I have been a teacher for 10 years and have never seen or heard of this before. I have recently been put on administrative leave for too many phone calls out and into my office phone over a period of 2 months. I was asked to resign due to too many calls, and I was never offered union representation nor legal representation when I was spoken to by the principal and the superintendent of human resources. I also had never been told the rules of the district phone system and was unaware that every time I made a call it was to 10 cents per call. This is just an overview, and I will now describe what happened in detail.
I taught fifth grade in a different state for 8 years and just moved to this state in August of 2007. I acquired a job teaching ESL to elementary school students K-6. I do not have tenure as of yet, because it takes 3 years in this school district to become tenured. Anyway, I piloted a program this year for my students that were newcomers in order for them to learn English more effectively, and it was accepted and embraced by the school district. Let me begin by saying that my husband and I do not have cell phones, so we communicate through our office phones usually during our lunches and breaks during the day. Most of those times they are just messages left on each others voice mail. We had some extreme circumstances hit us in January and we had to leave messages for each other more than normal between the months of January and March. Also, my phone in my office has always rung during the daytime, and if I were in there I would of course answer it. I was unaware that the phone was not supposed to ring because nobody ever told me that it wasn't.
One day at the end of March, the phone had just rung and it happened to be my realtor. I had one student in the room at the time and I was attempting to get off the phone with him, when my principal walked in. She sat down with my student and I proceeded to get off the phone with the realtor. I apologized to my principal and told her the phone had just rung and I was trying to end the conversation. The principal did not believe me that the phone had rung down there and proceeded to argue with me. She thought I had called out during my student time. So she had the secretary call me on her cell phone to see if the phone rang, and sure enough it did. They then had that problem quickly resolved and had them shut off my ringer. I was very grateful for that because I was tired of being interrupted by different phone calls throughout the morning. I only had students in my office for 2 hours a day and the rest of the time we were in the cafeteria for class.
So, later that morning my principal then called me into the office and gave me a letter that stated I was not to be on the phone during instructional time and that it would be kept on file at the school only as a warning. I was still not told that it cost 10 cents per minute per call.
After this, I never used the phone except once during lunch usually and then after school. 3 weeks later, I go to work like normal and my principal grabbed me before I got my kids. She tells me that the human resource superintendent wants to speak with me. I walk in and he has a stack of papers in front of him, then proceeds to tell me that I made a lot of phone calls between January and March on my phone in my office. I said, okay? Not understanding what he was getting at. He then proceeded to tell me that I committed fraud against the district for using the phone for personal gain and that 90% of the calls were incoming and outgoing to my husband's work. He told me that I committed fraud because it was 10 cents per minute and it cost the district money. Of course, I never knew that and I stated so. They then proceeded to tell me that they wanted me to resign that day and that if I chose not to resign they would take me to civil court and sue me for the charges, (which I had already stated I would pay with no problem), and my name would be dragged through the papers and I would probably not get a job again. I had no offer of union representation (I am a member) nor legal counsel, just a simple, resign or we sue you.
I of course freaked out because this is my entire career and I love what I do. So I told them I would not do anything without calling my husband and he came and told them I would not be resigning and we would have our lawyer look into this. So they told me I would be on administrative leave until things were resolved. We then went home and I called the union rep and told him what had happened. He told us to write a narrative about everything and we would meet with him on a Monday. We did so, and when we met with him, he seemed to think that the whole thing they were accusing me of was ridiculous and they would soon see the error of their ways.
One thing I wanted to point out is that the directive given to me by the principal was on March 30, and the phone records they pulled were from January 4-March 14, BEFORE the directive was ever given to me.
So here I sit 2 1/2 weeks later with no resolve to the issue. My name just came up at the Board meeting this past Monday night so I would be approved for administrative leave. The local newspaper was there and of course asked why I was being put on administrative leave and the human resource guy stated that an investigation was ongoing. So it makes it sound like I have done something horrible to kids or something. This statement was in the paper yesterday.
When I talked to my union rep he just says that we have to wait to see what their next move is going to be and there is nothing we can do right now. I don't know if I believe that because I feel that I have been unjustly targeted because my principal doesn't like me for some reason. I wanted to know that if there is any way at some point that I could take the human resource superintendent and the principal to civil court to sue for mental diress and unfair practices, once this whole thing is over. I have been mentally scarred by this whole thing and feel like I have had my reputation tarnished. I even had an article in another local paper, written about the work I do with these kids and how it is revolutionary, it came out right before this whole thing happened. This is part of the reason I feel that I have been targeted. Also, the superintendent of human resources was not aware of the letter the principal gave me until my union rep told him about it. So how can they justify forcing me to resign based on something I did before the directive was given to me? Once I was given the directive, I followed it to a tee and did not once violate that directive. Don't they have to look at those records after the directive was given to me before they can send me to the wolves? The whole thing makes no sense. In the beginning it made me question my teaching, but I am an excellent teacher and have proven it over and over throughout my career. I care about my kids and what I do and I would never knowingly do anything to jeapordize my career. Please answer my questions about this and give me your take on the situation. Thank you.
By the way, the cannot terminate me or choose to nonrenew me because I was already offered a contract for next year in March and I signed, sealed and delivered it right away. This is why they are having such difficulty with "getting me out".
I taught fifth grade in a different state for 8 years and just moved to this state in August of 2007. I acquired a job teaching ESL to elementary school students K-6. I do not have tenure as of yet, because it takes 3 years in this school district to become tenured. Anyway, I piloted a program this year for my students that were newcomers in order for them to learn English more effectively, and it was accepted and embraced by the school district. Let me begin by saying that my husband and I do not have cell phones, so we communicate through our office phones usually during our lunches and breaks during the day. Most of those times they are just messages left on each others voice mail. We had some extreme circumstances hit us in January and we had to leave messages for each other more than normal between the months of January and March. Also, my phone in my office has always rung during the daytime, and if I were in there I would of course answer it. I was unaware that the phone was not supposed to ring because nobody ever told me that it wasn't.
One day at the end of March, the phone had just rung and it happened to be my realtor. I had one student in the room at the time and I was attempting to get off the phone with him, when my principal walked in. She sat down with my student and I proceeded to get off the phone with the realtor. I apologized to my principal and told her the phone had just rung and I was trying to end the conversation. The principal did not believe me that the phone had rung down there and proceeded to argue with me. She thought I had called out during my student time. So she had the secretary call me on her cell phone to see if the phone rang, and sure enough it did. They then had that problem quickly resolved and had them shut off my ringer. I was very grateful for that because I was tired of being interrupted by different phone calls throughout the morning. I only had students in my office for 2 hours a day and the rest of the time we were in the cafeteria for class.
So, later that morning my principal then called me into the office and gave me a letter that stated I was not to be on the phone during instructional time and that it would be kept on file at the school only as a warning. I was still not told that it cost 10 cents per minute per call.
After this, I never used the phone except once during lunch usually and then after school. 3 weeks later, I go to work like normal and my principal grabbed me before I got my kids. She tells me that the human resource superintendent wants to speak with me. I walk in and he has a stack of papers in front of him, then proceeds to tell me that I made a lot of phone calls between January and March on my phone in my office. I said, okay? Not understanding what he was getting at. He then proceeded to tell me that I committed fraud against the district for using the phone for personal gain and that 90% of the calls were incoming and outgoing to my husband's work. He told me that I committed fraud because it was 10 cents per minute and it cost the district money. Of course, I never knew that and I stated so. They then proceeded to tell me that they wanted me to resign that day and that if I chose not to resign they would take me to civil court and sue me for the charges, (which I had already stated I would pay with no problem), and my name would be dragged through the papers and I would probably not get a job again. I had no offer of union representation (I am a member) nor legal counsel, just a simple, resign or we sue you.
I of course freaked out because this is my entire career and I love what I do. So I told them I would not do anything without calling my husband and he came and told them I would not be resigning and we would have our lawyer look into this. So they told me I would be on administrative leave until things were resolved. We then went home and I called the union rep and told him what had happened. He told us to write a narrative about everything and we would meet with him on a Monday. We did so, and when we met with him, he seemed to think that the whole thing they were accusing me of was ridiculous and they would soon see the error of their ways.
One thing I wanted to point out is that the directive given to me by the principal was on March 30, and the phone records they pulled were from January 4-March 14, BEFORE the directive was ever given to me.
So here I sit 2 1/2 weeks later with no resolve to the issue. My name just came up at the Board meeting this past Monday night so I would be approved for administrative leave. The local newspaper was there and of course asked why I was being put on administrative leave and the human resource guy stated that an investigation was ongoing. So it makes it sound like I have done something horrible to kids or something. This statement was in the paper yesterday.
When I talked to my union rep he just says that we have to wait to see what their next move is going to be and there is nothing we can do right now. I don't know if I believe that because I feel that I have been unjustly targeted because my principal doesn't like me for some reason. I wanted to know that if there is any way at some point that I could take the human resource superintendent and the principal to civil court to sue for mental diress and unfair practices, once this whole thing is over. I have been mentally scarred by this whole thing and feel like I have had my reputation tarnished. I even had an article in another local paper, written about the work I do with these kids and how it is revolutionary, it came out right before this whole thing happened. This is part of the reason I feel that I have been targeted. Also, the superintendent of human resources was not aware of the letter the principal gave me until my union rep told him about it. So how can they justify forcing me to resign based on something I did before the directive was given to me? Once I was given the directive, I followed it to a tee and did not once violate that directive. Don't they have to look at those records after the directive was given to me before they can send me to the wolves? The whole thing makes no sense. In the beginning it made me question my teaching, but I am an excellent teacher and have proven it over and over throughout my career. I care about my kids and what I do and I would never knowingly do anything to jeapordize my career. Please answer my questions about this and give me your take on the situation. Thank you.
By the way, the cannot terminate me or choose to nonrenew me because I was already offered a contract for next year in March and I signed, sealed and delivered it right away. This is why they are having such difficulty with "getting me out".
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