monopolized the discussion. The Respondent did not attempt to involve disinterested students. She gave no encouragement to the non- participants. The Respondent had assigned homework and only five students had done it and they received no reinforcement for their effort. The Respondent collected their work but did not grade it or place it in the students' folders. (SE39, T195-198) Assistant Principal Nelson did not assign a new prescription to the Respondent even though the time line on the November 24, 1982 prescription had run out. Instead, she reviewed the areas of the prescription that were incomplete and encouraged the Respondent to complete them, Mrs. Nelson felt that the November 24, 1982 prescription was a good one. (T200) On February 23, 1983, a conference with the Respondent, Dr. Augenstein, Assistant Principal Nelson, and Mrs. Yvonne Perez, a union representative, was held to discuss the status of remediation of observed performance deficiencies and to discuss reemployment of the Respondent. Principal Augenstein stated that she would recommend consideration of a return to annual contract status for the 1983-84 school year. (SE11) On March 2, 1983, the Respondent's seventh grade Level II class was again formally observed by Dr. Augenstein and Mr. Roger Frese, an outside administrator. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the areas of knowledge of subject matter and techniques of instruction. The Respondent gave her students inadequate instruction. She asked them to read a short story and then write a paragraph describing a character in the story. There was no discussion or instruction on method of character development that could be used to develop the paragraph. Most of the children were unable to complete the assignment. When the children read their paragraphs, many of which were merely a synopsis of the story rather than the assignment, the Respon- dent did not differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable responses. (SE12, SE33A, T78) At the end of the class, the Respondent made a homework assignment but the bell rang before she could adequately discuss or explain the assignment. Again, she did not provide closure on the lesson for the day. (SE33) Throughout the class period the Respondent missed opportunities to clarify the assignment. She did not adequately respond to student's questions and did not ask questions herself. Observers were left in doubt as to whether she, herself, understood the topic and assignment. (T416) As a result of the March 2, 1983 observation, Dr. Augenstein instructed the Respondent to continue with the prescription of November 24, 1982. In addition, the Principal instructed the Respondent to enroll in classes during the summer of 1983 covering the subject matter of (a) critical study and analysis of literature, (b) advanced English grammar, and (c) English rhetoric. (T79, SE13) On May 24, 1983, the Respondent's seventh grade English class was formally observed by Assistant Principal Herman Mills. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the area of knowledge of subject matter. The subject of the Respondent's lesson was analogy. The sequencing of information disbursed in the lesson was illogical and unclear. (SE26) The Respondent handed out an assignment with a series of words: greater, larger, more bigger, same. The children were to pick out the dissimilar word from the group. The Respondent failed to realize there is no such expression as "more bigger." She should have indicated that a comma between more and bigger was missing. In another series of words: accidental, design, intentional, on purpose, and planned the Respondent incorrectly chose "designed" as the dissimilar word. In other parts of the lesson, the Respondent told the class that Canada was a French speaking country and Korea was a city. (SE26, T258-259) Throughout the 1982-83 school year, administrators at Highland Oaks made it a point to drop into the Respondent's classroom so that their presence would help the Respondent get her class under control. (T267) The Respondent's 1982-83 annual evaluation indicated that Respondent had not remediated the areas of preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, classroom management, and techniques of instruction. It recommended that the Respondent lose her tenure status and be returned to annual contract. The recommendation was not implemented. (SE14, T81) In September 1983, Dr. Augenstein assigned Assistant Principal Mills the task of evaluating the Respondent's progress with the November 24, 1982 prescription. At his first meeting with the Respondent, Dr. Mills discovered that the Respondent had not completed any "required action" on the prescription. At their second meeting, Joan Kaspert of TEC verified that the Respondent had still not completed the "required action" on the prescription. She verified, however, that the Respondent had completed the course "Techniques of Instruction." On September 27, 1983, Dr. Mills instructed the Respondent to obtain "sign- off" on her prescription by September 30, 1983. On October 5, 1983, he determined that the only item signed-off on the pre- scription was the meeting with Assistant Principal Fontana on the subject of classroom management and the already noted course at the TEC. (SE27) On October 19, 1983, Dr. Augenstein again observed the Respondent's seventh grade, Level II English class. She rated the Respondent unacceptable in the areas of preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, techniques of instruction, and assessment techniques. (SE15) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning because her lesson was planned too sparsely. It did not fill the time allotted. Her homework assignment could not be done by the students because it required a spelling text, which was not a book sent home with the students. The Respondent scheduled a grammar exercise which the class could not do because a large number of the students did not bring the appropriate book to class. (5115) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the area of subject matter because she could not adequately explain or demonstrate the subject matter of her lesson, the difference between homonyms, and homographs, and homophones. (5115) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the area of techniques of instruction in that she did not use the chalkboard to reinforce the differences between the spellings, pronunciations, and uses of the words studied. Students were called upon for examples which only furthered the confusion. The Respondent was unable to clarify or rectify the situation. (5115) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in assessment techniques. Her grade book showed grades for only five spelling tests since the beginning of the year. There were no graded compositions or homework assignments in the students' folders. The Respondent did not call for the day's homework assignment. When the Principal asked the class for their homework only six students could produce any and those produced did not seem to be the planned assignment. (SE15) In order to remediate the Respondent's deficiencies observed on October 19, 1983, Dr. Augenstein instructed the Respondent to continue with the November 24, 1982 prescription. She instructed the Respondent to pay special attention to teaching the required content and skills for grade seven literature study, library skills, and composition lessons. She also told the Respondent to enroll in the TEC component "Preparation and Planning." Dr. Augenstein assigned Assistant Principal Mills to monitor the adequacy of the Respondent's weekly plans and the overall accomplishment of course objectives revealed in the plans. She then assigned Ms. Zelda Glazer, Supervisor of Language Arts, to prescribe activities to remediate the Respondent's inadequate knowledge of her subject matter. (SE15) On November 16, 1983, the Respondent's reading lab was observed by Assistant Principal Mills. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the area of techniques of instruction because her methodology was inappropriate for the reading lab. The purpose of the reading lab is to allow the students an opportunity to work at their own particular reading level. The Respondent was teaching the same lesson to the whole group, entirely missing the point of the reading lab. (SE28) Dr. Mills suggested that the Respondent immediately divide the class into three levels according to diagnostic testing that had been done. He instructed her to provide the requisite materials so that the students could work at their own pace. He also instructed the Respondent to utilize progress sheets so that the progress of the various students could be charted. Dr. Mills assigned a portion of the prescriptive manual to the Respondent and requested that she do all the activities suggested by the manual. Dr. Mills recommended various resource people to the Respondent. He assigned Mrs. Hoffman, a teacher on special assignment, to assist the Respondent in setting up her reading lab. Dr. Mills also arranged for carrels to be placed in the Respondent's reading lab. (SE28) On November 30, 1983, a parental complaint was made against the Respondent for the use of profanity in her classroom. After the matter was investigated it turned out that in chastising a student for profanity, the Respondent had repeated the word several times herself. The Respondent was instructed that repeating the profanity was ill-advised and served no purpose. She was instructed, in the future, to handle such situations using the standard referral procedures. (SE35) A conference for the record was held on December 13, 1983, to discuss the Respondent's progress with her prescription. After reviewing the Respondent's deficiencies and prescription the Respondent was informed that failure to remediate and improve performance to an acceptable rating could have an adverse impact on her employment status. (SE16) On February 14, 1984, the Respondent's ninth grade reading class was formally observed by Dr. Augenstein. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the areas of preparation and planning knowledge of subject matter, techniques of instruction and assessment techniques. There was no evidence that the Respondent had applied the readings from the TADS manual that had been prescribed. Dr. Augenstein pointed out to the Respondent' that she had not enrolled in the TEC component on preparation and planning as required by her prescription. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter because she did not understand the difference between assessment activity and programmed instruction. Her students were working on the ninth' grade preparation for taking the state assessment test given in the tenth grade. The Respondent did not orient the students to their assignments. She failed to answer the students' questions and did not review the students' work. The students never knew whether they had answered correctly or not. (T92) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because her students spent an entire period doing an activity which was never introduced, explained, monitored or concluded. The Respondent had no follow-up activities planned for the students who finished the assignment early. (T92-94) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in assessment techniques because her grade book showed no grades for the four weeks preceding the observation. The minimum amount of grades expected would be two per week. There was no evidence of graded homework in the students' folders. If the Respondent had become ill it would have been impossible for a substitute teacher to grade her students. (T94-95) In remediation, the Respondent was referred to a memorandum written April 22, 1983, in which Dr. Augenstein had suggested the need for intensive study of subject matter. She was also instructed to refer to the TADS prescription manual as prescribed on November 24, 1982. The principal also referred the Respondent to the prescription given on October 19, 1983. (SE13, 17) On March 6, 1984, the Respondent's language arts class was formally observed by Ms. Zelda Glazer and Dr. Augenstein. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the areas of knowledge of subject matter and assessment techniques. (SE18) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter because the Respondent was teaching a lesson dealing with parts of speech and she accepted incorrect answers from her students. She identified words as adjectives that were in fact adverbs, verbs and a noun. Furthermore, the Respondent's lesson was improperly sequenced. No background information was provided to the children who consequently did not understand what the Respondent was asking of them. In remediation the Respondent was directed to review with the department chairperson or school administrator the sequencing of a lesson. She was told to prepare a properly sequenced lesson, one which contained the necessary components: review, a drill, and a follow-up application of the skills learned. (T305-310) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the area of assessment techniques because her students' folders did not contain any compositions. At this time of the year the students should have done between fifteen to twenty (15 to 20) compositions. There was no evidence of any assignments which allowed the students to apply newly learned skills. In remediation the Respondent was instructed to develop a test on a present unit or topic being taught using writing production as one element of assessment. (SE18, T311-313) On March 6, 1984, another conference for the record was held to discuss the Respondent's remediation of performance deficiencies relative to future employment with Dade County Public Schools. After reviewing the Respondent's performance during the 1982-83 and 1983-84 school years, Dr. Augenstein recommended that action be taken toward dismissal for cause. (SE19) In March 1984, the Respondent went on maternity leave. (T97) The 1983-84 year-end evaluation indicated that the Respondent's performance in knowledge of subject matter, techniques of instruction, and assessment techniques was unacceptable. The Respondent was recommended for dismissal. (SE2O, T98-99) The Respondent returned from her maternity leave to Highland Oaks in April 1985. The Respondent received special attention to help acclimate her after almost a year's leave. The Respondent was allowed a full week without the responsibility of a classroom so that she could observe the status of the classes she was assuming and meet with the teacher to discuss the students' progress. Although Dr. Augenstein had never done this before with any other teacher, she wanted to make sure that the Respondent would be adequately prepared. Dr. Mills was also assigned to help the Respondent make the transition. (T99-100, 266-269) On May 2, 1985, the Respondent's eighth grade Level II English class was formally observed by Dr. Augenstein. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the areas of subject matter and techniques of instruction. (SE21) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the area of subject matter because she did not appear to grasp the difference between general and specific research sources. She was subsequently unable to clearly explain techniques of research and writing. The students were frustrated and unable to receive clarification from the Respondent. (SE21, T103) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the area of techniques of instruction because the Respondent was not addressing the needs of her students. Her students were advanced academic learners with a need for inductive and critical thinking approaches. (SE21, T104) In remediation, Dr. Augenstein recommended that the Respondent observe other Level IV English classes and that she do a research project herself. Respondent was also directed to design lessons using strategies for inductive and critical thinking. Dr. Augenstein assigned Mr. Charles Houghton, the North Area project manager for secondary language arts to assist and critique her demonstration lessons. (5521, T013-105) Because the Respondent had recently returned from maternity leave, her assessment techniques were not evaluated. (5521) On May 15, 1985, Mr. Houghton came to Highland Oaks to assist the Respondent. He observed her class working on a large research project. He discovered that the Respondent did not have a clear understanding of the use of bibliography cards, note cards, and research skills. Mr. Houghton told the Respondent that he would gather materials together to help her and return on Friday, May 17, 1985. Mr. Houghton returned on May 17, but the Respondent was absent that day. He left the materials with a note explaining the materials and inviting the Respondent to call him if she needed further assistance. The Respondent never called him. (T242-248) On May 28, 1985, the Respondent's English class was formally observed by assistant Principal Mills. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the areas of preparation and planning, classroom management, and techniques of instruction. (SE29) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning because although she had prepared lesson plans she did not follow them. There was no lesson presentation and no reference to the lesson objective a review of composition skills. (SE29) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in classroom management because the class never settled down so that a lesson could be presented. (SE29) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because, among other things, there was no systematic method demonstrated for monitoring the students' performance on the learning objectives. The Respondent still did not use media to assist her presentation. There was no lesson presented. (SE29) For remediation, Dr. Mills met with the Respondent and urged her to follow Dr. Augenstein's prescription. He gave her more prescriptive activities which were similar to those already assigned. (SE29, T266-268) On June 6, 1085, the Respondent was observed by Assistant Principal Nelson and Ms. Glazer. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, classroom management, techniques of instruction, and teacher-student relationships. (5E25) Mrs. Nelson observed little improvement on the part of the Respondent. She did not seem to be benefiting from the prescription and TADS system. (T210) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning because she did not follow her lesson plan. The poem which had been assigned reading for that day was inappropriate for the lesson objective: metaphors and similes. The Respondent was rated unacceptable in the area of knowledge of subject matter because not only was she using a poem that did not contain metaphors and similes, but she could not even give an example of a metaphor, when asked by a student. The Respondent referred to the cockney dialect of the poem as a southern dialect. Consequently she interpreted the word again" as dialect for aging and completely misinterpreted a whole line of the poem. (5E25) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in classroom management in that it took her ten minutes to call the roll, after which there was still socializing among the students. Several students came in late and no questions were asked of them. (SE25) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because she accepted correct and incorrect responses without comments or suggestions. No background was given on Rudyard Kipling (the poet being studied) or on the form of the poem, the ballad. The Respondent ignored all the appropriate topics raised by the poem and, instead, interjected the terms "metaphor" and "simile "haphazardly. (5E25) The Respondent was rated unacceptable in teacher- student relationships because she ignored the students' responsibilities. She neither praised nor questioned them. Furthermore, she ignored the non-participating students. (SE25) In remediation, the Respondent was referred to the prescription of May 2, 1985 and May 28, 1985. She was also directed to carefully review her lessons so that she would he prepared for students' questions and be ready with appropriate examples. The Respondent was also directed to specific exercises in the TADS manual dealing with feedback, interaction with stu- dents, and recognizing correct and incorrect responses. (SE25, T328-330) The Respondent's 1984-85 annual evaluation rated her unacceptable in the areas of preparation and planning, knowl- edge of subject matter, classroom management, techniques of instruction, and teacher-student relationships. Dr. Augenstein noted that the Respondent's unacceptable performance--documented in previous years--continued since her return from leave. She again recommended that the Respondent be dismissed for cause. (SE22) On May 30, 1985, a conference for the record was held to discuss the Respondent's end-of-the-year evaluation. The principal again recommended that dismissal for cause be initiat- ed. (SE23B) The Respondent's final exams distributed in June 1985, indicated that she still had no understanding of what constituted an objective type of exam. (T27, SE30-32) Dr. Augenstein informally observed the Respondent's classroom many times over the years, as she did with all the teachers. Her informal observations substantiated the general deficiencies noted ire formal observations. Problems were continually observed in lesson planning, subject matter, methods and materials. (T106-107) Dr. Augenstein testified that she did not think that the Respondent put out even a minimal effort to overcome her deficiencies. (T108) All the administrators and educators who observed the Respondent's classroom agreed that the Respondent did not adequately grasp her area of specialization, the English language arts. All agreed that she lacked the minimum skills in both content and methodology of English language arts. (T16, 255, 304, 424, 461) Over the three year period, the Respondent was given various prescriptions to encourage and help her in remediation. The Respondent followed and completed only a tenth of the prescriptions given to her. (T170) Dr. Patrick Gray, Assistant Superintendent for the Dade County School Board's Office of Professional Standards, testified that--based on his educational background; his personal evaluation of the Respondent's file, his review of the evidence offered at the Respondent's school board hearing in the Division of Administrative Hearings' Case No. 85-3223; his review of the exhibits introduced on behalf of the Petitioner; his knowledge of the required teaching behaviors for teachers, including the state of the art and research; and the Florida teaching competencies which are expected of every Florida teacher--the Respondent's performance consistently failed to meet the standards of performance of the State of Florida. Dr. Gray recommended that the State permanently revoke the Respondent's teaching license. On September 4, 1985, the Respondent was suspended from her employment with the Dade County School Board. The School Board instituted proceedings to dismiss the Respondent from employment. On June 4, 1986, the School Board of Dade County entered its Final Order upholding the dismissal of the Respondent. (PE77)
Recommendation Based on the foregoing, it is RECOMMENDED that the Respondent's Teaching Certificate Number 182937 be REVOKED. DONE and ORDERED this 30th day of September, 1986, in Tallahassee, Florida. R. L. CALEEN, JR. Hearing Officer Division of Administrative Hearings The Oakland Building 2009 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1550 (904) 488-9675 Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 30th day of September, 1986. APPENDIX TO RECOMMENDED ORDER, CASE NO. 86-1144 RULINGS ON PETITIONER'S PROPOSED FINDINGS OF FACT 1-100. Adopted. RULINGS ON RESPONDENT'S PROPOSED FINDINGS OF FACT 1-8. Approved. 9. Approved, as modified to reflect that Respondent did not attend any of the TDS training sessions conducted by Dr. Gray. 10-13. Approved. 14. Approved, as modified to reflect that she was given the correct textbooks soon after parents complained about her performance. 15-21. Approved. 22. Approved as modified to reflect that a secretary made a transposing error on the form so that those areas where Respondent performed satisfactorily were marked unsatisfactory, and vice versa. 23-34. Approved. 35. Approved, but modified to reflect that, nevertheless, Respondent continued to perform below minimal standards and her remediation efforts were not effective. COPIES FURNISHED: Craig R. Wilson, Esquire 215 Fifth Street, Suite 302 West Palm Beach, Florida 33401 Laverne Elizabeth Reaves 1430 N.W. 90th Street Miami, Florida 33147
Findings Of Fact Respondent, Laverne Reaves, has been employed as a teacher by the Petitioner since the 1966-67 school year and has been a junior high English language arts teacher since the 1971- 72 school year. For the 1982-83 school year and the subsequent years, except for a period of maternity leave, Respondent was employed as an English language arts teacher at Highland Oaks Junior High School (Highland Oaks). Prior to Respondent's assignment to Highland Oaks, her yearly evaluations indicated acceptable performance. In Fall, 1982, the Dade County School Board initiated a pilot program known as the Teacher Assessment and Development System (TADS). Highland Oaks was one of the schools selected for the pilot program. During the time she was at Highland Oaks, beginning with the 1982-83 school year, Respondent failed to demonstrate acceptable teaching in every classroom observation and in every language arts assignment. After an absence due to a back injury, Respondent reported to Highland Oaks at the end of September or at the beginning of October, 1982, after the beginning of the school years. Respondent missed the teacher orientation session because of her injury. When Respondent arrived at Highland Oaks, Ms. Ruskin, the English language arts department head met with her, as with any new teacher, to orient her to the textbooks to be used at each level, course outlines, basic curriculum, and the teacher manuals. Parents of the students began registering complaints the second day Respondent taught at Highland Oaks, and continued to complain on a regular basis. One of the major complaints was that the children were being taught at a level beneath their ability. These were Level III students (average-above average ability) who were being taught as Level II students (below average ability). Due to a scheduling error, Respondent believed that one class of Level III student was Level II. The complaints came not only from the class in which the administrative scheduling error was made, but also from other classes. The error was soon corrected. The parents also complained about Respondent's preparation for the classes and her knowledge and ability to teach. In addition to not teaching on the level of the students; she was assigning them book reports that were at a very elementary level. She was using textbooks that were far below their level. Her language was not appropriate. She assigned work to the class but did not explain it. The parents also complained that Respondent's homework assignments were not meaningful and that when she gave homework, she did not collect it, grade it, return it, or use it as part of the instruction. She wasted a lot of class time going off on tangents. The parents also complained that Respondent lacked control of the classroom and that she did not maintain appropriate relations with the parents. They complained that she called the students names, such as "stupid" and "ignorant," and constantly told the children to "shut up." She was hostile and aggressive and sometimes embarrassed and ridiculed students. The parents stated that Respondent threatened the students if they complained to their parents. The parents wanted to have their children removed from Respondent's class. The children did not want to go to her class. The parents felt that the situation was potentially dangerous as Respondent ignored dangerous situations. Because of the parental complaints, Assistant Principal Sarah Nelson had a conference with Respondent on October 8, 1982. Ms. Ruskin met with Respondent on October 12, 1982, in an effort to assist Respondent in the problems she was having in discipline, assigning homework, and general curriculum problems. Ms. Ruskin provided additional materials to Respondent in an effort to help her. These included books, tests, balanced curriculum, classroom materials, semester course outlines, SAT outlines, and publications about writing, course objectives for advanced level students, and suggested activities for lower level students. Other teachers in the department offered help, as well. Although Ms. Ruskin indicated that she was available to help in any way, Respondent never came to her for assistance. Respondent was officially observed in her seventh grade English Level II class on October 13, 1982, by Ms. Nelson. Respondent was rated overall unacceptable, and specifically, unacceptable in preparation and planning and techniques of instruction. Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning because the classroom activities did not reflect evidence of effective instructional planning and Respondent had not turned in lesson plans on a regular basis, as required. The objectives were too general and the homework was not specific enough. The expectations for Level III students were not higher than for Level II students. Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because she failed to adapt materials and methods to the interests, needs and abilities of her students, e.g., Level II versus Level III students, and she did not use instructional strategies for teaching the subject matter to the different levels. Her level of questioning was not done in enough depth. Her lesson lacked closure, i.e., review, recap. She failed to explain words which needed explanation. Spelling and vocabulary were to be done on a weekly basis, and yet, Respondent had only given one spelling test since the beginning of school. The homework did not have any meaningful value and the students who did the homework were not rewarded by having it collected. Students who did not do the homework were not penalized in any way. Although classroom management was rated acceptable; Mrs. Nelson was concerned that it took Respondent 20 minutes out of a 50-minute period to have the class begin working. There was too much movement in the room, which distracted students who were trying to read. Mrs. Nelson recommended that Respondent establish and enforce classroom rules. Mrs. Nelson further recommended that Respondent clearly state her objectives in the next week's lesson plans and that those objectives be differentiated for the two levels taught. Mrs. Nelson discussed the deficiencies in Respondent's lesson plans with her approximately a dozen times. Mrs. Nelson also offered to make sure that Respondent had the proper books and materials and that if she needed any additional help, she would be happy to help her and indicated that Ms. Ruskin would also be able to assist. Respondent was next formally observed on November 9, 1982, by Dr. Mildred Augenstein, principal, in her seventh grade Level III class. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter, classroom management; and techniques of instruction. Based on the observation of October 13, 1982, and her own observation, Dr. Augenstein established a written prescription to help Respondent remedy her problems. Although Respondent was rated acceptable in preparation and planning at the November 5, 1982, observation, Dr. Augenstein made specific recommendations as to preparation and planning because of the unacceptable ratings on October 13, 1982. These included turning in lesson plans weekly to Mrs. Nelson. They were to be done in depth, separately for Level II and Level III classes. They were to contain specific components and were to reference the Balanced Curriculum, a School Board rule on course objectives. The requested actions were to be completed by December 3, 1982. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter because she made errors in subject matter, e.g., inaccurate definition of science fiction. She read off words for a spelling test without giving the students a sentence in which they could hear the words. This confused the children. Dr. Augenstein prescribed required actions for remediation and recommended resources to which Respondent could turn for help in upgrading her preparation in English language arts. These included specific exercises in the TADS prescription manual dealing with knowledge of the subject matter, to be completed by December 8, 1982. Respondent was also instructed to contact the Teacher Education Center (TEC) to identify any course offerings in the area of language arts by December 15, 1982. Respondent was to visit other language arts classrooms in order to observe the different levels of instruction prior to December 15, 1982. Respondent was rated unacceptable in classroom management because the students spoke at will without raising hands. There was a constant undercurrent of conversation, and Respondent kept "shushing" them as a whole group without dealing with the specific behavior of individuals and making corrections. Respondent did not begin the class promptly. Dr. Augenstein prescribed required actions for remediation and recommended resources to which Respondent could turn for help in classroom management. These included beginning classes promptly and establishing a set of simple class rules and following through on them by December 15, 1982. Respondent was directed to investigate a course on assertive discipline or teacher effectiveness training and to enroll in a TEC course in classroom management by March, 1983. Respondent was directed to review the faculty handbook which contained the rules and regulations of the school and was asked to work with the assistant principal, Mr. Fontana, to set up a set of classroom rules. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in techniques of instruction because she failed to employ techniques which provided stimulating, varied and productive learning experiences for the students. Her lesson was not sequenced properly in that no background was given and there was no follow-through at the end as to what had been accomplished. When the students tried to ask questions for clarification, Respondent failed to answer them. The students were very confused. Respondent failed to anticipate the problems that the students would have in the lesson. Dr. Augenstein prescribed required actions for remediation and recommended resources to which Respondent could turn for help in improving her techniques of instruction. These included the TADS manual exercise on questioning skills, verbal interaction, effective teaching strategies, and instruction sequence; to be completed by January 15, 1983. Respondent needed to learn how to ask questions which led the students into more critical thinking and analytical skills, and not simply ask low level recall questions. Respondent was to demonstrate at least one new teaching approach by January 15, 1983. Parent complaints continued and culminated in a meeting on November 23, 1982, between a group of 19 parents and the principal. The principal held a meeting with Respondent on November 29, 1982, to discuss those complaints. Thereafter, the complaints continued and were far in excess of any that the principal had ever received about any other teacher. On December 13, 1982, the principal directed a memorandum to Respondent regarding her failure to comply with provisions of the previous prescription. Respondent had failed to turn in lesson plans as directed and her plans still did not differentiate between Level II and Level III. Children were given simple spelling words, e.g., leg, heat, without being given the purpose for their study. This confused the students as to why they were being made to learn easy words. The students were given a list of adverbs to use in a sentence and the words were not all adverbs. Parent complaints continued. One complaint concerned a disturbance in Respondent's classroom. Rather than dealing with it appropriately, Respondent stated that the two students who were involved should hang themselves. Parents tended to view Respondent as belligerent, abusive, and non-responsive to the academic and emotional needs of the students. On December 14, 1982, Respondent was released from classes to observe other language arts classrooms and to obtain direct assistance from the department head who was also released for the afternoon. Respondent was next formally observed in a seventh grade class on January 6, 1983, by Dr. Augenstein. Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, techniques of instruction, assessment techniques, and teacher-student relationships. Respondent still had not completed her previous prescription. Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning because her lesson plans were not realistic or appropriate and were not followed through. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter because she used a sentence that lacked a verb, i.e., "what hour you went to bed last night?" She also gave a spelling test of homonyms, but in some of the sentences, she used two of the homonyms, and the students were confused as to which form they were supposed to spell, e.g., "I want to go there too." While Respondent was rated acceptable in classroom management, that category was minimally acceptable. There was still an undercurrent of whispering and very few students were raising their hands before speaking out. Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because she had difficulty in sequencing the material, explaining and clarifying it. There was no connection made to what the students had previously learned. Respondent was not able to make clear to the students what an inference was. She never went beyond the textbook definition. She did not relate the term to the students' lives. The homework assignment was given very hurriedly and was vague. The students were unsure of what they were supposed to do. Respondent was rated unacceptable in assessment techniques because there was no evidence that student compositions were being written, collected, evaluated, and redone. That is a requirement of the Balanced Curriculum. When Respondent returned some papers to the students to look at "for a minute," she did not give them time to assess their progress. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in teacher-student relationships because when a student asked a question, Respondent made no response. The teacher-student interchanges were very cold and condensed, and there was much uneasiness. The teaching climate was hostile, punitive, or retaliatory. Since Respondent had not yet completed the previous prescription, she was directed to continue working on it. On or about January 11, 1983, Dr. Augenstein gave Respondent a list of TEC courses which would be helpful to Respondent in the areas in which she needed remediation. Parent complaints continued. On or about January 19, 1983, a parent complained that the work in her child's Level III class was too elementary. Upon review, Dr. Augenstein concurred. Respondent's class schedule was changed at the end of the first semester in order to give her an opportunity to perform acceptably with students of a lower level and to eliminate some of the parental pressure. It was thought that perhaps she was most familiar with that type of student from her pervious school and that would allow her more time to complete her prescriptive activities. Respondent was next formally observed in her seventh grade Level II class by Dr. Augenstein on February 8, 1983. She was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter, classroom management, and techniques of instruction. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter because she mispronounced words, e.g., denouement, architecture. Although "denouement" had been previously pronounced correctly in a filmstrip, Respondent mispronounced it. "Architecture" was pronounced "arch-chi-tek-chur" (as in church) in a lesson dealing with "ch" being used as a "K" sound (as in chaos). This confused the students in the major point of the lesson. Classroom management was rated unacceptable because after the lunch break, the students did not quiet down until the principal came back into the classroom. Although Respondent was not formally observed during the next period, the principal informally noted the noise coming from Respondent's classroom while she was observing the teacher in the next room. That teacher indicated that Respondent's classes were always that noisy. Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because she did not clarify or answer student's questions to a degree that was correct or satisfying to the students. She did not encourage and structure student participation. The lesson did not come to an end other than by the ringing of the bell, i.e., no closure. In spite of the fact that Respondent was teaching an entirely different group of students, the problems were a continuation of those seen in the prior observations. Respondent was directed to continue the prescriptive activities from November, 1982. As of the date of this observation, Respondent had not fulfilled her previous prescription. She had not demonstrated the new teaching technique to either Mrs. Nelson or Dr. Augenstein. Respondent was next formally observed in her seventh grade Level II class by Mrs. Nelson on February 17, 1983. She was rated unacceptable in classroom management, techniques of instruction, and teacher-student relationships. Respondent was rated unacceptable in classroom management because the students were noisy and she had a great deal of difficulty getting them settled. There was an undercurrent of noise throughout the whole class period. One student who was blowing bubbles was never reprimanded. Another student continued to get up and down out of her seat. Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because there was no focal point to the lesson. Nothing was emphasized. The main points could have been reinforced on the chalkboard or by the use of some other media, e.g., overhead projector, supplementary materials, to better helped those students who are visual rather than auditory learners. Although Respondent was rated acceptable in assessment techniques, she still did not collect the homework after asking the students how many had it. Only five students had the homework and there was no reinforcement for them. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in teacher-student relationships because some students monopolized the discussion while others never participated and were completely off task. No encouragement was given to those students who did not participate. However, due to a technical error in checking the boxes on the observation form, Respondent should have been given credit for satisfactory teacher-student relationships. This technical error would not remove Respondent from prescription. Rather than writing a new prescription for Respondent, Mrs. Nelson reviewed and discussed the prescription of November 24, 1982, with her. She did this because she felt as though that that prescription was a very good one and it had not been completed by Respondent. On February 23, 1983, a conference-for-the record was held with Respondent to discuss the problems that Respondent had been having, the help that had been given to her, the status of the remediation efforts, and to clarify decisions related to employment recommendations. Respondent was next formally observed in her seventh grade Level II class on March 2, 1983, by Dr. Augenstein and by an outside administrator, Roger Frese. Both administrators rated Respondent unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter and techniques of instruction. Respondent had difficulty in presenting the subject matter in a sequenced manner. While the lesson plan indicated that the students would study components of the short story, with the exception of merely mentioning the names of the components, the students jumped right into paragraph writing dealing with characterization without any development of the concept of characterization and without instruction on how to write. The written products of the students indicated confusion and misunderstanding. When the students asked questions, Respondent had an opportunity to clarify the misunderstanding: however, she failed to respond to their questions. When the students read their papers aloud, Respondent failed to indicate whether they were correct. Because Respondent did not ask questions and did not respond to the questions asked by the students; and because of the many wrong answers given and accepted by Respondent; there was no way to determine that Respondent did in fact have a grasp of the topic. There was no closure to the assignment. Respondent assigned a homework activity which was not an extension of the day's assignment. It was a new assignment given without prior instruction. In order to remediate Respondent's deficiencies, Dr. Augenstein directed her to continue the prescribed activities of the November 24, 1982 prescription. By memorandum dated April 22, 1983, Dr. Augenstein recommended course work to help remediate deficiencies in Respondent's knowledge of subject matter. Respondent was next formally observed in the classroom by assistant principal, Dr. Herman Mills, on May 24, 1983. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter. The sequencing of information was illogical and unclear. Dr. Mills found that Respondent had gaps in her education, as evidenced by her statements that Canada was a French-speaking country and Korea was a city. Respondent gave the students a handout with an error. "More bigger" was used on the handout, and Respondent failed to indicate to the class that a comma was missing. This confused the students in finding a dissimilar word in a given series. Respondent gave another wrong answer because she did not recognize the dissimilar word in a series of words. During the 1982-83 school year, administrators occasionally went to Respondent's classroom so that their presence would help Respondent get the class under control. Respondent's yearly evaluation indicated that she had not remediated deficiencies in preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, classroom management, and techniques of instruction, and Dr. Augenstein recommended a return to annual contract, i.e., loss of tenure. That recommendation, however, was not implemented. In September, 1983, Dr. Augenstein assigned Dr. Mills the task of determining the degree of Respondent's compliance with her previous prescription. At his first meeting with Respondent, Dr. Mills discovered that she had had none of the prescriptive activities signed off. At a second meeting with Respondent, Dr. Mills verified that Respondent completed a TEC course in techniques of instruction. On September 27, 1983, Dr. Mills directed Respondent to obtain sign-offs on her prescription by September 30, 1983. When he met with her on October 5, 1983, he discovered that the only item signed off was the activity of meeting with Mr. Fontana, assistant principal, on classroom management. Respondent was next formally observed in her seventh grade Level II class by Dr. Augenstein on October 19, 1983. Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, techniques of instruction, and assessment techniques. Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning because the lesson stated in the plan was not feasible. Respondent had not anticipated how long the various tasks would take, and since this was the same teaching assignment as the previous year, she should have had an idea of the reasonable time for the assignment. She listed a homework assignment that could not be done because the set of books involved was a classroom set and were not books that were sent home with the students. A large number of students did not have their books in class; thus indicating to the observer that they had not been prepared for the work to be assigned. In order to address Respondent's deficiencies in preparation and planning, Dr. Augenstein referred her to the original prescription of November 24, 1982. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in knowledge of subject matter because she had difficulty demonstrating the difference between homonyms, homographs, and homophones. She also assumed that the seventh grade students were knowledgeable of the parts of speech. This would not have been appropriate so early in the year for seventh grade students. In order to remediate Respondent's deficiencies in knowledge of subject matter, Dr. Augenstein referred her to the memorandum of April 22, 1983, recommending intensive study of subject matter. Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because she was still not emphasizing important points with the use of media, e.g., chalkboard. Student contributions ended in confusion rather than clarification since Respondent allowed the students to call out homonyms rather than using the homonyms in a correct sentence. To help remediate Respondent's deficiencies in techniques of instruction, Dr. Augenstein referred her to the original prescription of November 24, 1982. Respondent was rated unacceptable in assessment techniques because there were insufficient student papers in the students' folders and insufficient grades in the grade book to enable an administrator to make a judgment as to whether the students were making adequate progress. The criterion calls for a variety of assessment techniques, and yet, the only graded tests in Respondent's grade book were four spelling tests. The student folders contained no graded samples of homework or graded compositions. The day's homework was not called for. When Dr. Augenstein asked to see the homework, only six students turned in papers. In order to remediate Respondent's deficiencies in assessment techniques, Respondent was directed to enroll in a TEC course in assessment techniques. She was directed not to write in her lesson plans that the students should "go over the. ," but that she should be more specific on how she plans to assess the work. She was directed to provide a variety of assessments to include both written and oral work. Respondent was next formally observed in her reading lab by Dr. Mills on November 16, 1983. Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction. Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because her methodology was inappropriate for a reading lab. The purpose of a reading lab is to give the students individualized work based upon their reading levels. The students should have been diagnostically placed into three groups based upon reading levels however, they were being taught as one group and had been so taught for four days. Respondent's instructions to the class were vague and unclear. Respondent did not indicate to the class what the correct responses were, but rather, she seemed to be striving for consensus among the students. The students had little idea of what a topic sentence was, and Respondent did not give them any background. In order to help Respondent remediate her deficiencies in techniques of instruction, Dr. Mills arranged for carrels to be placed in Respondent's classroom. He also had Mrs. Hoffman, a teacher on special assignment in reading, work with Respondent in setting up the reading lab. He further directed Respondent to immediately divide the 20 students into three reading groups according to the diagnostic testing and to provide the necessary materials for individualized work according to their reading levels. He assigned exercise in the TADS prescription manual. A parental complaint was lodged against Respondent for using profanity in the classroom on November 30, 1983. An investigation into the matter revealed that a student had used profanity and that Respondent, in chastising him, repeated the profanity a number of times. Respondent was advised against the use of profanity in the classroom and to use standard referral procedures in handling such matters. A conference-for-the-record was held on December 13, 1983, to discuss Respondent's performance to date. Respondent was informed that failure to remediate and improve her performance could have an adverse impact upon her employment status. On February 14, 1984, Respondent was formally observed in her ninth grade reading class by Dr. Augenstein. She was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, techniques of instruction, and assessment techniques. Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning because she continued to demonstrate the same kinds of problems she had previously demonstrated. There was no evidence that Respondent was applying the previous help from the TADS manual. No objective was given in the lesson plan. Although a homework assignment was listed in the previous day's lesson plan, none was collected. The homework assignment for this day, as listed in the plan, was never assigned. Respondent was still putting in her plan that students should "Go over today's lesson." The terminology "go over" was still being used despite an earlier prescription indicating that the term was vague. Respondent was confusing assessment activity with programmed instruction. She demonstrated a lack of understanding of programmed instruction. To remediate Respondent's deficiencies in preparation and planning, Dr. Augenstein directed Respondent to enroll in a TEC course in preparation and planning as prescribed on October 19, 1983. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter because Respondent gave no feedback to the students as to the correct answers. She did not orient the students to what they were doing. When they asked questions, she was very vague in answering. In order to help Respondent remediate her deficiencies in knowledge of subject matter, Dr. Augenstein referred her to the memorandum of April 22, 1983, which suggested the need for intensive study of the subject matter. Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because she presented no lesson and did not carry out a question-answer sequence as indicated in her lesson plans. The students spent the entire period doing an activity which was not introduced to them and was not monitored by the teacher. There was no follow-up and the students did not get feedback as to whether the work was correct. The students who finished early sat with nothing to do. Respondent spent the period grading papers and provided assistance to a few students who asked for it. To aid Respondent in remediating her deficiencies in techniques of instruction, Dr. Augenstein referred Respondent to the pages in the TADS prescription manual which had been prescribed on November 24, 1982. Respondent was rated unacceptable in assessment techniques because her grade book contained no grades for the last four weeks of the first semester. Minimally, a teacher should have two grades per week. There was no evidence of graded homework or formal writing instruction in the grade book or the student folders. Some of the students had no papers in their folders for several months. Most of the papers that were in the folders were simply ditto sheets, quick, objective, short answer papers. The "essay" portion of the ninth grade final examination for the first semester was a multiple choice test rather than an essay test, contrary to the guidelines for final examinations in the faculty handbook and School Board Rule. In order to aid Respondent in remediating her deficiencies in assessment techniques, Dr. Augenstein referred her to the prescription of October 19, 1983. Respondent was next formally observed in her seventh grade class on March 6, 1984, by Dr. Augenstein and Zelda Glazer, supervisor of language arts. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter, techniques of instruction; and assessment techniques. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter because in a lesson dealing with parts of speech,. she accepted incorrect answers from students and even put some of them on the board. She incorrectly identified a number of words as adjectives when they were actually adverbs; verbs, and nouns. When the students gave wrong answers, Respondent did not correct them. Respondent relied on rote definitions for the parts of speech. These were difficult for low level students to understand. In order to aid Respondent in remediating her deficiencies in knowledge of subject matter, she was directed to review with the language arts supervisor or the department chairperson the identifying signals for adjectives and nouns, so that rote definitions would not be the exclusive explanations made to the students. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in techniques of instruction because there was no sequence for the lesson. Respondent's lesson lacked motivation and closure. No background was given, and no re-teaching was done of areas where the students lacked knowledge. Respondent did not recognize and anticipate difficulties in the lesson. She did not answer the student's questions and did not use students' wrong answers as a teaching experience. There was no attempt to explain why wrong answers were wrong, but rather, they were simply accepted, thus confirming the student's opinions that they had given correct responses. In order to aid Respondent in remediating her deficiencies in techniques of instruction, Respondent was directed to review with the department chairperson or a school administrator the sequencing of a lesson and to write a lesson which was carefully sequenced. The lesson should include the requisite components, i.e., review, participation in a drill or repetition, and application of the skills learned. Respondent was rated unacceptable in assessment techniques because the work in the students' folders did not reflect a variety of formats. The papers were merely simple drills or exercises. There were no compositions and no opportunities for applying the skills which were taught. By this time of year, Respondent should have had approximately 15 to 20 compositions in each student's folder. In order to help Respondent remediate her deficiencies in assessment techniques, Respondent was directed to develop a unit test using writing production as one element of the test. A conference-for-the-record was held on March 6, 1984. Respondent's assessments and prescriptions were reviewed. The help afforded to Respondent was also discussed. Dr. Augenstein indicated that she would be initiating the procedure for dismissal for cause. In March, 1984, shortly after the conference for the record, Respondent began approximately one year's maternity leave. Respondent's yearly evaluation for 1983-84 indicated that Respondent ended the year on prescription for deficiencies in knowledge of subject matter, techniques of instruction, and assessment techniques, and that Dr. Augenstein had recommended her for dismissal. The actual evaluation form (Petitioner's Exhibit 20) contains a typographical error in that the "X's" are reversed. The unacceptable categories are marked acceptable and vice versa. Respondent returned to Highland Oaks on April 15, 1985. She was given special help to acclimate her after her year's leave. Although Dr. Augenstein had never done so before; she purchased the services of the substitute teacher who had replaced Respondent during her leave in order that Respondent could have the minimum of one full week when she returned to prepare for her classes and so that the substitute could work with her on an as needed basis. Respondent was to observe the classes during that week, go over the student's progress, and plan in depth for the rest of the school year. Dr. Mills assisted in attempting to make a smooth transition between the substitute and Respondent. Respondent was next formally observed in the classroom on May 2, 1985, by Dr. Augenstein. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter and techniques of instruction. Since she had recently returned from leave, Dr. Augenstein did not rate her in assessment techniques. The class observed was an eighth grade Level IV class, the precursor to high school honors English. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in knowledge of subject matter because she did not demonstrate that she had knowledge of research projects and library research skills. The students were completely confused and frustrated by Respondent's teaching. They were trying to get clarification from Respondent but were not able to do so. In order to help Respondent remediate her deficiencies in knowledge of subject matter, Dr. Augenstein recommended that she observe other Level IV English classes and that she do a research project herself so that she would learn enough about it in order to teach it. Respondent was rated unacceptable in techniques of instruction because she was not meeting the needs of advanced learners. She was not using inductive and critical thinking approaches. She frustrated them by putting off their questions and giving conflicting and misleading information when she tried to answer questions. In order to help Respondent overcome her deficiencies in techniques of instruction, Dr. Augenstein directed her to design and present a lesson using strategies for inductive and critical thinking. She was to include higher order questioning skills, pre-writing strategies, and techniques for promoting student involvement. Dr. Augenstein indicated that Charles Houghton, North Area project manager for secondary language arts, would assist and critique demonstration lessons. Mr. Houghton came to Highland Oaks to assist Respondent on Wednesday, May 15, 1985. He discovered that Respondent lacked an understanding of research. Mr. Houghton indicated that he would return on Friday, May 17, 1985, in order to give assistance to Respondent. He would gather materials for her, would go over them with her during her planning period, and would stay with her through the classroom period to see how she did. When he came back on the 17th, he discovered that Respondent was absent. He left the materials for her with an open ended invitation that if she needed further assistance, to let him know. Respondent did not request further help. Respondent was next observed in her English class by Dr. Mills on May 28, 1985. Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning; classroom management, and techniques of instruction. Respondent was rated unacceptable in preparation and planning and techniques of instruction because although lesson plans had been made, they were not being followed. Respondent was rated unacceptable in classroom management because there was no lesson being presented. Respondent shouted at the students, but they continued to remain off task. The student behavior was almost chaotic. In an effort to help Respondent remediate her deficiencies, Dr. Mills met with Respondent and indicated that it was imperative that she follow through on the prescription Dr. Augenstein had given her. She was given further prescriptive activities which were similar to those she had been given before. Respondent was next formally observed in her eighth grade class on June 6, 1985, by Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. Glazer. Respondent was rated unaccepted in preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, classroom management, techniques of instruction, and teacher-student relationships. Mrs. Nelson did not see much of an improvement over her prior observation done in 1982. Respondent was teaching a lesson in similes and metaphors in the poem, "Danny Deever" by Rudyard Kipling. "Danny Deever" is a ballad written in cockney dialect about the public hanging of a solider in the British army. The poem contains no similes or metaphors. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in preparation and planning because the plan was not followed. The poem which had been indicated as a homework assignment was the one used for class discussion and was an inappropriate choice for simile and metaphor discussion. Respondent could not provide an example of a metaphor when asked by a student, thereby indicating that she did not have knowledge of what a metaphor was. In order to help Respondent remediate her deficiencies in preparation and planning, she was referred to the previous prescription of May 28, 1985. Respondent was rated unacceptable in knowledge of subject matter because she made many errors in the interpretation of "Danny Deever." She referred to the dialect of the poem as United States southern dialect and misinterpreted the meanings of dialectical words, resulting in completely misinterpreted lines. Respondent did not contemporize the poems to the children's lives in order to help them better understand the poem. In order to help Respondent overcome her deficiencies in knowledge of subject matter, she was referred back to the previous prescription of May 2, 1985. In addition, she was directed to review her lessons carefully in order to be prepared for student questions and to be able to provide appropriate examples. Respondent was rated unacceptable in classroom management because she took ten minutes to take the roll. Even after roll call, there was considerable socializing among the students. Quite a few students were late to class, but they were not questioned as to why they were late. With a seating chart, Respondent would have only needed two minutes to take attendance. The average teacher learns who her students are in less than a week, and Respondent had had the students since April 15, 1985. No attempts were made to prevent off task behavior. Inappropriate student behavior was mildly noted but was not effectively handled with firmness or suitable consequences. Respondent was absent. He left the materials for her with an open ended invitation that if she needed further assistance, to let him know. Respondent did not request further help. In order to help Respondent remediate her classroom management, she was referred to the previous prescription of May 28, 1985. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in techniques of instruction because the sequence of the lesson was erratic or haphazard. The students were asked to read the poem aloud, and they had great difficulty with the dialect. Therefore, the poem was not a positive experience for them. Respondent provided no background information in order to set the tone for the study of "Danny Deever." She gave no background on the poet or on the form of the poem. Correct and incorrect responses were accepted in exactly the same fashion without comment or question. Respondent misinterpreted the meanings of the dialectical words, thereby resulting in irrelevant interpretation of the poem. The students never came to realize that the poem was about a hanging. All of the topics which should have appropriately been covered in the poem were ignored. Respondent failed to anticipate the confusion or misunderstanding in the class. Therefore, no attempt was made to clarify the lack of student understanding or appreciation. In order to help Respondent remediate her deficiencies in techniques of instruction, she was referred to the two previous prescriptions, since they had never been completed nor had her problems been remediated. Respondent was rated unsatisfactory in teacher-student relationships because student responses were ignored; neither praised nor questioned. Non-participants were not called upon or encouraged to participate. There was a quiet disrespect in the class. In order to help Respondent remediate her deficiencies in teacher-student relationships, she was referred to specific exercise in the TADS prescription manual dealing with feedback, interacting with students, and recognizing correct and incorrect responses. Petitioner's yearly evaluation for the 1984-85 school year indicated that Respondent remained deficient in preparation and planning, knowledge of subject matter, classroom management, techniques of instruction, teacher-student relationships, and that the principal recommended dismissal for cause. A conference-for-the-record was held on May 30, 1985, to discuss Respondent's end-of-the-year evaluation and the principal's recommendation for dismissal. Respondent's final examinations for June, 1985, indicate that Respondent still lacked an understanding of what constitutes an objective examination. In addition to the formal observations, Respondent was observed informally numerous times. These informal observations substantiated those deficiencies found on the formal observations. Her room was often noisy and Respondent could be heard yelling in an attempt to try to gain control of the class. The students were often out of their seats until an administrator walked in. Her class was noisy regardless of the time of the day or the portion of the period. Respondent was generally seated at her desk with students congregated around her. Rarely was instruction going on and rarely were students on task. When seen in the library, the class was fooling around and little was being accomplished. It is the consensus of opinion of those administrators who observed Respondent and/or those who reviewed her records, that Respondent repeatedly failed to communicate with and relate to the students in her class to such an extent that they were deprived of a minimum educational experience. These administrators also were of the opinion that Respondent lacks adequate command of her area of specialization, i.e., English language arts, in that she lacks the minimum skills and competencies in both content and methodology to teach English language arts. Dr. Mills believes that Respondent should only teach basic skills English classes, if she teaches at all. Unfortunately, the evidence compels the same conclusion. At least 90% of Respondent's prescription for remediation was not met. Given the time, effort, and assistance expended on Respondent's behalf, she did not make the minimum effort necessary to overcome her deficiencies. She lacked basic knowledge which could have been obtained by pursuing the course work that was prescribed. No matter who the observer was or what the specific teaching assignment was; Respondent failed to demonstrate an acceptable level of teaching. Respondent's certification should have enabled her to teach any of the related components within the field of English language arts, including different ability levels. Respondent demonstrated her lack of knowledge of the subject area during the hearing when she was unable to answer questions that a junior high school teacher should be able to answer, such as the signals which help identify a noun and the noun, verb, adverb and adjective forms of common words. Effective September 4; 1985; Respondent was suspended from her employment with Petitioner, and Petitioner instituted proceedings to dismiss Respondent from employment.
Recommendation Based upon the foregoing Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, it is RECOMMENDED that the School Board of Dade County enter a Final Order sustaining the suspension of Respondent Laverne Reaves, and dismissing Respondent, Laverne Reaves, as a teacher in the Dade County Public Schools. DONE and ENTERED this 12th day of May, 1986; in Tallahassee, Florida. DIANE K. KIESLING, Hearing Officer Division of Administrative Hearings The Oakland Building 2009 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32301 (904) 488-9675 Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 12th day of May, 1986. COPIES FURNISHED: Madelyn P. Schere, Esquire Suite 301 1450 N. E. Second Avenue Miami, Florida 33132 Curtis L. Jones, Jr., Esquire P. O. Box 105182 Miami, Florida 33101 Dr. Leonard Britton Superintendent of Schools Dade County Public Schools Board Administration Building 1450 Northeast Second Avenue Miami, Florida 33132 Karen Barr Wilde Executive Director Department of Education The Capitol Tallahassee, Florida 32301 APPENDIX The following constitutes my specific rulings pursuant to Section 120.59(2); Florida Statutes; on all proposed findings of fact submitted by the parties to this case. Rulings on Proposed Findings of Fact of Petitioner Proposed findings of fact 1-3 and 5-151 are adopted in substance in Findings of Fact 1-3 and 5-151. Proposed finding of fact 4 is rejected as not supported by the evidence and argumentative. Ruling on Proposed Findings of Fact of Respondent Proposed finding of fact 1 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 1. Proposed finding of fact 2 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 2. Proposed finding of fact 7 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 6. Proposed finding of fact 8 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 4. Proposed finding of fact 9 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 4. Proposed finding of fact 14 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 6. Proposed finding of fact 15 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 6. Proposed finding of fact 16 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 8. Proposed finding of fact 20 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 12. Proposed finding of fact 22 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 24. Proposed finding of fact 26 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 57. Proposed finding of fact 31 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 112. Proposed finding of fact 32 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Facts 25 and 82. Proposed finding of fact 35 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Facts 102 and 105. Proposed finding of fact 44 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Facts 69 and 85. Proposed finding of fact 45 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Facts 69 and 85. Proposed finding of fact 46 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 148. Proposed finding of fact 47 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 111. Proposed finding of fact 52 is adopted in substance as modified in Finding of Fact 72. 20. Proposed findings of fact 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 21, 41, 48, 49, 50, 53, and 57 are rejected as irrelevant. Proposed findings of fact 17, 18, 23; 25, 29, and 51 are rejected as not supported by the competent, substantial evidence. Proposed findings of fact 24, 27; and 54 are rejected as being unsupported by the competent, substantial evidence and as being argumentative. 23. Proposed findings of fact 28, 30, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 55, and 56 are rejected as unnecessary. Proposed finding of fact 38 is rejected as unnecessary and argumentative. Proposed finding of fact 42 is rejected as being misleading and incomplete and therefore not supported by the competent, substantial evidence.
The Issue Whether the Respondent committed the violations alleged in the letter from the Petitioner dated January 16, 2003, and in the Notice of Specific Charges filed February 27, 2003, and, if so, the penalty that should be imposed.
Findings Of Fact Based on the oral and documentary evidence presented at the final hearing and on the entire record of this proceeding, the following findings of fact are made: The School Board is a duly-constituted school board charged with the duty to operate, control, and supervise all free public schools within the School District of Miami-Dade County, Florida. Article IX, Florida Constitution; Section 230.03, Florida Statutes (2002).3 At the times material to this proceeding, Mr. Lefkowitz taught emotionally handicapped and seriously emotionally disturbed students in North Miami Beach High's Bertha Abbess exceptional student education program. He has been employed by the School Board since 1993, and is currently employed under a professional services contract. At the times material to this proceeding, Mr. Lefkowitz and at least one other person were making a music video for a course they were taking at Florida International University. Alvarro Gutierrez was working with Mr. Lefkowitz on the video, and Mr. Gutierrez had chosen the girl who would sing and would choreograph the dances for the video. Mr. Gutierrez did not, however, have any dancers, and Mr. Lefkowitz told Mr. Gutierrez that he knew some girls "from school" who were dancers and that he would ask them if they wanted to dance in the video. J.D. was, at the times material to his proceeding, an 11th-grade student at North Miami Beach High, although she was not a student of Mr. Lefkowitz. Rather, J.D. met Mr. Lefkowitz in a school hallway, while she was selling candy for her French class, and they apparently had several conversations during school hours. In one of these conversations, Mr. Lefkowitz mentioned that he was filming a music video for a college class. J.D. asked if she could be in the video, and Mr. Lefkowitz agreed and asked J.D. if she had any friends who could also dance in the video. J.D. introduced Mr. Lefkowitz to her friend N.F. N.F. was, at the time, an 11th-grade student at North Miami Beach High, but she did not know Mr. Lefkowitz until J.D. introduced them. Mr. Lefkowitz did not know at the time he met her that N.F. was a student at North Miami Beach High. J.D. also introduced Mr. Lefkowitz to Glamour Legros, whom she knew because she and Ms. Legros attended the same church. Prior to introducing Mr. Lefkowitz to Ms. Legros, J.D. had told him on a number of occasions how much Ms. Legros wanted to meet him.4 Ms. Legros and N.F. shared an apartment. Ms. Legros was not a student at the times material to this proceeding, and she was older than N.F. and J.D. J.D., N.F., and Ms. Legros agreed to dance in the music video and went to Mr. Lefkowitz's apartment several times to discuss, rehearse, and shoot the video. Mr. Lefkowitz picked up J.D., N.F., and Ms. Legros and drove them to his apartment on the occasions when they were working on the video. Mr. Lefkowitz also took J.D. and her friends home on these occasions. M.D., J.D.'s brother and a student at North Miami Beach High at the time, went to Mr. Lefkowitz's apartment once, and H.D., another student at North Miami Beach High, was at Mr. Lefkowitz's apartment on at least one occasion, when she danced for the music video. These two students also rode with Mr. Lefkowitz in his car on at least one occasion. In addition to her visits to Mr. Lefkowitz's apartment and her rides in his car, J.D. spoke with Mr. Lefkowitz numerous times on the telephone. When working on the video, J.D. went to Mr. Lefkowitz's apartment with her friends. She was alone with Mr. Lefkowitz once, after her friends left Mr. Lefkowitz's apartment; Mr. Lefkowitz took her home after about an hour. Mr. Gutierrez did not observe Mr. Lefkowitz engage in any improper behavior with J.D. or her friends at Mr. Lefkowitz's apartment during the time they were discussing, rehearsing, and shooting the music video. On April 21, 2003, Ms. Legros called the police and she and N.F. reported that Mr. Lefkowitz had come to their apartment, beat on the door, and threatened them verbally. According to the police incident report, the police were dispatched at 10:09 p.m. and arrived at Ms. Legros's and N.F.'s apartment at 10:12 p.m. Mr. Lefkowitz had outpatient surgery on April 18, 2002. Mr. Lefkowitz's mother was with him at his apartment from April 18 through the morning of April 22, 2002, the day he returned to work. According to Ms. Lefkowitz, Mr. Lefkowitz was in bed, asleep, on the night of April 21, 2002. On April 22, 2002, Raymond Fontana, the principal of North Miami Beach High, received a telephone call from a woman who identified herself to Mr. Fontana's secretary as J.D.'s aunt and who told Mr. Fontana that an exceptional student education teacher named "Neil" was having a relationship with J.D., a student at North Miami Beach High; the caller also reported that the teacher had been involved in an "incident" that had been reported to the police. Ms. Legros was the person who called Mr. Fontana.5 Mr. Fontana called Allyn Bernstein, an assistant principal at North Miami Beach High, into his office and asked her to look into the allegations made by the caller. Dr. Bernstein called Mr. Lefkowitz into her office and, before she could say anything, Mr. Lefkowitz told her that he knew why she had summoned him, that an ex-girlfriend had threatened to make trouble for him because he wouldn't give her money. When Dr. Bernstein questioned Mr. Lefkowitz about his relationship with the student J.D., Mr. Lefkowitz denied knowing her. Dr. Bernstein also called J.D. into her office. In response to Dr. Bernstein's questions, J.D. denied knowing Mr. Lefkowitz. She stated that she did not have a social relationship with any teacher outside of school and that she had never met any staff member outside school. After Dr. Bernstein reported to Mr. Fontana that she believed that there might be "something there,"6 Mr. Fontana reported the matter to the school district personnel, who referred the matter to the Miami-Dade School Police Department, and an investigation was initiated. Once the investigation was initiated, Mr. Lefkowitz was placed on alternate assignment at his home effective May 3, 2002. The investigator, Detective Victor Hernandez, interviewed N.F., Ms. Legros, J.D., H.D., M.D., and Mr. Lefkowitz. During the course of his investigation, Detective Hernandez was told that Mr. Lefkowitz and N.F. had dated and that they had had sexual intercourse. When Detective Hernandez interviewed Mr. Lefkowitz, Mr. Lefkowitz denied that he knew either J.D. or N.F. In a report dated September 2, 2002, Detective Hernandez described his investigation and set forth the substance of the statements given by the witnesses. Detective Hernandez concluded that the charges that Mr. Lefkowitz had violated Rules 6B-1.001 and 6B-1.006, Florida Administrative Code, and School Board Rules 6Gx13-4.109 and 6Gx13-4A-1.21 were substantiated. A Conference-for-the-Record was held on October 2, 2002, with Paul Greenfield, District Director, presiding. Mr. Lefkowitz attended the Conference-for-the-Record, together with the School Board's Director of Region II and Mr. Fontana. Mr. Lefkowitz requested that his attorney be allowed to attend, but this request was denied.7 Mr. Greenfield reviewed Mr. Lefkowitz's history with the Miami-Dade County public school system and presented the results of the investigation. Mr. Lefkowitz denied having met J.D. and N.F. and denied that they were ever in his apartment. After the Conference-for-the-Record, Mr. Fontana recommended to the Superintendent of Region II that Mr. Lefkowitz's employment be terminated. Mr. Lefkowitz lied to Dr. Bernstein, to Detective Hernandez, and to the participants in the Conference-for-the- Record about his relationships with J.D. and N.F. because he knew it was improper for the students to be in his apartment and for him to associate with students outside of school. Mr. Lefkowitz expressed remorse at his behavior and acknowledged that his conduct was not appropriate. J.D. testified that she and Mr. Lefkowitz never dated or had sexual intercourse. Ms. Legros testified that she did not know whether Mr. Lefkowitz and J.D. had had sexual intercourse. She claimed, however, to have observed Mr. Lefkowitz and J.D. at Mr. Lefkowitz's apartment hugging and kissing and acting like "boyfriend and girlfriend to me."8 Ms. Legros has no personal knowledge that Mr. Lefkowitz had sexual relations with N.F., but testified that N.F. told Ms. Legros that she had had a relationship with Mr. Lefkowitz. An 11th-grade student testified at the hearing that he considered Mr. Lefkowitz to be a good teacher, a role model, and a teacher that he would remember after high school. Mr. Fontana testified that he thought Mr. Lefkowitz's effectiveness as a teacher had been impaired because of the "manner in which he dealt with students, having students come to his apartment, dealing with students that are out of the realm of his teaching responsibilities." Mr. Fontana observed that "once you breach that student/teacher relationship and you lose that professionalism I don't think you can ever go back and have the same degree of effectiveness as a teacher."9 In making his decision to recommend that Mr. Lefkowitz be terminated from his employment as a teacher, Mr. Fontana considered Mr. Lefkowitz's employment history with the Miami- Dade County public school system. Mr. Lefkowitz was twice referred for evaluation as to his medical fitness to perform his duties as a teacher and was twice found fit to perform these duties. Mr. Lefkowitz was the subject of three allegations of battery on a student, one in February 1995, one in February 1999, and one in March 1999; the February 1995 charge was substantiated,10 and Mr. Lefkowitz was given a verbal warning; the remaining two charges were unsubstantiated. Finally, in August 1995, Mr. Lefkowitz had an unacceptable annual evaluation, was given a TADS Category VII prescription in the area of Professional Responsibility, and successfully completed the prescription within the specified time. Summary The greater weight of the credible evidence presented by the School Board is insufficient to establish that Mr. Lefkowitz dated either J.D. or N.F. or that Mr. Lefkowitz had sexual intercourse with N.F. The School Board presented no direct evidence establishing that J.D. and Mr. Lefkowitz had a romantic relationship or that N.F. and Mr. Lefkowitz had a sexual relationship. The School Board relied exclusively on Ms. Legros's testimony to establish that these relationships existed,11 and most of her testimony was based on hearsay, not personal knowledge. Ms. Legros had no personal knowledge that N.F. had sexual relations with Mr. Lefkowitz, and the only behavior that Ms. Legros testified that she personally observed was Mr. Lefkowitz and J.D. in Mr. Lefkowitz's apartment hugging and kissing and, in Ms. Legros's estimation, acting like boyfriend and girlfriend. Ms. Legros is found not to be a particularly credible witness, and her uncorroborated testimony is not sufficiently persuasive to establish that Mr. Lefkowitz and J.D. more likely than not were dating or that the hugging and kissing, if she indeed observed such behavior, was sexual in nature. Both J.D. and Mr. Lefkowitz denied having a romantic relationship, but it is difficult to credit fully their testimony, given that both J.D. and Mr. Lefkowitz lied to School Board personnel about knowing one another and that Mr. Lefkowitz lied to School Board personnel about being acquainted with N.F. However, on reflection and after a careful review of the evidence, the testimony of J.D. and Mr. Lefkowitz is credited over that of Ms. Legros. The greater weight of the credible evidence presented by the School Board is not sufficient to establish that Mr. Lefkowitz telephoned N.F. on April 21, 2002, and threatened her or that he went to the apartment shared by Ms. Legros and N.F. on the night of April 21, 2002, and made threats to harm them. Mr. Lefkowitz's mother testified unequivocally that she was with Mr. Lefkowitz from April 19 through the morning of April 22, 2002, and that he was recovering from surgery and sleeping on the night of April 21, 2002. The School Board presented no evidence that Mr. Lefkowitz telephoned N.F. and threatened her, and Ms. Legros was the only witness to testify that Mr. Lefkowitz came to her apartment and made threats. The testimony of Mrs. Lefkowitz is credited over that of Ms. Legros.12 The evidence presented in this case is sufficient to establish that Mr. Lefkowitz failed to exercise the best professional judgment, failed to maintain the highest ethical standards, and used his position as a teacher to his personal advantage by recruiting young women students to perform as dancers in the music video he was filming as part of a college assignment. Mr. Lefkowitz admitted that he had engaged in inappropriate conduct: He had had a personal relationship outside of school with both J.D. and N.F.; J.D. and N.F. danced in a music video he made for a college project; J.D. and N.F. were in his apartment several times; and he drove J.D. and N.F. in his car to and from his apartment. The contents and tone of the written statement Mr. Lefkowitz adopted as his testimony supports an inference that he was on very familiar terms with both J.D. and N.F., and with Ms. Legros as well.13 Mr. Lefkowitz's poor judgment in developing significant social relationships outside of school with two female students at North Miami Beach High and his inappropriate behavior in having these students as guests in his car and in his apartment reflect poorly on him as a teacher employed by the School Board. Mr. Lefkowitz also failed to exercise the best professional judgment and to maintain the highest ethical standards with respect to his dealings with the School Board during the investigation of his conduct. Mr. Lefkowitz lied to Dr. Bernstein and Detective Hernandez and at the October 2, 2002, Conference-for-the-Record when he said he did not know J.D. or N.F., and he admitted at the final hearing that he lied because he knew that he should never have involved these students in making the music video, should never have given these students rides in his car, and should never have invited the students to his apartment. Mr. Lefkowitz's lack of truthfulness reflects poorly on him as a teacher employed by the School Board. The evidence presented by the School Board is also sufficient to establish that Mr. Lefkowitz engaged in one instance of inappropriate behavior involving students M.D. and H.D. Mr. Lefkowitz admitted that, on one occasion, he picked up these two students in his car and drove them to his apartment, where H.D. danced in the music video and M.D. observed Mr. Lefkowitz and cohorts filming the music video. Mr. Lefkowitz did not have repeated out-of-school contacts with these two students, as he did with J.D. and N.F., but his behavior with M.D. and H.D. reflected poorly on him as a teacher employed by the School Board. The evidence presented by the School Board, which consisted only of Mr. Fontana's conclusory and general statements, is not sufficient to establish that Mr. Lefkowitz's conduct impaired his effectiveness as a teacher in the Miami- Dade County public school system. The evidence presented by the School Board is, however, sufficient to permit an inference that Mr. Lefkowitz's effectiveness as a teacher was impaired. Mr. Lefkowitz encouraged students to develop personal relationships with him and to spend significant amounts of time with him in his apartment. Even though J.D., the young woman with whom he was primarily involved, was not a student in his class, his willingness to become involved with this student and her friends brings his personal and professional judgment into question and necessarily affects the school administration's assessment of his fitness for supervising high school students. It may also be inferred that Mr. Lefkowitz's effectiveness as an employee of the School Board was also impaired because he lied to the principal and assistant principal of his school and to the regional superintendent of the Miami-Dade County public school system about even knowing J.D. By not being truthful with the school system administrators, Mr. Lefkowitz diminished his credibility as a professional educator.
Recommendation Based on the foregoing Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, it is RECOMMENDED that the Miami-Dade County School Board enter a final order; Finding that Neil D. Lefkowitz is guilty of having committed misconduct in office and of violating School Board Rules 6Gx13-4-1.09 and 6Gx13-4A-1.21; Suspending Mr. Lefkowitz without pay for a period of 24 months, retroactive to the date on which the School Board suspended him from his employment without pay; and Imposing such conditions on Mr. Lefkowitz upon his return to employment as the School Board deems appropriate. DONE AND ENTERED this 31th day of July, 2003, in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida. S PATRICIA HART MALONO Administrative Law Judge Division of Administrative Hearings The DeSoto Building 1230 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32399-3060 (850) 488-9675 SUNCOM 278-9675 Fax Filing (850) 921-6847 www.doah.state.fl.us Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 31th day of July, 2003.
The Issue The issue to be determined is whether Respondent committed the acts alleged in the Administrative Complaint and if so, what penalties should be imposed?
Findings Of Fact Petitioner is the head of the state agency responsible for certifying and regulating public school teachers in the State of Florida. At all times relevant to these proceedings, Respondent has been licensed in the fields of elementary education and exceptional student education. Her Florida education certificate number is 840291. Her certificate expires on June 30, 2010. Respondent was employed by the Bradford County School District from 1994 to 1996, from 1998 to 2001, and finally from 2004 to 2007. She has worked as a substitute teacher, a parent specialist, and a teacher of varying exceptionalities. At the time of the events alleged in the Administrative Complaint, Respondent was the principal and teacher at Believer's School of Learning (Believer's School) in Bradford County School District. Believer's School was a charter school, for grades K-3, meant to give alternatives to traditional public school. Charter schools fulfill various purposes such as improving student learning and increasing learning opportunities. With respect to the Believer's School, a special emphasis was placed on low- performing students and reading. An "exceptional student" is defined by Section 1003.01(3)(a), Florida Statutes, as: ny student who has been determined eligible for a special program in accordance with rules of the State Board of Education. The term includes students who are gifted and students with disabilities who have an intellectual disability; autism spectrum disorder; a speech impairment; a language impairment; an orthopedic impairment; an other health impairment; traumatic brain injury; a visual impairment; an emotional or behavioral disability; or a specific learning disability, including, but not limited to, dyslexia, dyscalculia, or developmental aphasia; students who are deaf or hard of hearing or dual sensory impaired; students who are hospitalized or homebound; children with developmental delays ages birth through 5 years, or children, ages birth through 2 years, with established conditions that are identified in State Board of Education rules pursuant to s. 1003.21(1)(e). Respondent had Exceptional Student Education (ESE) students in her school. Believer’s School was required to follow federal and state guidelines with respect to ESE students. Those requirements include keeping complete, current and accurate records with respect to exceptional education students. These recordkeeping requirements are required by federal and state law and are necessary for the school system of Bradford County, of which Believer's School was a part, to remain eligible for federal and state funds allocated to pay costs associated with educating exceptional students. In accordance with Florida Administrative Code Rule 6A- 6.03028(3), Respondent was required to prepare an Individual Education Plan (IEP) for each ESE student attending Believer's school. Rule 6A-6.03028(3) states: (3) IEP Requirements. An IEP or individual family support plan (IFSP) must be developed, reviewed, and revised for each eligible student or child with a disability served by a school district, or other state agency that provides special education and related services either directly, by contract, or through other arrangements, in accordance with this rule. Parents are partners with schools and school district personnel in developing, reviewing, and revising the IEP for their student. An IEP is necessary to evaluate the student's educational level, to establish short and long-term educational objectives, to develop alternative ways to accomplish those objectives, and to record the progress of the plan and establish a means for review of the student's educational progress. The proper preparation and maintenance of an IEP is a basic responsibility of the Respondent for exceptional education students at Believer's School. An improperly prepared IEP is potentially harmful to the learning of an ESE student because services and accommodations must be listed on the student's IEP before they can be provided. IEP’s are created by an IEP Team during a meeting involving the parties as set out in Florida Administrative Code Rule 6A-6.03028(3)(c) as follows: (c) IEP Team participants. The IEP Team, with a reasonable number of participants, shall include: The parents of the student; Not less than one (1) regular education teacher of a student with a disability... Not less than one (1) special education teacher of the student, or where appropriate, not less than one special education provider of the student; A representative of the school district who is qualified to provide or supervise the provision of specially designed instruction to meet the unique needs of students with disabilities, is knowledgeable about the general curriculum, and is knowledgeable about the availability of resources of the school district. . . An individual who can interpret the instructional implications of evaluation results who may be a member of the IEP Team as described in subparagraphs (3)(c)3., or (3)(c)4., of this rule;. . . Upon completion, the IEP is signed by the regular education teacher, the ESE teacher, the local education agency (LEA), and the parent or guardian of the student. The LEA is ultimately responsible for what goes into the IEP. If something is in the IEP it is because the LEA determined that it was feasible to carry out. The ESE teacher examines the psycho-educational reports and the specialized needs of the student. He or she often provides strategies to the regular education teacher to use with the ESE student. The regular education teacher is the most familiar with the curriculum being used for the student’s grade level. He or she provides insight as to how that curriculum can be adapted for the ESE student. Members of the IEP Team for an ESE student are supposed to be teachers and individuals associated with the student’s current grade level and involved in the student's education, in order to provide accurate curriculum and services for the student. The IEP Team is supposed to review the child’s test scores or have access to the child, know about the curriculum being used, and what types of accommodations an ESE student of the particular grade level would need. By signing the IEP, the individual team members are stating they met to discuss the ESE student, to develop goals and objectives and services for the student, and that they will follow up on making sure those goals and objectives are met. IEP's are updated on an annual basis. The annual IEP conference is mandatory, and failure to provide such a conference is a violation of federal, state, and School Board rules and policies. Failure to hold such a conference deprives the parents of the exceptional student any meaningful participation in determining the student's educational goals and may deprive the child of the assistance to which he or she is entitled. It also jeopardizes continued state and federal funding of the School Board's exceptional education program. Respondent was instructed, as were other teachers of exceptional students in the school district, that every IEP must be reviewed at least once a year through an annual IEP conference. Respondent was trained in how to prepare IEPs by the Bradford County School District on July 19, 20, and 21, 2005. Florida Administrative Code Rule 6A-6.03028(3)(b) requires that the school notify parents of an ESE student that an IEP meeting is scheduled prior to the IEP Team Meeting taking place. This notification is more than a formality; it is meant to insure meaningful participation by parents or guardians in the IEP process. Rule 6A-6.03028(3)(b) states as follows: (b) Parental participation in meetings. Each school district shall establish procedures that provide the opportunity for one or both of the student’s parents to participate in meetings and decisions concerning the IEP for the student. Parents of each student with a disability must be members of any group that makes decisions on the educational placement of their student. Procedures to ensure participation in meetings shall include the following: Notifying parents of the meeting early enough to ensure that they will have an opportunity to attend; and Scheduling the meeting at a mutually agreed on time and place. A written notice of the meeting must be provided to the parents and must indicate the purpose, time, and location of the meeting, and who, by title or position, will be attending. . . . * * * A meeting may be conducted without a parent in attendance if the school district is unable to obtain the attendance of the parents. In this case, the district must have a record of its attempts to arrange a mutually agreed on time and place, such as: Detailed records of telephone calls made or attempted and the results of those calls; Copies of correspondence sent to the parents and any responses received; and Detailed records of visits made to the parents’ home or place of employment and the results of those visits. To comply with Rule 6A-6.03028(3)(b), it is Bradford County School District’s policy to send out a Parent Notification Form 10 days prior to an IEP team meeting. A few days after the first notification was sent, a second notification is sent to the parent. After the two written notifications are sent, a phone call is made to the parent of the ESE student. Student S.B. began school in the Bradford County School District when she was in pre-K. She was identified as a student with developmental disabilities. In 2005, she was living in Richmond, Virginia, and found to be eligible for exceptional education services as a student with a developmental disability. Upon return to Florida, S.B. was enrolled in Southside Elementary on March 17, 2005. In May 2005, an IEP team met, determined that S.B. was a student with specific learning disabilities, and developed an IEP outlining the services required for S.B. Without those services, S.B. would not receive a free appropriate public education as contemplated under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), or Florida law regarding the provision of exceptional education. IEPs for exceptional education students are required to be completed every year before the prior year’s IEP expires. S.B.’s next IEP was due on May 17, 2006. On February 13, 2006, S.B. enrolled in Respondent’s charter school, Believer's School of Learning, approximately three months before S.B.’s next IEP was due. There was apparently some delay in providing S.B.'s May 2005 IEP to Respondent, but the length of the delay is unclear. In order for a school district to receive the extra funding for its ESE students all the ESE students’ IEP’s must be current by "FTE week." FTE week is when the schools determine a final head count of all the students that are in attendance. The FTE week for Bradford County School District in 2006 was October 13, 2006. All the ESE students within the school district had to have their IEPs in by that date or the schools would not receive the extra funding associated with that student. If S.B.’s IEP was not turned in before October 13, 2006, Believer's School would have only received its normal funding only instead of the additional ESE funding. As of the last week of September 2006, Respondent had not completed the IEP for S.B. In late September, Respondent called Verdell Long, and asked for some assistance in preparing an IEP for a third grader. On September 28, 2006, Respondent met with Verdell Long, at Bradford County High School, during Ms. Long’s lunch break, for assistance with preparing an IEP for a third grader at her charter school. Verdell Long was a high school teacher at Bradford County High School who had worked with ESE students, with a focus on mental retardation from grades K-12. She had assisted Respondent with IEPs in the past. She understood that she was assisting with a “sample” IEP to be used as a model. However, it was Respondent’s intention to use the product created as an IEP for the student S.B. The day of the meeting Verdell Long’s computer was not working so she could not access the IEPs she had on file. She asked another high school teacher, Dr. Vivian Haynes to assist in the meeting. Dr. Haynes was an ESE teacher at Bradford County High School in September 2006. She was very experienced with preparing and writing IEPs, having just completed a doctoral dissertation which included copies of third and fifth grade IEPs. Dr. Haynes had not previously met Respondent. Dr. Haynes brought several blank “dummy” IEPs with her to the meeting in order to have examples to show Respondent. The IEP prepared at the meeting included the various components of an IEP, such as the measurable goals and objectives for a third grader, but did not include the demographic information on any student. The document prepared at the meeting did not have a student’s name or test scores on it anywhere. Respondent did not bring the student S.B. or her test scores with her to the meeting. However, neither Ms. Long nor Dr. Haynes expected to see individualized information because they did not understand that an IEP for an actual child was being prepared. Verdell Long signed the IEP as the ESE teacher, Dr. Vivian Haynes signed as the LEA, and Respondent signed as the regular education teacher. Neither Verdell Long nor Dr. Vivian Haynes was contracted with Believer's School by the Bradford County School District to provide services as an LEA representative or an ESE teacher. Both Verdell Long and Dr. Vivian Haynes believed the purpose of the meeting was to construct a model IEP in order to assist Respondent with properly preparing an IEP for an ESE student. Neither expected the document created at their meeting to be submitted as an actual IEP for S.B., or any other student, and neither considered the meeting to be an IEP team meeting. Neither Verdell Long nor Dr. Vivian Haynes was shown a Parent Notification Form indicating that their meeting was to be an IEP team meeting. Neither would have signed the IEP if they had seen such a form because they did not believe that an IEP team meeting was being conducted. After the meeting on September 28, 2006, Respondent took the IEP form prepared with the help of Ms. Long and Dr. Haynes, and inserted information specific to S.B. She then submitted the form as S.B.’s IEP and turned in to the Bradford County School District. Submitted with the IEP form was a document which purported to be the Notification of Meeting Form for the IEP team meeting. Only one notification is referenced. The form was dated September 15, 2006, and identified Dr. Vivian Haynes and Verdell Long as participants in the meeting, notwithstanding Respondent's acknowledgement that she did not meet Dr. Haynes until September 28, 2006, and did not know until that time that Dr. Haynes would be participating in the meeting. The form also indicated that the IEP meeting would take place at the Believer's School, as opposed to the Bradford County High School, where the meeting between Respondent, Ms. Long and Dr. Haynes took place. There is no other indication of other attempts of notification. The signature line reserved for a parent or legal guardian is signed by a Rudolph Williams and dated September 29, 2006, the day after the meeting took place. Respondent claims that Mr. Williams is S.B.'s stepfather. However, there is nothing in the Bradford County School District's records to indicate that Mr. Williams is a parent or legal guardian of S.B., and school district officials were not aware of anyone by that name living in the home. By her own admission, Respondent did not keep "official records" for any of her students, including ESE students. She was not particularly concerned with who signed the IEP, because she apparently considered it to be simply a matter of paperwork to be filed with the School District. In her view, the person responsible for ensuring that a child is receiving the appropriate education is her teacher, regardless of the directives in the IEP. She felt that some of the things identified as required simply could not be done at a school her size. She did not consider the role of the LEA and the ESE teacher on the IEP to be all that important. To her, the real responsibility for the child's education lay with the teacher who worked with her on a daily basis. S.B. was later withdrawn from Believer's School and now attends Starke Elementary School. Believer's School has since closed and is no longer operating as a charter school.
Recommendation Upon consideration of the facts found and conclusions of law reached, it is RECOMMENDED: That a final order be entered finding Respondent to be guilty of the violations alleged in Counts Two through Seven and dismissing Count One of the Administrative Complaint; imposing a fine of $500; suspending her certificate for one year and placing Respondent on probation for a period of three years. DONE AND ENTERED this 22nd day of October, 2009, in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida. S LISA SHEARER NELSON Administrative Law Judge Division of Administrative Hearings The DeSoto Building 1230 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32399-3060 (850) 488-9675 Fax Filing (850) 921-6847 www.doah.state.fl.us Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 22nd day of October, 2009.
The Issue The issue to be determined is whether Respondent violated School Board Policies, and, if so, what penalty should be imposed.
Findings Of Fact At all relevant times to this matter, Respondent was employed as a science teacher in the Pinellas County School District and currently holds a professional service contract. She was hired as a teacher in September 1995, and worked at Lakewood High School for one school year. During the bulk of her career with the school district--August 1996 through December 2012--she worked at Largo Middle School teaching science. At the semester break, she was transferred to Countryside High School to finish out the 2012-2013 school year. She was assigned to teach anatomy and biology at Largo High School for the 2013-2014 school year and then transferred to Bay Point Middle School beginning with the 2014-2015 school year until she was placed on paid administrative leave on April 25, 2016. From at least 2011 forward, administrators, parents, and colleagues at three different schools, voiced repeated concerns regarding Respondent’s effectiveness as a teacher, including her failure to appropriately plan and deliver instruction; the lack of rigorous academic assignments; poorly organized lessons; failure to align learning targets and goals with activities and tasks; failure to differentiate instruction; failure to explain content; and failure to engage students. Complaints persisted regarding her failure or refusal to regularly grade student work and enter the grades into the student information system known as FOCUS; administer assessments; and otherwise properly manage the students in her classroom. Specific examples of her performance deficiencies, as well as repeated efforts to remediate her deficiencies through mentoring opportunities and professional development, were described in great detail at the two-day hearing and are summarized herein. Performance Issues While Teaching at Largo Middle School During the latter part of her time at Largo Middle School, administrators met with Snow to address performance concerns that existed regarding her instructional delivery, grading policies, and classroom management. Specifically, she met with administrators on October 25 and 31, 2011, to revise a “success plan,” and to discuss concerns from parents that grades were not being entered in a timely manner, mid-term progress reports not being sent home, failure to allow make-up assignments, and the issue of not enough grades being entered each marking period. They discussed developing a positive relationship with students and discontinuing the use of sarcasm during class, use of the Gradual Release Model for instructional delivery, the development of rubrics for grading student projects, and developing clear criteria for how grades would be earned. These concerns and expectations were memorialized in a disciplinary memorandum dated November 7, 2011, known as a “conference summary.” Another meeting was scheduled at Largo Middle School on April 6, 2012, to discuss “on-going issues that occurred last year and continue to occur in the 2011-2012 school year.” This meeting resulted in a letter of reprimand dated April 10, 2012, for insubordination because Respondent ignored directives to send home progress reports for students with a D or F grade; to enter student grades bi-weekly; and to allow students to make up assignments. The letter stated, in part: [D]ue to your act of insubordination in disregarding an administrative directive you are receiving this letter of reprimand. Also, by this letter of reprimand I am directing you to enter grades into the computer weekly or bi-weekly, send out progress reports at least three weeks before the end of a six week grading period and make every reasonable effort to support all students to achieve educational success. Failure to follow this directive will result in further disciplinary action. The Same Performance Standards Continue at Largo High School Following the disciplinary conferences noted above, Respondent spent a few more months at Largo Middle School, then served one semester at Countryside High School with no noted issues. Some of the same issues that plagued her at Largo Middle School, however, continued at her new school--Largo High School. For example, just four weeks into the 2013-2014 school year, Respondent was told by her supervising assistant principal, John Marina, that he was “getting feedback from parents that they don’t know what’s going on in [her] class.” He explained that parents need to see the grades so they can appropriately address their children at home. Another assistant principle notified her by e-mail that her seventh-period class had no grades entered, and two of her other classes only had two grades entered. The assistant principle reminded her of the expectation “that grades are posted weekly in FOCUS to assist students with tracking their progress, as well as parents being able to track what their students are doing.” A few days later, a parent’s complaint to the principal came to Marina’s attention. The parent advocated for her daughter’s “rights to be educated by a teacher that knows how to TEACH. . . . She is a junior, and the last two years are the most important. She deserves no less than a teacher that can provide her with the knowledge she seeks.” At the hearing, Marina recalled the meeting between the parent and Respondent. He testified that the student aspired to attend medical school and was frustrated that there was no rigor in Respondent’s anatomy class. He described the relationship between the student and Snow as “contentious” after the student said, “Hey, when are you going to teach, Mrs. Snow.” Ultimately, the parent obtained a doctor’s note authorizing the student to be removed from Respondent’s class. Even her colleagues complained to administrators. One teacher stated that Respondent “is either a really good actress, or she is inept completely.” The teacher described Respondent struggling to attach a copy of an exam to an e-mail so the teacher could print it for Snow. She said that Respondent had originally planned to have the anatomy students simply answer questions at the back of the book, but was urged by her colleague to create an exam. This caused Respondent to skip her assigned cafeteria duties to perform the task. Her colleague complained to the school administrators, stating, “I have observed that she has extremely poor planning and forethought and I believe she exists on campus for the purpose of seeking out possible excuses for her inability to perform her job duties. The more I interact with her, the more appalled that I am.” Marina developed a detailed success plan and both he and the principal met with Respondent to discuss their expectations regarding improved classroom management, use of formative assessments to differentiate instruction for students at various levels, use of standards-based benchmarks to drive instruction and measure student understanding of the curriculum, and entering grades into FOCUS. Basically, the success plan addressed the same deficiencies that were identified at Largo Middle School. Snow was offered support from experienced educators and took advantage of coaching provided by an instructional staff developer to help her with classroom management processes. According to Marina, Snow never accepted that her performance required improvement. Rather, “there was always an excuse,” and she routinely maintained that she was “an exceptional science teacher.” On April 30, 2014, Marina completed an annual appraisal of Respondent’s performance. The appraisal instrument for the 2013-2014 school year was described by Louis Cerreta (“Cerreta”), the district’s Director of Professional Development, as a “hybrid model,” because it consisted of behavior indicators from the Charlotte Danielson evaluation system and the Dr. Robert Marzano evaluation system, as well as a few indicators recommended by an appraisal advisory committee consisting of principals, assistant principals, union representatives, district administrators, and classroom teachers. The appraisal system was approved by the Pinellas County School Board, submitted to and approved by FLDOE for use as the instructional appraisal instrument, and Marina was appropriately trained to conduct the appraisal. The evaluation instrument consists of three components: the administrative review or “instructional practice” component; the deliberate practice, also called the “professional development” piece; and the student achievement component. Marina completed the Summative Evaluation (consisting of the first two components, but excluding student achievement data) on April 30, 2014, which resulted in a scaled score of 1 out of 4 available points on the administrative review and zero points for professional development. The student achievement score was based on the scores of students taking the biology EOC (student achievement) and resulted in Respondent receiving a score of 3 on a 4-point scale. Snow’s final evaluation resulted in a score of 1.685 or “needs improvement” under the statutory rating system. The administrative review incorporated and summarized observations made by Marina during visits to Snow’s classroom from January through April 2014. During these visits, Marina completed a “science implementation rubric” for each of the seven observations. He explained that each of the indicators on the rubric correlated to an indicator on the evaluation instrument, and he would either mark the indicator as “evident” or “not evident” depending on what he observed in the classroom. The Administrative Review reflected many of the same concerns addressed in Respondent’s success plans at Largo High School, as well as from her former school, Largo Middle School. For example, she received “unsatisfactory” ratings on each of the five indicators under “ability to assess instructional needs.” Marina commented: “This has been an ongoing issue this entire year. I mediated several parent meetings over the concern of accurate and up to date grades.” Under the section entitled “Plans and Delivers Instruction,” she received less than effective ratings on seven of the nine indicators. Here, Marina commented that her “lesson plans are more of a to-do list,” and while she had opportunities to “go into higher order thinking and increase the rigor of her classes,” she failed to do so. He also noted that she failed to abide by the directive to send tests and quizzes to the administration for review. Under the category entitled “Maintains a Student Centered Learning Environment,” Respondent scored less than effective on ten of the 11 indicators. Marina noted: “rules and procedures tend to fall into chaos on a daily basis, as administrators are frequently called to your room. Many times it is loud and there is a back and forth between teacher and student(s).” Marina testified that he gave Respondent a zero on the professional development section of the evaluation because she submitted the same form that she had submitted when she worked at Largo Middle School indicating that she taught comprehensive science to seventh graders when in fact her professional development goals should have accurately reflected the courses she taught at Largo High School. Marina stated: “not only was it the wrong [professional development form], but it was [delivered] in March” when they are due at the beginning of the school year. Professional Performance Deficiencies Continue at Bay Point Middle School Respondent was involuntarily transferred out of Largo High School at the conclusion of the 2013-2014 school year and resumed teaching middle school for the start of the 2014-2015 school year. The principal at Bay Point Middle School (“Bay Point”), Dr. Jason Shedrick (“Shedrick”), learned during the summer of 2014 that Respondent would be his new sixth-grade science teacher. He immediately reached out several times on the telephone to introduce himself. She proved to be unreceptive to his overtures and combative at every turn. When she did not return his calls, he contacted her former school, Largo High School, to gain some insights into her background and discovered she was on a success plan. He sent Respondent an e-mail to schedule a formal meeting to discuss his expectations, as well as the climate at Bay Point so that she could become successful at her new school. At an impromptu meeting, she told him she was not happy with her schedule because she only wanted to teach biology and advanced classes. He reminded her that middle schools do not have biology classes. She insisted she was a high school teacher and that any further meetings would have to include her union representative. They met again on August 15, 2014, and developed a sixteen-paragraph detailed success plan that addressed classroom management, instructional planning and delivery, grading and tracking student progress, notification to parents through contact logs and progress reports, and attendance and professional development. Shedrick testified that there was no ambiguity as to what he expected from Respondent. He said they spent three full hours working on the success plan because they hammered out each and every issue: We went through every single item on this plan. Ms. Snow went through every item on this plan. Her Union representative went through every item on this plan. We changed it several times to accommodate Ms. Snow for Professional Development, her doctors’ appointments before school, after school, whatever it entailed. Everything was laid out so there would be no misunderstanding about the plan. For the next two years, until she was placed on paid administrative leave on April 25, 2016, Respondent proved to be both unwilling and incapable of following directions and performing the most basic duties of a classroom teacher and fulfilling the expectations of her success plan. 2014-2015 Bay Point Lesson Plans Appropriately completing lesson plans and submitting them timely was a recurring problem for Respondent at Bay Point as it had been for her while assigned to previous schools. She had been provided the Bay Point template for lesson plans in her “first day packet” and the expectation for their submission had been reviewed as part of their marathon meeting on August 15, 2014, in connection with the success plan. Nevertheless, Respondent returned her first submission on handwritten notebook paper claiming that she was unable to save an attachment on her computer. Shortly thereafter, Respondent met with Dr. Elizabeth Tisdale (now “Chiles”), the sixth-grade assistant principal responsible for supervising Snow during the 2014-2015 school year. Chiles scheduled the meeting to review school-wide rules and processes with Respondent because she had missed a couple of days during pre-school when administrators typically review these expectations. Her lesson plans were late, so Chiles specifically reviewed this expectation again. Respondent’s excuse for not submitting them varied but included: no internet at home, computer malfunction, wrong lesson plan template, and an uncertainty as to required content. Throughout Respondent’s two-year tenure at Bay Point, Shedrick had to regularly remind her to correct her lesson plans and to submit them timely. Parent Contact and Progress Reports Respondent was expected to contact parents anytime a student was in jeopardy of receiving a grade less than a C. This was another expectation in her success plan, as was the expectation that parents receive a progress report in such cases. She fell short on this expectation and, in fact, expressed early on that she had no intention of calling parents, as required. Specifically, Chiles met with her on September 2, 2014, to discuss, among other matters, a parent’s concern that her straight-A student was receiving an F in Snow’s class. Chiles reminded Respondent that parents need to be contacted if their child has an F. Respondent outright refused, stating that “she would not call every parent.” On September 15, 2014, Shedrick asked Respondent to produce the progress reports that she had sent home for students receiving a D or F in her class. In response, Snow sent him copies of the computer gradebook that she had sent home to parents requesting that they sign and return. Shedrick was incensed that she had no concept of confidentiality and would send each parent a printout describing the grades of every other student in the class. Moreover, the gradebook printouts were not the progress reports he had requested. He explained: I didn’t receive the progress reports the way that I wanted. . . . I want to know what students were doing, what the assignment was, what the point value was, when it was due, when it was turned in. I wanted to see it before it went home because, then again, I have to answer to these parents at this time why was there not enough grades in the computer, why did my kid have an F, why did my kid have a D. So what I received from Ms. Snow wasn’t what I asked for. Several months later on February 12, 2015, Shedrick notified Respondent by e-mail that he wanted to see the progress reports for all students with a D or F in her class by February 18, 2015. On that date, Chiles spoke with Snow and followed up with a an e-mail requesting that she submit the progress reports no later than 4:00 p.m., that afternoon. At 4:19 p.m., Snow sent Shedrick an e-mail telling him that the progress reports would not be completed by 4:00 p.m. The excuses given included her usual claim that there was a computer problem, this time the internet was slow, but also that students were absent and, therefore, were still taking the test. Failure to Provide Weekly Academic Assessments and Assignments Respondent was expected to grade at least two academic- based assignments each week and record the grades in FOCUS so parents and students could monitor their progress. She blatantly refused to do so and claimed that she was not contractually required. According to Snow, she was only required to record one grade weekly. During a conversation in early September, Chiles reiterated that the expectation was two graded assignments, not one, but even if only one assignment were required, Snow missed the mark because it was the third week of school and she only had two grades recorded. By September 15, 2014, several weeks into the first grading period, Snow had recorded only four grades and one was for a review of the student code of conduct, not an academic- based grade. The walk-through feedback forms completed by Chiles noted this deficiency. On January 13, 2015, Chiles noted “currently zero (0) grades posted-starting new quarter (should have at least 2-4)”; on January 20, 2015, she noted again that zero grades had been posted and on February 23, 2015, she noted that four grades were posted and there should have been 18. Shedrick testified that it was “unacceptable” that by March 23, 2015, eight weeks into a nine-week grading period, after which students were supposed to receive their report cards, Snow had posted only four grades. Respondent also was expected, and repeatedly directed, to give the students a test which would enable her to measure the students’ progress and tailor her instruction accordingly. She gave her first and only test in February 2015, and that was only after several people in administration coaxed, prodded, and essentially wrote the assessment for her. Lack of Classroom Structure, Organization, and Management Several people noted that Respondent’s students were not engaged during class and that she needed help with classroom management. For example, during walk-throughs on September 8 and 15, 2014, Chiles told her she needed more engaging lessons and to circulate the classroom rather than sitting at her desk. Again, on January 13, 2015, Chiles noted lack of engagement, students not paying attention, “no flow of the lesson-transition nonexistent, unorganized structure,” and students not understanding the lesson. On January 20, 2015, Chiles and Michele Stewart (“Stewart”), an instructional staff developer, observed her classroom together and again noted lack of engagement, rigor, and understanding by the students. Chiles had a meeting with Snow on January 21, 2015, to review these issues. Snow did not respond to her suggestions for improvement, except to say that her planning period should not be interrupted and that the students do not understand the class “because of their levels.” Excessive referrals, sending students out of class into the hallway without assistance, and not addressing student needs were regular issues for Snow. In one instance, she assigned a student to the back of the room in a time-out chair and did not excuse him to use the restroom. The student wet himself causing him to be embarrassed and ridiculed by his peers. Snow told Chiles that she saw the boy’s hand slightly raised, but thought he was playing with the blinds. Shedrick testified that the boy’s parent called and came to the school to take the student home and that he “had to explain [to the parent] why the student sat in the back of the classroom and the teacher would not let him go to the bathroom.” Another time, Respondent left campus in the middle of the day without telling anyone. Her class of 22 students was left alone, unsupervised. Shedrick said he arrived in her room, and she was not there. Another teacher had to cover her class. He said he called her on the phone and was informed that she was sick or had a doctor’s appointment. As a result of this incident, coupled with the other recurring performance deficiencies, the superintendent suspended Snow for three days. Support, Training, and Professional Development at Bay Point Snow had multiple opportunities to correct her performance and improve her deficiencies through a variety of training opportunities and support provided to her. On most occasions, she refused to attend or otherwise participate. Many examples were given by the witnesses testifying on behalf of the school district. At the very beginning of the 2014-2015 school year, Respondent was expected to attend District Wide Training (“DWT”) for middle school science teachers. The DWT is the “big kick- off” for the upcoming school year, and the sessions consist of practices and initiatives that the science department expects to be implemented in the schools. Despite being specifically told that she needed to attend the middle school sessions to learn about revisions to the middle school curriculum, she instead chose to attend the high school science sessions. When asked why she did not attend these (which would have been relevant to her assignment as a middle school teacher), she told the principal that in her mind she was a high school science teacher. As is the case with all teachers new to the school, Respondent had a mentor assigned. Lara McElveen (“McElveen”) was the lead mentor at Bay Point and testified that she was a resource and was always available to help teachers navigate issues ranging from curriculum questions to technology. She held regular monthly meetings to discuss what was working for the teachers and what was not. While most teachers came to her when they needed help with the type of problems Snow experienced (lesson planning, progress reports, assignments, test preparation, FOCUS, etc.), Snow only sought her help occasionally and only for minor issues such as printing or copying assignments. McElveen testified that she tried to set up meetings to help with more substantive matters, but Snow complained that she had “too many meetings and that it was outside her contractual hours.” Four specific trainings were identified in the Success Plan negotiated between the principal, Respondent, and her union representative during their three-hour meeting on August 15, 2014. Specifically, she agreed to attend the following training sessions: Just in Time Unpacking & 5E Collaborative Planning on September 2, 2014; Content Enhancement Part 1 Unit Organizer on September 23, 2014; Data Driven Instruction & Analysis Gap Check In in January 2015; and Just in Time Boot Camp on February 3, 2015. Shedrick went out of his way to remove any barrier to her attendance. He made sure she was paid to attend the trainings by giving her a “TDE” (Temporary Duty Elsewhere). He personally coordinated the timing of the trainings with other appointments on her calendar, including her doctor’s appointments, and also sought out convenient locations for the different trainings so that she did not have to travel far. He set the first training scheduled for September 2, 2014, at a school located only five minutes away. She did not attend this training. Given the efforts that he went through to personally set up the trainings and personally reach out to the people conducting them, Shedrick testified that he was beyond disappointed and annoyed that she did not bother to attend. As a result, he wrote her a reprimand dated September 5, 2014, and directed her to follow the expectations in the success plan-- including attendance at the other trainings--in order to avoid future discipline. Despite her agreement as part of the success plan and the directive in the reprimand, she did not attend any of the four trainings. She never offered the principal an explanation for not attending, but simply told him that she did not attend. In early October 2014, administrators visiting Respondent’s classroom noted that she was two-to-three weeks behind in the pacing calendar establishing the dates by which certain subjects should be covered in her classroom. Shedrick worked with the middle school science specialist, Tom Doughty, to provide Snow assistance and get her back on pace. They assigned Stewart the task of working with Respondent. Stewart observed her class on October 8, 2014; met with her briefly to discuss a remediation plan; and scheduled another meeting the following week to follow through. At the scheduled meeting, Stewart brought the additional materials Snow had requested, but was unable to work personally with her because there was a collaborative planning session scheduled with all teachers. Stewart attended this training with Respondent. Afterward, she asked Snow to meet with her individually as planned, but Snow told her no, she was not contractually required to meet. Over the next couple of weeks, Stewart was at the school for five more days conducting trainings and available to assist the science teachers. Respondent appeared for one group-training on November 12, 2014, but no more. On one of the days (October 20, 2014), all of the science teachers came to meet with Stewart, except Snow. On another day (November 20, 2014), administrators asked Snow to meet with Stewart, but she never showed up and on the other two days, she called in sick. In addition to Snow falling behind in pacing, Doughty and others observed during classroom visits that Snow had “instructional pedagogy issues.” Shedrick again asked Doughty and his team to come in and provide direct support to Snow. Doughty observed her classroom on four occasions between January 13 and January 16, 2015, to see “what instructional strategies were used or lack thereof, what could have been used and were not employed or were not employed correctly.” The plan was to work in tandem with Stewart to provide professional development geared toward the specific areas where Snow struggled. Following the observations, he met with Snow, Shedrick, and Chiles to “debrief,” but Snow was openly resistant to his observations and suggestions. He said he tried to point out areas where her classroom management and practices needed to be refined, but she “cut me off at various points to argue with my observations.” For example, he suggested that a classic and fun activity for kids to learn the concept of balanced and unbalanced forces was a simple game of tug-of-war where they can experience what happens with forces on either side of a rope. Snow’s method for teaching this concept was to refer the kids to a picture of a satellite in their textbooks. Doughty told her that pointing the kids to a picture in a textbook “is not helping a student put an abstract concept to a concrete example.” In response, Snow “defensively interrupted [him] saying that she would never do that with her students and would stick with the picture of a satellite in a book.” He concluded that overall “Snow was very defensive and seemed not willing to accept feedback in order to improve her practice.” Snow was told repeatedly that assessments are necessary to measure a student’s understanding of the content taught. Also, Shedrick wanted to see any test she planned to give the kids. Despite these directives, Snow had not tested her students nor had she tried to create a test. Finally, on January 20, 2015, Snow sent Shedrick two documents for his approval which she presumably believed to be appropriate for testing her students. Noting that they appeared to be three-year-old worksheets, Shedrick forwarded the proposed assessments to Doughty for his review. Doughty first questioned why Snow would be testing certain subjects in late January--homeostasis and cells--when the pacing calendar called for the topic to be covered in the first week of October. He also noted that the sheet was straight out of the textbook. He observed that the second document was apparently pulled by Snow from a bank of questions designed several years earlier and was not appropriate to be given as a test to students. He also reminded Shedrick that Snow would benefit from attending a session at an upcoming DWT focused on proper classroom assessment design. As already noted, she did not attend the trainings which could have helped her do her job and, in particular, a training specifically designed to help her create a test. Next, Shedrick notified Snow that she was not to give the test she had proposed. In desperation, he asked Doughty and his science team to again work with Snow on creating a test. He testified that he had to ask for their help because Snow had not tested her students all year: I had to because we’re in December, January and the students haven’t been assessed. So how do you know what deficiencies they have? How do you know what standards to remediate? How do you know what they’re lacking? How do you know where to fill in the gaps? How do you know what to do as a teacher if you haven’t given a five-question quiz? How do you know what to do? When Shedrick informed Snow that the county science department would be setting up individualized training at Bay Point because she missed the professional development planned for all teachers (a DWT), she responded that “she did not have time for training because [she] was so busy.” He asked if it would be possible to set them up in the morning before school, during her planning period or after school, and she repeated that she was too busy and would never attend a training during her planning period. Finally, Snow agreed to attend a side-by•side training with Stewart so that Stewart could teach Snow, a veteran teacher with upwards of 23 years’ experience, how to write a test. Stewart and the district’s test bank did the bulk of the work, and eventually a test was created. Snow’s students were administered their first and only test on February 10, 2015. 2014-2015 Annual Evaluation at Bay Point On April 17, 2015, Chiles completed an annual appraisal of Snow’s performance. The appraisal instrument for this year was the “hybrid model” incorporating indicators from the Charlotte Danielson evaluation system and the Dr. Robert Marzano evaluation. Chiles completed a two-day training on the evaluation system. She passed a test on its use prior to evaluating teachers. The instructional practice portion of the evaluation, completed by Chiles, comprised 40 percent of the total score. Snow scored 1.364 points achieving an “unsatisfactory” rating. Snow did not score “effective” on any of the indicators. Chiles noted in the formal observation that: Ms. Snow demonstrates deficiencies in the area of delivery of instruction . . . she also struggles with time management in delivering instruction which causes students to be unclear on instruction and assignments. Many students are unable to articulate the learning goal or relate the learning goal to the lesson. Furthermore, many parts of the Gradual Release Model are not applied or observed. With regard to the assessment of instructional needs, Chiles noted that “little progress has been made.” “Tracking and monitoring data has not been exhibited, as well as using multiple assessments to assess the instructional needs of all students.” The student achievement portion of the evaluation counted for 50 percent of the overall score. Snow achieved 3.0 points for this portion. The remaining ten percent was based on professional development and Snow was given three out of ten available points. Respondent received only three points because she submitted a plan that did not match her duties. Again, she submitted an old form from the previous year when she worked at a high school. The form stated she was a biology teacher at Largo High School rather than a sixth-grade science teacher at Bay Point. Three points on a ten-point score was converted to a 1.2 on a four-point scale. Overall, Snow’s evaluation reflected a “needs improvement” rating with a final score of 2.166. 2015-2016 School Year at Bay Point Despite Snow’s poor performance, lack of cooperation and outright defiance the preceding year, Shedrick was optimistic that the 2015-2016 school year would be different. He testified that he was excited that Snow may have “turned a corner.” He testified that he was hopeful because over the summer Snow had shown some initiative and “went to a training without me asking her to.” Moreover, she actually approached him and shared the information, which was rare. He then scheduled a meeting with Snow to scale down her success plan and work on what was necessary to make her a successful science teacher. Shedrick’s optimism was misplaced and quickly faded. Snow was contentious and not receptive to the scaled-down success plan which contained many of the same expectations as the earlier one, i.e., two grades per week in FOCUS; at least one approved assessment each grading period; follow pacing guides; provide progress reports to students with D’s and F’s; contact parents; submit lesson plans; and attend classroom management training. She immediately objected to the expectation that she attend classroom management training stating that she already went to a training in July: “I’ve already been to that training and I am not going to any more training.” He tried to explain to her that the trainings are not all the same at which point it occurred to him that the only reason she attended training in the summer was probably to get a “trade day,” which amounted to a paid day off during the school year. He said, “I hope she didn’t go to that training just for the trade day. I hope she went to that training for students. Conclusion, trade day, because she would not go anymore [to additional trainings].” Not only did her performance and attitude fail to improve, it went downhill quickly from that point forward. Throughout the first semester of 2015, Shedrick and other administrators conducted numerous visits to Snow’s classroom and repeatedly notified her that she was behind the curriculum; her instruction was very low-level textbook work; she had not given the students a single assessment or even a quiz; she was not entering academic grades into FOCUS; she was not engaging the students or managing her classroom; and she had no plan to remediate the students who were falling behind. Shedrick testified that by December 2015, he was “at wits end.” He tried to schedule a conference with her prior to her formal observation but she would not meet with him. He tried repeatedly to re-schedule a meeting. Snow responded with a variety of excuses and objections and once marched into his office at the scheduled time simply stating, “I’m not meeting for your pre-conference,” and walked out. She did not complete the required pre•observation form, so Shedrick asked someone from the professional development department to go into the iObservation database and prepare the form for her. She never completed the form and never appeared for a pre-conference before the formal evaluation. Shedrick experienced the same difficulty with Snow in scheduling a formal observation. She objected that he did not give her enough notice; she did not have enough time; she had to test ESE and ESOL students; and other teachers do not have a formal observation mid-year. At one point he went to her classroom to discuss the observation (because she did not respond to his e-mails) and discovered that the kids were working on crossword puzzles. He said that if she was going to ignore his e-mails, “at least let me walk into [her] class and see [her] students highly engaged in some specification [sic] of some science labs, some dissection, and some hands-on lab learning for science. Imagine my dismay to walk in and see students working on crossword puzzles.” He conducted the formal observation on December 16, 2015, and for 55 minutes of the class period, the students worked on defining terms. He said this was typical of Snow’s lessons. “Bell work was defining terms. Classwork was defining terms . . . students would sit there and actually copy word for word verbatim or she would have them in the science consumer workbooks underline or she would regurgitate to them as to what to write next to whatever they underlined right next to it.” On the formal observation, Shedrick notes under “Establishing Classroom Routines”: [A]s I walked into the classroom you were moving around students from seat to seat and one student asked what are we doing and you replied “just wait.” You instructed the class to sharpen their pencil one by one and seven students ran to the pencil sharpener. Now students are sitting and waiting for you to begin the lesson. Two students are passing out books. Four minutes are gone and students are still waiting. Two students in the front row are passing out sheets of paper, now you have several students up doing various things at this time. Female students in the back are talking about the movies from the weekend. Ten minutes has gone before you address the class. You are trying to inform students of the Scale you created. Under the category entitled “Identifying Critical Content,” he wrote: Teacher reading terms that she asked students to define (define three terms) and students ask you to repeat and what page? No collaboration for this assignment . . . students are just defining terms out of the book and writing on paper . . . . At the beginning of the second semester, Shedrick’s frustration with Snow was palpable. He requested help from OPS, as well as the area superintendent, Robert Path, asking: How much longer must we continue with Snow? Anytime I request a meeting, she does not respond and doesn’t attend. This is defiant and disrespectful to start. How will I continue to run my campus as teachers hear she doesn’t attend my requested meetings, why should they. All this with no action which allows her to continue her behavior. On January 15, 2016, Shedrick sent Snow a letter telling her that she was on very thin ice but he was going to try once again to remediate her numerous deficiencies. After summarizing all of his efforts to meet with her to conduct a formal observation, as well as her responses, he stated: I have grave concerns over whether the very marginal instructional improvement that you made last year is sustained. You have never assessed your students so I have no information on that score, refused to show me the work that your students are performing so I do not have that information to review, refused to meet with me to finish a formal observation and have called in sick for several days avoiding this discussion. For that reason, I asked Mr. Doughty, the Middle School Science Specialist to observe your classroom, on Thursday, January 14th and this morning. I am very concerned about numerous things including the lack of science instruction taking place in your classroom, your classroom management and your conduct and attitude every time that I try to discuss these issues with you. Your continued refusal to do what I ask has seriously impeded the education of our students and they deserve better. I remain willing to work with you and sincerely hope that you choose to work with me toward preparing our students to meet the goals set for 6th grade science. I plan to meet with you to discuss all of these issues. Doughty again observed Snow’s class on January 14 and 15, 2016, and used his observations as a basis to develop yet another remediation plan. He observed that the activities were “low rigor-no connection made to learning target”; the pace of the lesson was not appropriate; there was “minimal student engagement” with students “off task” and “compliant” [sic, the context supports “non-compliant”]; and classroom management and discipline was not evident. Doughty helped design yet another remediation plan that was presented to Snow on January 20, 2016. He said: [W]e wanted to provide as much support and help to try to help her be the best teacher we could make her to be. So one of the things I suggested to Dr. Shedrick was, for example, Letter G [of the remediation plan] was stop using movies as a time filler, having appropriate topics and rigorous assignments that tied to it. Aware that much of what he had observed in the past was “textbook, textbook, textbook, writing in the textbook and . . . not a lot of hands-on engaging things,” he suggested Letter H of the plan, “performing labs that tied into the unit to bring on hands-on activities to give students ownership into their learning.” Doughty and Stewart spent several sessions with Snow during January and February 2016. On February 19, 2016, following an observation of her class, Doughty wrote to Snow commenting that the students were generally confused because the learning goal or the content she intended to teach, did not align to the task: The strategies used weren’t implemented correctly and did not achieve the desired effect. . . . Through my last two visits I have not seen effective implementation of the professional development Michele has provided on an individual basis. It is apparent we will need to revisit the topics from the previous 2 PO [personal observation] sessions. . . . At this point, Doughty felt his team’s efforts could be better utilized elsewhere, rather than continuing to work with Snow who was not cooperating. He contacted a number of people to tell them that “we’re not getting anywhere.” In an e-mail dated February 23, 2016, Doughty noted that “overall it is not going well” and “Michelle is very frustrated that her efforts are not yielding any results.” Insubordination, Incompetence, Performance Deficiencies, Willful Neglect of Duty Respondent is either incapable of performing the duties of a classroom teacher or simply unwilling to do so. Based upon the record, it is both. At times it seems that she is not willing to try because she does not have the skills necessary to perform her duties and, at other times, she is outright defiant claiming that she is not required to do what is asked of her. For two years at Bay Point, she has been directed to enter at least two academic standards-based grades per week in FOCUS and administer an assessment to the students. The assignments that she gave to students in no way could be construed as academic- based. The workbooks produced at hearing from students T.J. and M.T. contain pages with a few definitions, questions and answers copied out of the textbook, and “reflections” consisting of one to two sentences of what the student learned. One assignment is a “foldable” that the student cut out and pasted in the book, with definitions of cell parts written under the flap. In another assignment, the student cut out pictures of body parts and pasted them in the book partially labelling them. With all of the emphasis placed by the educators and administrators on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and rigorous science instruction, Shedrick was appalled that Snow was teaching and assigning her students what he described as “baby work.” From the record and Snow’s testimony, there is little explanation as to when or how she graded these assignments. The students testified that they did not know the purpose of the assignments or how they were graded. Their parents did not know how she arrived at the grades and, when asked, she was not able to explain the grades to them. In addition to the low-level nature of the assignments in FOCUS, Shedrick objected to Snow giving a grade for a parent’s signature, bell work, notebook checks, reflections, and review of the code of student conduct. These were not academic grades, in his opinion. Parents also complained that they never knew where their child stood in the class because of the irregularity of Snow’s grading. Shedrick testified that parent complaints came in “fast and furious” because of Snow’s habit of “dumping” grades at the end of the marking period. John Frank (“Frank”), the OPS administrator, conducted an audit trail in FOCUS which enabled him to determine the dates that grades were entered and found that grades due earlier in the grading period were added a day or two before the end of the marking period, often drastically affecting a student’s grade with no warning or opportunity for the student to improve. For example, on March 14, 2016, FOCUS indicated Snow had entered six grades. Three days later she had entered four more grades for assignments that should have been added weeks prior. It is nearly inconceivable that entering two grades weekly could have been so difficult, especially for an experienced science teacher. For Snow, however, it was a constant uphill climb. When she met with Shedrick and, at times, with Valencia Walker, and later Frank, each told her “just put in two grades a week.” She said she did not have to. At the hearing, she claimed that she was “confused” when she was told the school district wanted two grades. She “preferred” to enter only one grade and reasoned that her assignments were so “intense” that one grade for her was really the equivalent of two grades for another teacher. Her lessons and assignments could in no way be deemed “intense.” At one point, she said she tried to put in two grades, but did not have time. Later, she said “my goal was to put in two grades a week. The reason why I wasn’t able to put in two grades a week at the end was because of the testing schedule and the pacing guide.” This explanation is almost nonsensical. As evident from her belief that her assignments were “intense,” Snow appears to have no insight into the lack of academic rigor in her classroom. At the hearing, she tried to explain the complexity involved for students to answer two questions in their textbooks on cells. She defended her extensive use of the textbook and instructional strategy of having the students read aloud from it on the basis that she had a lot of “special learners” who needed to learn to read. The record does not support her contention that her students needed “special” treatment due to learning disabilities or other special needs. Snow blames many of her deficiencies on the students’ misbehavior in her class. Testimony confirms that at times the class was loud and the students sometimes disrespectful. This is not uncommon when teaching middle school students. A parent called by Snow to testify characterized her observation as a class “out of control.” Snow, however, fails to recognize that her inability to deliver meaningful instruction caused, or at least substantially contributed to, the student behavioral issues. If the students were more engaged and assigned to more meaningful tasks, classroom decorum would have improved. Doughty summarized the correlation well when he testified, “The more low- rigor, the more textbook work . . . the more misbehavior I see happening. The more I see classrooms that engage students in fun, interactive . . . cool science, engaging science, the less misbehavior I see.” Snow attributes the misbehavior to the students, not her teaching methods or poor classroom management skills. She claimed that she was assigned “more than three fourths of the 6th grade SE/ESOL and 504 population . . . in addition, I have the majority of the lower level 6th graders.” Shedrick and the sixth-grade assistant principle, Jason Helbling, testified that the population of students in Snow’s class was no different than any other sixth-grade class. In fact, Helbling pulled the grades of the students Snow complained were nonperforming and found they received A’s, B’s, and C’s in their other classes. Snow’s testimony on this point is not credited. Helbling testified that he was called to Snow’s room much more frequently than any other teacher’s classroom in the school; in his words, as much as ten times more frequently. She had no interventions set up to redirect the students, but would instead call administrators to have those misbehaving or rowdy removed from class. She complained to Helbling that the students were terrible and not teachable. He counseled her to call home to the parent and “try to do other things than throw the student out of class and having them miss content.” Snow claimed she contacted parents but when Helbling called them himself, he learned that there had been no follow-up by Snow in the form of telephone calls. Helbling found that the students characterized by Snow as “rough,” “terrible,” and “not teachable” did not have the same problems in other teachers’ classes. He visited other classrooms to observe these students’ interaction with the teachers. The difference was that the other teachers had classroom management strategies and reached out to the students. Inexplicably, Snow did not even know the names of her students, something Helbling found inexcusable after several months of school. He testified, “If [by end of January] we don’t even know the names of our students, we have a problem, and a lot of that is linked to classroom management. How can you manage a classroom if you don’t know who your students are?” During a classroom visit on January 29, 2016, Helbling walked into a classroom in disarray. A chair was sitting on top of a desk; most of the students were talking; bell work took 21 minutes with no student actually working on bell work (“bell work” are brief assignments given at the start of class to warm up the students, settle them down, and prepare them for the day’s substantive lessons); five kids were lined up at the pencil sharpener; and Snow “sat at her desk the entire time that the observation took place.” Annual Evaluation at Bay Point for 2015-2016 School Year When the time came for the annual evaluation for the 2015-2016 school year, the district had fully integrated the Marzano appraisal system for use in all schools, which as noted above, is designed to grow a teacher’s practice. The comprehensive instrument is comprised of three components: the instructional practice, the deliberate practice, and the student growth score. The Instructional Practice portion counts for 56.67 percent of the evaluation and consists of four domains. Domain 1 is “Classroom Strategies and Behaviors” consisting of 41 instructional categories that happen in the classroom. Administrators conducted seven informal and two formal observations (mid-point and final) for completion of Domain 1. Domain 2 is “Planning and Preparing.” Domain 3 is “Reflecting on Teaching” and Domain 4 is “Collegiality and Professionalism.” Administrators also conducted nine walk-throughs which contributed to Domains 2-4. In each of the four domains, a teacher is rated based on a scale with the lowest being “not using” and the highest being “innovating.” The scores are tallied in the iObservation database. Snow received a score of 1 which is an “unsatisfactory” rating for the instructional practice portion. Her weaknesses in classroom management, instructional delivery and planning, and failure to cooperate were noted in many instances by her evaluator. The Deliberate Practice portion of the instrument counts for ten percent of the overall score. The rubric dictates that a teacher may receive a score of 1, 3, or 10. Teachers receive points, either 1, 3, or 10, depending on whether they submitted a professional development plan and then whether they implemented it. Snow received three out of ten points because she submitted a deliberate practice plan, but did not attend the required professional development. On a four-point scale, this translated into a score of 1.2. The Student Growth score is worth 33.3 percent of the overall score. Snow received a score of 3.0 on this section resulting in a final score on her evaluation of 1.69 or “needs improvement.” Cerreta testified that Snow is the only teacher in the district, out of more than seven thousand teachers, ever to have received three consecutive ratings of “needs improvement.” Cerreta confirmed that each of the evaluators for the 2013-2014 through 2015-2016 school years received training and were certified by the district to conduct an evaluation using the respective evaluation instruments. The administrators properly administered each of the evaluation instruments and Snow never challenged, through a grievance, the process followed by the administrators in conducting the evaluation. Cerreta’s office is responsible for submitting the appraisal systems to FLDOE for approval each year and confirmed that each of the respective systems described for the three-year period were submitted and approved by FLDOE. It bears noting and a brief discussion as to the integrity and character of Principal Shedrick and the other administrators who patiently worked with Respondent throughout her tenure with the Pinellas County School District and, especially, at Bay Point. It is rare to see a principal and district administrators who not only give a teacher the benefit of the doubt when it comes to her shortcomings, but go well above the call of duty to counsel; offer guidance at many levels; and utilize so many already overworked district personnel in an attempt to make one teacher not only a better educator, but successful in every way relating to her classroom and her students. Shedrick, his fellow administrators, and other teachers at Bay Point spent an inordinate amount of time working with one teacher, Snow, who not only rebuffed their efforts to make her successful, but seemed to resent their attempts to make her a more effective teacher. Only after constant failures by Snow in the classroom, and her apparent inability or lack of desire to improve or learn from all the advice and instruction given, did Shedrick reach his breaking point and move forward with the steps leading to Snow’s proposed termination. Less dedicated individuals would have pulled the plug far sooner, and Shedrick, along with all the administrators involved, should be commended for their patience and desire to make an experienced science teacher, a valuable commodity in the district, successful to the point where she could better further her students’ education in such a vital academic subject in today’s world. Based upon the extensive evidence and testimony, all these efforts were unappreciated and, ultimately, made in vain.
Recommendation Based on the foregoing Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, it is RECOMMENDED that Petitioner enter a final order terminating Respondent’s employment as a teacher. DONE AND ENTERED this 24th day of February, 2017, in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida. S ROBERT S. COHEN Administrative Law Judge Division of Administrative Hearings The DeSoto Building 1230 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32399-3060 (850) 488-9675 Fax Filing (850) 921-6847 www.doah.state.fl.us Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 24th day of February, 2017. COPIES FURNISHED: Laurie A. Dart, Esquire Office of General Counsel Pinellas County School Board 301 4th Street Southwest Largo, Florida 33770 (eServed) Branden M. Vicari, Esquire Herdman & Sakellarides, P.A. Suite 110 29605 U.S. Highway 19 North Clearwater, Florida 33761 (eServed) Dr. Michael A. Grego, Superintendent Pinellas County School Board 301 4th Street Southwest Largo, Florida 33770-2942 Matthew Mears, General Counsel Department of Education Turlington Building, Suite 1244 325 West Gaines Street Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400 (eServed) Pam Stewart, Commissioner of Education Department of Education Turlington Building, Suite 1514 325 West Gaines Street Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400 (eServed)
Findings Of Fact Respondent, Jean-Baptiste Guerrier (Guerrier), holds Florida Teaching Certificate No. 59692 covering the area of English which is valid through June 30, 1995. Guerrier was employed as a teacher at Miami Edison Middle School during the 1992-93 school year. On September 20, 1993, the following disciplinary action was taken by the Dade County School System against Guerrier for conduct unbecoming a school employee: Directives were issued to Respondent to refrain from making inappropriate remarks. Respondent was issued a letter of reprimand. Respondent was placed on prescription. Respondent received an unacceptable rating for Category VII and an overall summary rating of unacceptable on his 1992-93 TADS Annual Evaluation. On November 29, 1994, the Commissioner of Education issued an Administrative Complaint against Guerrier alleging that he made inappropriate comments of a sexual nature to three eighth grade female students during the 1992-1993 school year. Based on the evidence presented Guerrier did not make such comments. The Administrative Complaint alleged that Guerrier engaged in inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature with two eighth female students during the 1992-1993 school year. Based on the evidence presented Guerrier did not engage in such behavior. A teacher at Miami Edison Middle School observed Guerrier putting his arm around female students during the changing of classes. He did not identify the students. During these occasions, Guerrier's back was turned towards the teacher. The teacher characterized Guerrier as a gregarious teacher. During the 1992-1993 school year, Guerrier had three female cousins who were attending Miami Edison Middle School. Guerrier would put his arm around his cousins' shoulders when he would see them at school. Guerrier did not put his arm around any other female students.
Recommendation Based on the foregoing Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, it is RECOMMENDED that the Administrative Complaint against Jean-Baptiste Guerrier be DISMISSED. DONE AND ENTERED this 24th day of July, 1995, in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida. SUSAN B. KIRKLAND Hearing Officer Division of Administrative Hearings The DeSoto Building 1230 Apalachee Parkway Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1550 (904) 488-9675 Filed with the Clerk of the Division of Administrative Hearings this 24th day of July, 1995. APPENDIX TO RECOMMENDED ORDER, CASE NO. 95-649 Neither Petitioner nor Respondent filed proposed findings of fact. COPIES FURNISHED: Karen Barr Wilde, Executive Director Education Practices Commission 301 Florida Education Center 325 West Gaines Street Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400 Ronald G. Stowers, Esquire Department of Education Suite 1701, the Capitol Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400 William Du Fresne, Esquire 2929 Southwest 3rd Avenue, Suite One Miami, Florida 33129 Kathleen M. Richards, Administrator Professional Practices Services 352 Fla. Education Center 325 West Gaines Street Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400
